Masrour Barzani named as new premier of Iraqi Kurdistan
Masrour Barzani, Massoud’s son, named as news Iraqi Kurdistan PM. Photo: 2018, Farhad Ahmad/FB
HEWLÊR-Erbil, Iraq’s Kurdistan region,— Iraqi Kurdistan’s parliament named Masrour Barzani as the region’s new premier on Tuesday, a day after his cousin was sworn in as its president.
Masrour Barzani, 50, is the son of longtime Iraqi Kurdish KDP party leader Massoud Barzani and had been serving as national security adviser for the autonomous Kurdistan region since 2012 in the areas under Kurdistan Democratic Party control.
He won the votes of 87 of the 97 members present in the region’s 111-seat chamber — more than his cousin received when he was elected president late last month.
PM-elect Barzani will have one month to form the autonomous region’s cabinet.
The cousins hail from the KDP, which was founded by their grandfather Mustafa in 1946 and remains dominated by the Barzani clan.
Its main rival, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), boycotted Nechirvan’s election as president but at least some of its MPs took part in Tuesday’s session.
Born in Erbil in 1969, Masrour joined the Kurdish security forces, known as the peshmerga, as a 16-year-old.
He attended school in neighbouring Iran, then returned to Iraqi Kurdistan to take part in the 1991 uprising against then-dictator Saddam Hussein before travelling to the US to complete his graduate studies.
During his tenure as national security adviser, Barzani had a major role in the region’s fightback against the Islamic State jihadist group, which swept across a third of Iraq in 2014.
He succeeds his cousin Nechirvan who had served as prime minister since 2012.
Nechirvan is now the KRG’s second president after Masoud Barzani, who served in the role from 2005 until he stepped down in 2017 following a controversial independence referendum that prompted Baghdad to reoccupy large swathes of Kurdish-held territory.
On August 20, 2015 Massoud Barzani’s term as president of Kurdistan has expired but he refused to step down and remains unofficially in office for more than two years despite protests and demonstration against Barzani across Kurdistan region. He also closed the parliament and prevented speaker from entering Erbil.
The Barzani clan have been routinely accused by critics of amassing huge wealth from oil business for his family instead of serving the population.
The Barzanis control a large number of commercial enterprises in Kurdistan-Iraq, with a gross value of several billion US dollars. The family is routinely accused of corruption and nepotism by Kurdish media as well as international observers.
Copyright © 2019, respective author or news agency, Ekurd.net | AFP
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