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“Massoud Barzani, his nephew, and his sons often take umbrage when compared to Saddam or sons Uday and Qusay, but they continue to provide fodder for comparison”

Michael Rubin | American Enterprise Institute

Now is the time for Massoud Barzani to think about his legacy. He is 72 years old; his father died at 75. While Barzani may think he will follow his father into history as a great nationalist leader, the reality is less certain. Massoud has presided over the rise of the Kurdistan Regional Government, but his cynical embrace of Saddam Hussein less than a decade after the Anfal campaign suggests that Barzani cares more about wealth and personal power than Kurdish aspirations. His emphasis on family empowerment and wealth accumulation also suggests that he has been unable to shed the role of tribal leader to become a broader national leader.

Recent events suggest that Barzani will have no change of heart or mind in his final years. He still lives in an old resort, which first Saddam and then Massoud confiscated for their own personal use. First his children and then his grandchildren were educated in a school reserved only for family members so that they need not mix with ordinary Kurds. Here, Barzani is far more extreme than Arab monarchs who encouraged their children to mix with ordinary citizens in order to allow them to develop friendship and lifelong ties to the people whose acceptance was the key to legitimacy. Bizarrely, as Kurdish society grows, Barzani does not seem able to conceive the importance of broader ties and friendships beyond narrow patronage networks.

Simply put, Barzani has no friends whom he does not pay.

Indeed, Barzani’s willingness to serve foreign clients may be the defining point of his legacy. After Turkish airstrikes on Jan. 23, 2019, left four locals dead, protesters in the town of Shiladize overran an illegal Turkish army outpost located inside Iraqi Kurdistan and burned military vehicles and equipment. Turkish soldiers opened fire on protesters, killing one and wounding eight.

In response to the incident, Barzani closed NRT TV, the main independent station, in Duhok and arrested its journalists. Nechirvan Barzani, Massoud’s nephew and the prime minister, did not condemn not the Turks for airstrikes which killed Iraqi Kurdish civilians, or for firing on Iraqi Kurdish protesters. Instead, he condemned the media for reporting news which might “deteriorate the security of the Kurdistan Region.”

Nechirvan explained, “Democracy and freedom have their boundaries. For us, the security of people is much more important than things are being discussed,” he said, in defense of the Barzani clan’s repression of the free press. There followed mass arrests carried out not by police but rather the intelligence service Massoud’s son runs, as activists and journalists organized a protest in solidarity with the Shiladze victims. Massoud and Masrour based their crackdown under Iraqi Penal Law No. 156, which Saddam used to justify many of his arbitrary arrests.

Massoud Barzani, his nephew, and his sons often take umbrage when compared to Saddam or sons Uday and Qusay, but they continue to provide fodder for comparison. Most of those whom the Barzanis arrested in subsequent crackdowns had no connection to the attack on the illegal Turkish base, but rather were protesting the Barzani response to those protesting the Turkish affront to Kurdish nationalism. Barzani’s intolerance to the subsequent protests both underscored his vulnerability to the nationalist issue and also the reality that he has effectively become a client to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an.

Barzani’s followers and the media he sponsors often depict his support for the September 2017 Kurdish referendum as proof of his national credentials, and they describe the subsequent conflict with Iraqi forces and Iranian-backed militias as proof that Barzani is a nationalist leader like his father. In reality, however, the referendum was cynical. Its timing was meant to prolong his rule extra-constitutionally and to provide sovereign immunity to international debt collection after losing a series of arbitration rulings. Barzani’s embrace of Turkish forces on Iraqi and Iraqi Kurdish territory shows his exaggerated complaints about Iraqi and Iranian actions to be hypocritical.

Iraqi Kurdistan may spend millions in public relations in Washington and London, but sometimes money and lobbying firms cannot supplant reality. As journalists languish in prison, debt booms, democracy disappears, and Barzani bows figuratively if not literally before Turkey and the contracts Erdo?an can provide, Barzani should recognize he will never share his father’s reputation or legacy.

Michael Rubin is a former Pentagon official whose major research areas are the Middle East, Turkey, Iran and diplomacy. He is author of “Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes” (Encounter, 2014). He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute AEI. His major research area is the Middle East, with special focus on Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Kurdish society.

Read more by Michael Rubin
Read more about The Monarchy of Iraqi Kurdistan
Read more about Corruption in Iraqi Kurdistan

The article first published at American Enterprise Institute.

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