Baghdad, November 6 (Reuters) - Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, who first took up arms against Saddam Hussein as a young man, remains a prominent figure in Kurdish politics as Iraq approaches elections scheduled for November 11.

Although he no longer holds an official position, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which he leads, is urging Kurds to participate strongly in the elections in order to protect the region's interests and strengthen its position in the thorny negotiations with Baghdad.

Barzani's political career has been marked by decades of rebellion, betrayal, and fragile understandings with successive Iraqi governments. Now in his late seventies, he still wields considerable influence behind the scenes and is often referred to as "the President" in the Kurdish media and diplomatic circles.

His legacy appears to be both present and absent in the race for seats in the national parliament in Baghdad, a race that could either strengthen Kurdish autonomy or expose deep scars within the Kurdish political landscape.

A strong performance by the Kurdistan Democratic Party would give Barzani’s camp a stronger position in disputes with the central government over oil revenues and budget allocations, issues that led to a sharp escalation of tensions between Erbil and Baghdad in 2025.

Poor performance, however, would give influence to rival Kurdish parties and strengthen the position of the central government.

From a mountain fighter to a political negotiator

Barzani’s long career has been characterized by shrewdness and patience, qualities that helped the Kurds in northern Iraq survive the brutality of Saddam’s regime.

Following the 1991 Gulf War, the Kurds rose up against Saddam's dictatorship, and Barzani and his Peshmerga fighters came down from the mountains and took control of several cities.

But the victorious US-led allies seemed unwilling to accept the possibility of Kurdish secession from Baghdad and initially gave Saddam's forces free rein to suppress the uprising.

In order to deal with the strategic defeat, Barzani, known for his composure, was forced to take an unexpected step and negotiate with Saddam, who years earlier had used poison gas against the Kurds and buried them in mass graves.

Barzani survived thanks to a no-fly zone imposed by the United States and Britain over northern Iraq, which allowed him and his Kurdish rival, Jalal Talabani, to regain control of the region. This marked the beginning of the longest period of Kurdish autonomy in modern history. However, this experiment was marred by the flames of war between Barzani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), led by Talabani.

In 1996, Barzani invited Iraqi government tanks into the region to take control of Erbil, the regional capital, which led not only to Talabani's flight but also to CIA operatives and local collaborators.

A gamble for independence ends in failure.

After decades of struggle and the fall of Saddam in a US-led invasion in 2003, Barzani did what critics described as one of his biggest mistakes: holding a referendum on Kurdish independence in 2017.

The Baghdad government rejected the referendum as illegal and deployed its forces to seize control of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, which the Kurds consider the heart of any future Kurdish state. Under the weight of this bitter defeat, Barzani resigned as head of the regional government.

"I am the same Masoud Barzani, I am a Peshmerga and I will continue to support my people in their struggle for independence," Barzani said in a televised address.

He added, "No one stood with us except our mountains."

Barzani was born in 1946, shortly after his father, the leader Mulla Mustafa Barzani, known as the Lion of Kurdistan, founded a party to fight for the rights of the Kurds of Iraq.

Masoud Barzani joined the ranks of the fighters at a young age, and he quickly realized one of the constants in Kurdish history: the betrayal of them by regional and Western powers.

Mullah Mustafa expressed regret for having trusted the United States. The charismatic leader lived in exile and died of cancer in a US hospital in 1976.

Prior to that, Mullah Mustafa had been waging a guerrilla war against Baghdad with the support of the pro-Western Shah of Iran, but that support was cut off when then-US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger brokered a deal that allowed Saddam to crush the Kurds.

During the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) once again allied itself with Tehran. As a result, some 8,000 members of the Barzani clan were arrested, tortured in the streets of Baghdad, and then executed. In Saddam Hussein's words, "They went to hell."

In March 1988, Saddam's warplanes bombed the Kurdish city of Halabja with poison gas, killing up to 5,000 people.

Despite the massacres, Barzani still had enough fighting force to answer President George Bush’s call for an uprising during the 1991 Gulf War, when US-led coalition forces defeated Saddam’s army in Kuwait.

After the fall of Saddam Hussein, Barzani became a pivotal figure in the efforts to establish an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq. Kurdish leaders kept their region relatively untouched by the sectarian violence that plagued much of the rest of Iraq. Senior executives from Western oil companies flocked to the region seeking to strike deals.

Tensions with Baghdad over oil return

The military capabilities of the Kurds became evident during their joining forces with the Iraqi government and Iranian-backed paramilitary forces to expel Islamic State militants from Mosul.

Barzani proceeded with the disastrous referendum, driven by his conviction that the time had come to establish an independent homeland. The day after the vote, Barzani invoked the seemingly endless suffering of the Kurds.

"I have been fighting for half a century," he told the Kurdish news agency Rudaw. "I have suffered with my people from massacres, deportations, and gassing. I remember times when we thought we were finished, that we would be wiped out."

He went on to say, "I remember times, like in 1991 after the first war against Saddam, when democracies came to our rescue but left dictatorship in place, which put us back in the shadows."

Saddam Hussein, Barzani's arch-enemy, was executed in 2007. But tensions remain between the Kurds and the authorities in Baghdad.

Relations became strained again in February 2022 when the Iraqi Federal Court deemed the oil and gas law regulating the oil sector in Iraqi Kurdistan unconstitutional and demanded that the Kurdish authorities hand over their crude oil supplies.

Barzani criticized this move, describing it as a "purely political decision" aimed at undermining the region.

Barzani maintains his political presence through his Kurdistan Democratic Party, which swept the Kurdish vote in the 2021 elections after allying with Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

(Prepared by Marwa Gharib for the Arabic Bulletin - Edited by Suha Jadu)