The Kurdistan Observer- By  Serbest  Qeradaghi. Mar 2, 2002

           In August 1989, Mr Masoud Barzani, President of  Parti Democrati Kurdistan, PDK, came to London on the first leg of a European tour to brief the world on the worsening situation in Iraqi Kurdistan, During a meeting in committee room C, House of Commons, chaired by  Mr George Robertson, (then shadow defence secretary , Now Lord Robertson, NATO Secretary  General), attended by 17 MP and just as he was beginning his opening remarks, an elderly man with a gray goatee beard, stood up, leaning on a walking stick  and said : "Pardon the interruption , my name is Julian Emery, I haven’t come here to debate, learn or voice an opinion, I have done plenty of that during my long tenure of this House, I have just come to shake the hands of the son of the noblest foe of our bygone British Empire, and one of the most courageous men of this century”. With that he walked slowly towards Mr Barzani shook his hands and told him that he had had shaken  Mela Mustafa’s hand back in 1943, in Baghdad, while stationed there with a special forces unit of the British army, and Barzani was conducting negotiations with the Iraqi’s during a lull in his uprising for Kurdish emancipation.

Mr Emery, later to become Lord Emery was one of Britain’s most distinguished war heroes, I was to discover. His tribute was a spontaneous gesture, he told me later, to a great soldier whom he felt " had been wronged by the British among others”.
Barzani had established a worldwide reputation by the late forties as the resilient fighter against tremendous odds, who refused to accept the inevitable erosion and 
Final demise of the Kurdish identity, The newly established nation states of the M.E, pursued with ruthless vigour the aim of eradicating Kurdish nationalism through brutal military campaigns in the rural and tribal areas, and incorporation of the urban population in a centralised state controlled economy, leading to a rapid decline of traditional infrastructure. Kurdish Ottoman officers and intelligentsia having flirted briefly with dreams of Independent Kurdistan in the early twenties, by joining Shaykh Said, Shaykh Mehmoud or Symko, had by the early thirties switched loyalties to the state and became part of its civil and military machine that sought to assimilate their own people.
Off course, nationalist sentiments still existed, few poets, writers, societies and parties, to their great credit, kept stoking the dying embers of the culture, tradition and pride that was under siege by the state sponsored and more powerful Arab, Turkish and Persian civilisations, but they were exactly that. Sentiments. Voiced at the more cosmopolitan capitals of Baghdad, Damascus or Tehran, were some dissent was tolerated, Into the twilight stepped the dazzling figure of Barzani, proud, resilient, invincible and above all a pure Kurdish product, untainted by servitude to foreign masters independent of their largess and ready to challenge the state or states, reinventing the legends of Saladin, the Fortress of Dum Dum or the 12 knights of Meriwan. By the late forties the student and the poet, the peasant and townsman, the rich and the poor throughout Kurdistan had found a common and a realisable purpose in following his lead, His very name came to signify Kurdishness in its noblest and most wholesome form, Upon his return after an11 year exile in the Soviet Union, every Kurd, PDK, Communist, independents, religious …etc, claimed him to be their very own, for the first time in our history, a leader would transcend tribal, regional and class boundaries on such a scale . 

My reverence for his memory on this day, 23 years after his passing, is not idol worship or emotional gesture, It is a recognition of his fantastic achievements and influence in shaping and defining modern Kurdish nationalism, But this will be the last sad commemoration for me, for on 14th March 2003, I shall celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of our greatest leader by planting a tree, as my compatriots at home do every year.
And I have a feeling that every Kurd who belongs, and who is proud of his heritage will celebrate this occasion in unison, and declare to the world that the Kurds have arrived.
If Julian Emery and thousands of prominent none Kurdish writers, Soldiers and politicians, have taken the trouble to pay their tributes to our Barzani, throughout the years, then our entire nation regardless of political or regional affiliation should start preparing for the greatest show of solidarity and unity on the100th anniversary of his birth on 14-03-2003.