Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish leader who used pragmatism, guile and an outsize personality to navigate a hazardous course in Mideast politics, surviving guerrilla war, the terrors of Saddam Hussein and shifting alliances to become the first president of Iraq under its postwar Constitution, died on Tuesday in Berlin. He was 83.
The cause was a brain hemorrhage and a stroke, his second since 2012, according to Saadi Bira, a spokesman for Mr. Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
The Iraqi presidency, on paper, is largely ceremonial. But Mr. Talabani, through skillful bridge-building, used his tenure in office, from 2005 to 2012, to act as a chief executive with a broad and powerful portfolio.
President George W. Bush’s administration saw Mr. Talabani as an important ally, though at times he was a harsh critic of American policies and military tactics. The Obama White House was also quick to reach out to him. Michael Rubin, editor of Middle East Quarterly, reported that “less than two weeks into his presidency,” President Barack Obama telephoned Mr. Talabani “to discuss the way ahead.’’
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Mr. Talabani was long an ardent campaigner for a sovereign Kurdish state in northern Iraq, where his political beginnings, like his family, were rooted. But he submerged many of those aspirations in his later years as he worked to unify the factions that contested for power after the fall of Mr. Hussein in 2003.
Mr. Talabani was a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, which drafted the country’s interim Constitution after the war. The National Assembly named him interim president in April 2005, to succeed Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer. A year later he became the first president to be elected under the new Constitution.
As the war in Iraq wound down in 2010, Mr. Talabani figured in the Obama administration’s plans for a postwar government there. In their 2012 book, “The Endgame: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq, from George W. Bush to Barack Obama,” Michael R. Gordon, a former correspondent for The New York Times, and retired Lt. Gen. Bernard E. Trainor wrote that Mr. Obama made a confidential call to Mr. Talabani asking him to give up the Iraqi presidency so that a more inclusive government might be formed under Ayad Allawi, a Shiite with broad Sunni support. The administration’s aim, the authors wrote, was to counter what the White House saw as a drift toward authoritarianism under Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.
Mr. Talabani refused. He was re-elected a week later.
Mr. Talabani, widely known as Mam Jalal or Uncle Jalal, cut a Falstaffian figure, typically in bespoke suits. A rotund, gregarious gourmand, he enjoyed nothing so much as a bountiful table and Cuban cigars as he grew wealthy from duties on oil exported illegally through Turkey.
His health was not as robust. He collapsed from exhaustion in February 2007, and an American military plane took him to a hospital in Amman, Jordan. He returned home after 17 days, but that May he went to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., for rest and treatment for what he called “my obesity.’’ In the summer of 2008, he returned to the Mayo Clinic for an operation to repair a heart valve. Then came the stroke, at the end of 2012, when he was flown to Germany for treatment.
Mr. Talabani was a consummate political survivor and an openhanded pragmatist, if not an ideological chameleon, adept at maintaining his equilibrium in the sectarian, often ruthless environment of postwar Iraq. He was quite capable of startling marriages of political convenience, some ending in equally expedient divorce.
After the Islamic revolution brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power in Iran in 1979, for example, Mr. Talabani backed the Iranian Kurds against the regime in Tehran. Later, he allied himself with the Tehran government in its war with Baghdad.
In a 2007 profile in The New Yorker by Jon Lee Anderson, Iraq’s national security adviser, the Shiite politician Mowaffak al-Rubaie, was quoted as calling Mr. Talabani “very difficult to define.”
“If you are an Islamist, he brings you Koranic verses; if you’re a Marxist, he’ll talk to you about Marxist-Leninist theory, dialectics and Descartes,” the article quoted Mr. al-Rubaie as saying. “He has a very interesting ability to speak several languages, sometimes with a very limited vocabulary. He has a lot of anecdotes and knows a lot of jokes. He is an extraordinarily generous person, and he spends like there’s no tomorrow.”
Jalal Talabani was born on Nov. 12, 1933, in the northeastern Kurdish village of Kelkan, near Suleimaniya. The Talabani clan was a powerful one, and his father was one of its leaders. Jalal’s political life started early. At 13 he joined a clandestine group of Kurdish students. At 18 he was among the ranking members of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, led by Mustafa Barzani.
Mr. Talabani attended law school at Baghdad University but withdrew to evade arrest for his role in founding the Kurdistan Student Union. He traveled to China in 1955, met Premier Zhou Enlai and translated writings of Mao Zedong — his political role model — into Kurdish.
He returned to Iraq after the fall of the Hashemite monarchy in 1958 and graduated from law school the next year. In 1961, after his compulsory service in the Iraqi Army, he joined a Kurdish independence uprising led by Mr. Barzani.
Mr. Talabani served Mr. Barzani as an overseas envoy, living first in Lebanon and later in Syria. He also traveled through Europe and the Mideast, establishing political friendships with Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, King Hussein of Jordan and Hafez al-Assad of Syria.
Mr. Talabani quit and rejoined the Kurdistan Democratic Party several times before splitting with Mr. Barzani and switching his allegiance to a splinter group led by the politician and novelist Ibrahim Ahmed. Mr. Talabani married Mr. Ahmed’s daughter, Hero, in 1970. In 1975, he united several Kurdish groups into a new party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
An avowed Marxist and Maoist, Mr. Talabani was angry that the United States had initially sided with Iraq, and Mr. Hussein, during the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted from 1980 to 1988.
With the war winding down in the spring of 1988, Mr. Talabani slipped out of Iraq through Iran to make his first trip to the United States.
His trip was primarily intended to accuse Mr. Hussein’s regime of genocide in using chemical weapons against the Kurds. The previous March, a gas attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja left an estimated 5,000 people dead. Mr. Talabani was the principal messenger to the West about the massacre, which was largely unreported at the time. He spoke at the United Nations, to politicians in Washington and to the news media.
Despite the massacre and the army’s campaign of repression against the Kurds, Mr. Talabani and Mr. Barzani’s son Massoud, who by then had taken over leadership of the K.D.P., traveled to Baghdad to sue for peace. Mr. Talabani later described a series of warm meetings with Mr. Hussein, but he made a rare political misstep when he was photographed kissing the hated Iraqi president on the cheek.
A no-fly zone imposed by the United States and its allies in the Kurdish north gave the Kurds a relatively safe haven beyond the reach of Baghdad. But intramural Kurdish hatreds began to resurface, and by 1994 Mr. Talabani’s forces were engaged in a civil war with Mr. Barzani’s. (Twice Mr. Barzani appealed to Mr. Hussein for help.)
The two men reconciled in 1997 and built an uneasy peace, fortified by the American-led invasion in 2003. The rapprochement proved enduring enough that the parties fielded a joint list of candidates in the country’s first national elections, in 2005.
Mr. Talabani is survived by his wife, who owns a television station and a newspaper in Suleimaniya; their two sons, Bafel, who works in counterinsurgency for the Patriotic Union on Kurdistan, and Qubad, the deputy prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government; and three grandchildren. His wife and children were in Germany with him when he died, according to a spokesman for his party.
Mr. Talabani for years lived with declining health. He underwent heart surgery in the United States in 2008, and in December 2012 he had his first stroke. He flew from Iraq to Germany for extended medical treatment. From Berlin, he cast a vote in parliamentary elections in April 2014, the country’s first since the withdrawal of American forces in 2011.
He only returned to Iraq in July 2014. He resigned his post as president soon after, in part due to his weakened physical condition, which included partial paralysis.
In September, he returned to Berlin seeking further medical care. His wife and sons were with him when he died, according to Mr. Bira, the party spokesman.
Iraq’s prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, during his weekly news conference, extended his condolences to Mr. Talabani’s family and to all Iraqis for the loss of the nation’s first non-Arab president.
Mr. Talabani’s penchant for quicksilver diplomatic expediency was on display in his relationship with Iran. After the invasion of Iraq in 2003, he spoke harshly about Iranian meddling in Iraqi politics. But by March 2008 he had softened toward his country’s neighbor and former enemy. That was when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran made the first trip to Baghdad by an Iranian leader in a quarter century. After his plane landed, Mr. Ahmadinejad went straight from the airport to Mr. Talabani’s personal compound.
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Jalal Talabani (Kurdish: جەلال تاڵەبانی Celal Tallebanî, Arabic: جلال طالباني Jalāl Ṭālabānī; 1933 – 3 October 2017)[2] was an Iraqi Kurdish politician who served as the sixth President of Iraq from 2005 to 2014, as well as the President of the Governing Council of Iraq (39th Prime Minister of Iraq). He was the first non-Arab president of Iraq, although Abdul Karim Qasim was of partial Kurdish heritage.[3] He is known as "Mam Jalal" meaning "uncle Jalal" among Kurdish people.
Talabani is the founder and had been secretary general of one of the main Kurdish political parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). He was a prominent member of the Interim Iraq Governing Council, which was established following the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime by the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Talabani was an advocate for Kurdish rights and democracy in Iraq for more than 50 years. Apart from his native Kurdish, Talabani was fluent in Arabic, Persian, and English.
Talabani was born on in 1933[4] in Kelkan village, the son of Husamuddin, a shaykh of the Koy Sanjaq branch of the Talabani family. The Talabani lineage has produced many leading social figures including the poet Riza Talabani, his grandson, Abd al-Karim Qasim prime minister (1959-1963) and former National Democratic Party's member Hasan Talabani and Mukarram Talabani, a prominent member of the Communist party.[5] He received his elementary and intermediate school education in Koya (Koysanjak) and his high school education in Erbil and Kirkuk. When he was in his teens, Talabani's peers began referring to him as "Mam" Jalal, as 'mam' meaning "paternal uncle" in Kurdish, and the Kurds have called him by this affectionate name ever since. In 1957, during the final year of his studies for a degree in law at Baghdad University, he was expelled because of his political activities. He completed his degree two years later.
The paternal ancestors of Jalal Talabani were originally Iranian and from the Bukan (Iranian Kurdistan) who immigrated to Iraq during the Safavid dynasty.[6]
When in September 1961, the Kurdish uprising for the rights of the Kurds in northern Iraq was declared against the Baghdad government of Abdul Karim Qassem, Talabani took charge of the Kirkuk and Silemani battle fronts and organized and led separatist movements in Mawat, Rezan and the Karadagh regions. In March 1962, he led a coordinated offensive that brought about the liberation of the district of Sharbazher from Iraqi government forces. When not engaged in fighting in the early and mid-1960s, Talabani undertook numerous diplomatic missions, representing the Kurdish leadership at meetings in Europe and the Middle East.
The Kurdish separatist movement collapsed in March 1975, after Iran ended their support in exchange for a border agreement with Iraq. This agreement was the 1975 Algiers Agreement, where Iraq gave up claims to the Shatt al-Arab(Arvand Rūd) waterway and Khuzestan, which later became the basis for the Iran–Iraq War. Believing it was time to give a new direction to the Kurdish separatists and to the Kurdish society, Talabani, with a group of Kurdish intellectuals and activists, founded the Kurdish Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (Yekiaiti Nishtimani Kurdistan). In 1976, he began organizing an armed campaign for Kurdish independence inside Iraqi Kurdistan. During the 1980s, Talabani sided with Iran and led a Kurdish struggle from bases inside Iraq until the crackdown against Kurdish separatists from 1987 to 1988.
In 1991, he helped inspire a renewed effort for Kurdish independence. He negotiated a ceasefire with the Iraqi Ba'athist government that saved the lives of many Kurds and worked closely with the United States, United Kingdom, France and other countries to set up the safe haven in Iraqi Kurdistan. In 1992 the Kurdistan Regional Government was founded. Talabani has pursued a negotiated settlement to the internecine problems plaguing the Kurdish movement, as well as the larger issue of Kurdish rights in the current regional context. He works closely with other Kurdish politicians as well as the rest of the Iraqi opposition factions. In close coordination with Masoud Barzani, Talabani and the Kurds played a key role as a partner of the US-led Coalition in the invasion of Iraq.[7] Talabani was a member of the Iraqi Governing Council that negotiated the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL), Iraq's interim constitution. The TAL governed all politics in Iraq and the process of writing and adopting the final constitution.
Talabani was elected President of Iraq on April 6, 2005 by the Iraqi National Assembly and sworn into office the following day. On April 22, 2006, Talabani began his second term as President of Iraq, becoming the first President elected under the country's new constitution. His office was part of the Presidency Council of Iraq. Nawshirwan Mustafa was Talabani's deputy until Mustafa resigned in 2006 and formed an opposition party called Gorran.
Jalal Talabani was married to Hero Ibrahim Ahmed, daughter of Ibrahim Ahmed, a lieutenant of Mullah Mustafa.[8] His youngest son, Qubad, is the deputy Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Erbil.
On 18 December 2012 Talabani suffered a stroke and was in intensive care in Baghdad, where his condition eventually stabilized after reports that he was in a coma. A statement on the President's official website said that he was being treated for blocked arteries.[9][10][11] On 20 December, Talabani's condition had improved enough to allow travel to Germany for treatment.[12][13] The head of Talabani's medical team in Iraq has been Governor Najmiddin Karim.[14][15] On 19 July 2014, Jalal Talabani returned to Iraq after more than 18 months of medical treatment.[16]
********************************************************************************************************Jalal Talabani, (born 1933, Kelkan, Iraq—died October 3, 2017, Berlin, Germany), Iraqi Kurdish politician who served as president of Iraq (2005–14).
Talabani’s involvement in politics began at an early age. He joined the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) at age 14 and was elected to the KDP’s central committee at age 18. In 1956 he founded the Kurdistan Student Union, later becoming its secretary-general. After receiving a law degree from Baghdad University in 1959, Talabani served as the commander of a tank unit in the Iraqi army.
When the Kurds revolted against the government of ʿAbd al-Karīm Qāsim in 1961, Talabani joined the resistance, leading a successful campaign to force the Iraqi army out of the district of Sharbazher. He subsequently undertook several diplomatic missions in Europe and the Middle East on behalf of the Kurdish leadership.
In 1975 Talabani and a group of Kurdish activists and intellectuals broke with the KDP and founded a new political party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. During the late 1970s and early ’80s, Talabani helped to organize Kurdish resistance to the Baʿthist regime of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Saddam’s successful military campaign against the Kurds (1987–88) forced Talabani to flee Iraq. Following the Persian Gulf War in 1991, Talabani returned to Iraq to help lead a Kurdish uprising against Saddam, which failed after U.S.-led forces refused to intervene to support the rebels. Talabani subsequently worked with the United States, the United Kingdom, Turkey, and France to establish a “safe haven” for Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan in the far north and northeast of the country.
After the overthrow of Saddam in the 2003 Iraq War, Talabani became a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, which developed Iraq’s interim constitution. In 2005 Talabani was elected interim president of Iraq by the National Assembly, and he was reelected to a four-year term in 2006 and again in 2010. As president, Talabani worked to reduce sectarian violence and corruption within Iraq and to improve relations with Turkey, which had accused Iraq of allowing Kurdish rebels within Turkey to operate from bases in Iraqi Kurdistan. Talabani, suffering from poor health following a stroke in 2012, spent much of the last two years of his presidency receiving medical treatment in Germany. He was succeeded as president by another Kurdish politician, Fuad Masum.
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Talabani, Jalal
Jalal Talabani (b. November 12, 1933, Kelkan, Iraq — d. October 3, 2017, Berlin, Germany) was an Iraqi Kurdish politician who served as President of Iraq from 2005 to 2014.
Talabani’s involvement in politics began at an early age. He joined the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) at age 14 and was elected to the KDP’s central committee at age 18. In 1956, he founded the Kurdistan Student Union, later becoming its secretary-general. After receiving a law degree from Baghdad University in 1959, Talabani served as the commander of a tank unit in the Iraqi army.
When the Kurds revolted against the government of 'Abd al-Karim Qasim in 1961, Talabani joined the resistance, leading a successful campaign to force the Iraqi army out of the district of Sharbazher. He subsequently undertook several diplomatic missions in Europe and the Middle East on behalf of the Kurdish leadership.
In 1975, Talabani and a group of Kurdish activists and intellectuals broke with the KDP and founded a new political party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. During the late 1970s and early ’80s, Talabani helped to organize Kurdish resistance to the Ba'thist regime of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Saddam’s successful military campaign against the Kurds (1987–88) forced Talabani to flee Iraq. Following the Persian Gulf War in 1991, Talabani returned to Iraq to help lead a Kurdish uprising against Saddam, which failed after United States led forces refused to intervene to support the rebels. Talabani subsequently worked with the United States, the United Kingdom, Turkey, and France to establish a “safe haven” for Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan in the far north and northeast of the country.
After the overthrow of Saddam in the 2003 Iraq War, Talabani became a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, which developed Iraq’s interim constitution. In 2005, Talabani was elected interim president of Iraq by the National Assembly, and he was re-elected to a four-year term in 2006 and again in 2010. As president, Talabani worked to reduce sectarian violence and corruption within Iraq and to improve relations with Turkey, which had accused Iraq of allowing Kurdish rebels within Turkey to operate from bases in Iraqi Kurdistan. Talabani, suffering from poor health following a stroke in 2012, spent much of the last two years of his presidency receiving medical treatment in Germany. He was succeeded as president by another Kurdish politician, Fuad Masum.
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