Iraqi Kurdistan: An Elusive Autonomy – Lost Opportunities For Peace

Sheri Laizer | Exclusive to iKurd.net

Sheri Laizer speaks with the former head of the PUK’s Foreign Relations, Omar Sheikhmous

Between December 1983 and January 1985, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Iraqi government achieved a ceasefire despite the ongoing war between Iraq and Iran. 1 The terms of the agreement could have had far reaching consequences for peace between Baghdad and the Kurds, and ensured a successful autonomy, but external players interfered. Omar Sheikhmous who headed the PUK’s Foreign Relations during this phase told me more about it.

Question 1: In the group photos below taken during the ceasefire period talks between the Iraqi Ba’ath government and the PUK, the participants share smiles all round. Both Mam Jalal and Ali Hassan al-Majid (later dubbed Ali Chemical) and Izzet Ibrahim al-Douri look pleased and indeed, candidly friendly towards one another. Did they socialize together during these talks, such as was often the penchant for Iraqi men to join in a glass of whisky, and a chat, or were the meetings just brief and the smiles mainly for the camera?

In the second photo taken indoors, it looks like tea is being served but maybe later there was more? Mam Jalal looks amused about something. It seems to be the same day by their hair and clothing.

Answer to question one:

I was in London and in charge of the PUK´s Foreign Relations in 1984 when these meetings took place. I could not return to Kurdistan after the spring of 1982 because our relations had deteriorated with Iran since the autumn of 1981 and also because we had been sending our Peshmergas to support the Iranian Kurds in 1982.

The leadership of the PUK tried to get me involved by naming me as the head of the PUK negotiating team in the spring of 1984, but Iraq refused, and Tariq Aziz said, “We do not accept this because he is a Kurd from Syria. Mam Jalal had responded very angrily saying, “Then you should expel most of your non-Iraqi Arabs from the leadership of the Ba’ath Party as well.

We are a nationalist Kurdistani organisation, and we have always had leaders from other parts of Kurdistan in our movement.” The talks were suspended for a day or two because of this and Tariq Aziz had to apologize over it, but my colleagues did not insist on my return thereafter. (I do not recognise the person next to Kak Nawshirwan or the one next to Dr. Fuad Masoum).

No, they never socialised during those negotiations. The PUK delegation stayed in the official Presidential Guest House in Baghdad and were having their meals there. Some of the negotiating sessions were also there.

Otherwise, they never drank during the lunch breaks of the meetings. When the Iraqi delegations came to Kurdistan (Sargaloo or Bargaloo), they never stayed overnight. They took helicopters back to Kirkuk. I have never heard anything about Mam Jalal´s amusement with Ali Hasan Al-Majid in the second picture.

There is also a very interesting episode between Saddam Hussein and Mam Jalal. Saddam Hussein asks Mam Jalal: “How come you are not anxious or afraid that we might drug or poison you during your stay?”

Mam Jalal answers him: “I trust your code of honour as a tribal man. I have read your statement about your indebtedness and survival as the Tikriti clan to the Talabanis that saved and protected your clan during the Ottoman persecutions.”

Question 2: In another meeting between Mam Jalal, and his confederates, including Fuad Masoum with Saddam Hussein, both Jalal Talabani and Saddam Hussein look extremely happy and at ease in one another’s company, stood in close physical contact and beaming smiles. Both shared a socialist ideology with nationalist values inbuilt. Were politics set aside at times such that they actually got on well as people, as men in the same arena with both shared and divergent goals? Was there any empathy between them as the atmosphere of the photo suggests?

Answer to question two:

Iraq was in a very difficult military situation during the negotiations of 1983-1984. Therefore, Saddam was extremely friendly and compromise-willing during this period. According to what Mam Jalal narrated to me personally in later years Saddam acted as a mediator and as a problem solver between us and the Iraqi Government negotiating team that was headed by Tariq Aziz or Izzat Al-Douri. He even told Mam Jalal in a private conversation, “I will sign an agreement with you that will raise your head among all Kurds in all parts of Kurdistan.” No wonder the picture conveys such an amicable impression!

Just as a reminder – in the negotiations of 1984, both sides reached an agreement, and it was about to be signed and publicly announced, but at the last minute it was stopped because of Turkish opposition and threats made against any agreement.

There are two proofs of this:

1. I was the PUK`s representative abroad residing in London. On a Thursday, Mam Jalal phoned me from Baghdad to get ready to arrange a press conference the next day to proclaim the agreement officially, and after that he and Tariq Aziz were to do the same around noon in Baghdad. I had prepared the press conference with some media organisations in London, including the Persian Service of the BBC. I was supposed to start the conference at 13.00 hrs GMT. I waited for several hours, but nothing came in.

   

   So I phoned Mam Jalal and he told me that the agreement had been cancelled at the last minute without any explanation. I apologised to the press and cancelled the conference. Later that evening, the Chief of the Persian Service, Baqir Moin, phoned me and said we have received some news that the agreement was cancelled because of Turkish threats and opposition.

2. During the negotiations of 1991, after certain accords were reached, Mam Jalal pointed out ” If you had signed the agreement we reached in December 1984, we could have saved a lot of bloodshed and destruction in both Iraq and Kurdistan.” Tariq Aziz immediately replied, “Say that to your friend, Turgut Özal, and why he objected to it then.”

Question 3: I think what Mam Jalal said to Saddam about the Talabanis and Tikritis having a shared history against the Ottomans to be very interesting, thank you.

Also, that owing to your being a Syrian Kurd Tariq Aziz tried to confine the participants to Iraq.  Turgut Özal undermined the signing of the 1984 agreement and that is a very sad thing. It rebounded on him to some extent as it was then he who had to face the problem of the 70,000-100,000 Iraqi Kurdish refugees that fled into Turkey during the final stages of the Anfal campaign.

Özal slowly began to play his own Kurdish cards and even claimed that his mother or grandmother had been Kurdish. Intent on continuing to deny Kurdish identity in Turkey at that time, internal Kurdish dissent grew stronger during the 1980 military coup. The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) had been founded back in 1978 and by 15 August 1985 it would launch its armed struggle. Sources show how in February 1981, during the Iran-Iraq war, Turkey signed a joint trade protocol with Tehran. In 1982, when incumbent Prime Minister, Özal (Prime Minister 1983-1989, President 9.11.1989 – 17.03.1993) headed a forty-man business delegation to Tehran. A month on, they signed a $1.8 billion agreement in which Turkey could exchange food for 60,000-100,000 barrels of Iranian oil per day.

A year later, Turkey had become Iran’s most significant trading partner while the war with Iraq dragged on.4 Turkey claimed to be neutral in the Iran-Iraq war but its business dealings with Tehran speak otherwise. Turkey also opposed autonomy in Iraqi Kurdistan to the extent of planning to annex the region and ‘manage’ any such autonomy. However, President Suleiman Demirel preferred that Saddam remain in power and keep the Kurds under control. Following the 1970 Autonomy Agreement between Baghdad and the Barzani leadership, Demirel had also launched commando attacks against Kurdish villages that intensified after the 1971 military coup. He backed Saddam until the end of his term.

Did Turgut Özal threaten Saddam with military intervention or economic boycott if he signed the 1984 agreement with the PUK?

Answer to question three:

Turgut Özal used his economic leverage in threatening Saddam with sanctions and closing the extremely important transit route of goods to Iraq through Turkey. He also threatened diplomatic consequences. I am not aware of any military threats.

A 1983 article in the LA Times and in the New Statesman by Robin Wright, claimed that Turkey was planning to occupy Iraqi Kurdistan (the historical Vilayat of Mosul) if the Iranians started to win the war and occupied southern and central Iraq. In response, I had given a statement as spokesman for PUK, that if the states that rule over different parts of Kurdistan violate their own borders, then we as a Kurdish liberation movement will not respect these borders anymore and we shall cooperate with other Kurdish movements in other parts of Kurdistan.

There is a very funny anecdote somewhat later between Mam Jalal and President Turgut Özal when they met for the first time in 1991(?).  Mam Jalal tells Özal, ”Mr. President, since your grandmother is Kurdish and my grandmother is Turkoman, we are going to get along very well.”

Question 4: Why could no faction put themselves in Saddam Hussein’s shoes and understand his outlook once the Islamic Revolution transformed Iran into a medieval theocracy? With multiple enemies within and without, the Iraqi president was sidelined from his original Nasserite, pan-Arab idealism and projects of building up the country (he brought electricity to the most remote villages etc.) to exacting revenge for treason and clamping down on dissent in successive conflict situations? Saddam’s successors have learned that Iraq is far from easy to govern or to unify.

The Kurdish leadership has turned in on itself afresh – just as the two main parties did when the civil war between them kicked off on Mayday 1994 – and on 31 August 1996 the KDP brought the Iraqi army into Kurdistan against the PUK in service of its own interests. Both parties have frequently promoted their own families and clans in a nepotistic manner over the interests of civil society: tribalism and feuds, political assassinations, incarceration of critics, threats of harm etc. have become the order of the day.

The Shi’a militias that seized power also act as a law unto themselves and have spearheaded an ugly, revenge-based government prioritising the Shi’a sect. Do you think ordinary people in Iraq have any perspective of what could have been achieved if the ceasefire between the PUK and Saddam’s government had been allowed to bear fruit?

Answer to question four

Unfortunately, ordinary people in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East are so influenced by their official media that they end up not believing any information except for conspiracy theories. Sadly, Saddam became so arrogant after 1975, that he could not think clearly, but especially after 1979 after he gained full control and then ended up in conflict with Assad, Qaddafi, Yasser Arafat and many others.

The Iraqi government had a golden opportunity in appeasing the Kurds in 1975, 1979, and 1984, but they misjudged the situation. The Kurds made their own mistakes, too.

You are right, Iraq could have become one of the richest and most developed countries in the region, had they had good governance. Look at Syria now, despite the miserable situation they are in and despite all the pressure and advice they are getting on having a pluralist and more inclusive governance, they continue excluding the Kurds, the Druze, the Alawites, and secular Sunnis.

Question 5: After the collapse of the 1991 Kurdish uprising despite losses on both sides and the cold-blooded murder of POWs, Saddam Hussein embraced Jalal Talabani and the other delegates like long lost brothers returning to the fold. Were you present at any of these meetings and ceasefire negotiations?

Answer to question five:

I resigned from the PUK in April 1986, so I did not participate in any of the 1991 negotiations. The reasons for the good and amicable atmosphere of these negotiations were two-fold:

1. Saddam was very much afraid of the internationalisation of the Kurdish Question (Resolution 688) on humanitarian intervention and with the creation of the Safe Zone.

2. The Kurdistan Front, after the exodus of nearly 2.5 million Iraqi Kurdish refugees to Iran, Turkey and Syria, were afraid that their people might not return and their question will turn into a refugee and humanitarian one, like the Palestinian Question. Therefore, they were desperate for an agreement to be reached. The international community had not yet reacted strongly; that only came later. Furthermore, the Peshmerga forces of both the PUK and KDP had demanded that Mam Jalal and Masoud Barzani take care of their families that had fled. The fear of the use of poison gas by the Iraqi regime was very strong amongst the Kurdish population.

Question 6: Saddam expressed anger to his CIA interrogator, John Nixon, (whom I interviewed for my new book, Iraq & the Middle East Conflagration) over gas being used in Halabja.

He stated that General Khafaji had been responsible and he himself had been preoccupied at the time with the southern front and Iranian encroachment into Iraq through the Howeiza marshes and the Fao Peninsula.

Saddam claimed he had known how Iran would capitalise on such an action as indeed the Islamic Republic did. However, Ali Hassan al-Majid l had continued to use illegal weapons as an intrinsic element of fear and victory in his eight -stage, region by region ‘Anfal’ operations. Are there any personal accounts, or external evidence, that he can have argued over this with Saddam as he did apparently with Tariq Aziz, who is reported to have opposed it? Or was Saddam so affronted and angered by the PUK resuming collaboration with Iran after the 18-month ceasefire and all the hopes invested in it that he became revenge-driven and fell back upon tribal methods in dealing with betrayal and indeed, as he saw it, treason?

Answer to question six

Saddam was not telling the truth. Nobody in Iraq would dare use poison gas against Kurdistan without the approval of Saddam Hussein. Furthermore, it was an integral part of the whole Anfal Campaign. See, for example, Human Rights Watch’s book Genocide in Iraq (it includes some transcriptions of

the tapes of Ali Hassan Al-Majid) and Joost Hiltermann’s book, “A Poisonous Affair” mainly on Halabja. Also, one can contact the National Archives in Washington, D.C. where they have the translations of the Mukhabarat documents captured by the PUK and others in 1991 and again later in 2003. 5

Yes, Saddam was very angry at Mam Jalal for cooperating afresh with Iran. You may remember that he had issued a general Amnesty to all Kurds after the uprising and the exodus, and he exempted Jalal Talabani from it. The text is available in several books.

Question 7: Saddam had already dubbed the Barzani-dominated KDP as the “Descendants of Treason” owing to Mala Mustafa Barzani and his generation colluding with Iran, the US, Russia, and any external force that seemed expedient when he did not get his own way, which included the demand for control over Kirkuk. Massoud was therefore the key Descendant of Treason as his father’s appointed surviving heir.

The KDP appeared to have prioritized the power of the tribe over the wellbeing of the wider Kurdish nation, ever prepared to fight against the PUK, the PKK, and other tribes. The events of August 31, 1996, seem to indicate the same mentality in that after Anfal had been accomplished in Badinan, Barzani was still prepared to work with Saddam against the PUK and invited the Iraqi army in on his side, as is documented.

Has the dominating interest of the KDP in your view always been tribal supremacy as we see again with their many institutions named after Barzanis? Doesn’t the current KDP collaboration with Sunni Islamist Erdoğan, and the Iranians appear once again to be for the sake of their own prosperity rather than the greater good of the Kurdish nation?

Answer to question seven:

Yes, I agree with your analysis of the KDP and the Barzanis. Unfortunately, the interests of their tribe and maintenance of their leadership position in the Kurdish Movement is still the highest political priority for them, not only in Iraq, but in other parts of Kurdistan. Hence, the conflicts with the Iranian KDP, Komala, the PKK, the PUK and Rojava (PYD and SDF). Now, it is a different story.

Question 8: When the Americans held Saddam Hussein captive, intent on undermining and humiliating him, they allowed their proxies like Ahmad Chalabi to access him in his cell to demean him. Saddam maintained his dignity by and large. By this time Jalal Talabani had been made the US puppet president of Iraq in the power sharing (muhasasa) system with key Shi’a fundamentalist militants like Nouri al-Maliki and Badr leader, Hadi al-Ameri and their counterparts in the INA and INC. Did you ever hear that Jalal regretted the lost opportunities with Saddam and foresaw the dangers Iran posed to Kurdistan’s freedoms and indeed, its very existence, or did he believe the muhasasa system could endure and deliver the goals the PUK and KDP had sought for the Kurdish north?

Answer to question eight:

I have never had such a discussion with Mam Jalal, despite our very close relationship as friends and comrades in arms. Even if he had regretted it, the move by President Barack Obama to replace him with Iyad Allawi in the second elections forced him to ally himself with the Shiites and Iranians again.

Question 9:  When Saddam Hussein was put before the show trial circus following his capture by US special forces, Mam Jalal refused to sign the order for his execution. I surmise that as Saddam had not tried to assassinate or harm him despite having had several opportunities, it was perhaps because of their shared past and (owing to) a code of honour in war that he did not wish to bear this historic responsibility as a dishonour knowing their deeper background?

Answer to question nine:

Apart from your correct observation, the reason was that during one of my tours in Europe as a PUK emissary, in the spring of 1982, I had met the international Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva to discuss the exchange of prisoners between the PUK and the Iraq government as well the question of foreign hostages and the treatment of each other`s prisoners of war.

They agreed to act on these questions but asked me in return to ask our General Secretary, Jalal Talabani, to sign an international legal document against the death sentence and summary execution. This he did, and as a lawyer, respected his signature and his legal commitment.

That was the reason he gave for not signing the death sentence against Saddam Hussein. In my opinion, he refused to sign the execution of Saddam (aware of the later manner in which it which it would be carried out as a sham and as a ritual of vengeance by the Shiites – especially by Al-Sadr, but Mam Jalal was acting as a realist political leader and thinking of his future relations with the Sunni Arabs in Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states among others.

Question 10: Has oil corruption gotten in the way of socio-political and cultural progress in the Kurdish north, in your view?

Answer to question ten:

Yes, oil corruption and unchecked political power in Kurdistan has led to a number of bad practices in establishing good governance in Kurdistan although it is still better than the rest of Iraq.

Paul Bremer and the Americans also have their share of responsibility in corrupting the situation in Kurdistan concerning the distribution of the surplus from the Oil for Food Programme in billions of dollars in cash (7 billion, I think) transported by helicopter to the KDP and PUK.

Remember the wise words of Lord Acton: “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Middle East political culture and the lack of experience in governance has also played a role.

Many thanks, Omar Sheikhmous, for your revealing insights.

Sheri Laizer, a Middle East and North African expert specialist and well known commentator on the Kurdish issue. She is a senior contributing writer for iKurd.net. More about Sheri Laizer see below.

The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.

Copyright © 2025 Sheri Laizer, iKurd.net. All rights reserved

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