Ex-intel chief Talabany warns Iraqi Kurds risk civil conflict leaving Turkey, Iran room to meddle
Ousted Iraqi Kurdish Intel Chief Lahur Talabany warns of civil conflict amid escalating tensions between the main Iraqi Kurdish factions, and insists that Kurds' future lies in Iraq.
Iraqi Kurdistan is gripped by turbulence as it comes under mounting aggression from Iran and Turkey, and as Baghdad seeks to wrest full control of its oil and gas industry. Rampant corruption and a lack of economic opportunity are prompting a rising number of young Iraqi Kurds to flee the country. As if things were not bad enough, the two largest political parties — the Kurdistan Democratic Party led by Massoud Barzani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) that was founded by Iraq’s first post-war president, the late Jalal Talabani — are quarreling again over power and money, prompting worries of a resurgence of the civil conflict that convulsed the region in the mid-1990s.
The difference today is that not only are the parties at odds with each other, they are also mired in internal rivalries. Lahur Talabany, former co-chair of the PUK who led the Sulaimaniyah region’s intelligence services and the US-trained Counter Terrorism Group, was ousted by his cousins Bafel and Qubad Talabani last summer in a Byzantine power grab. It was the most overt manifestation yet of the intra-family feuds simmering in the Talabani and Barzani dynasties.
Talabany, an architect of the United States’ alliance with the Syrian Kurds in the fight against the Islamic State, is well regarded in Western circles as a clearheaded and effective partner if ruthless in his own right. Despite recent setbacks, few believe his political career is over. Many are betting on a comeback because Talabany continues to enjoy popular support in his native Sulaimaniyah.
We caught up with Talabany as he met with British officials in London this week and delivered a speech at the House of Commons Nov. 1 to a packed audience of mainly Iraqi Kurds.
