Iraqi ex-president led Kurdish guerrillas against Saddam

Leader tried to unify country’s many factions.

Jalal Talabani, IRBIL, IRAQ— the Kurdish guerrilla leader who becameIraq’s president after theU.S. toppledSaddam Hussein, andwho embodied hopes for a unified, peaceful future through years of strife, hasdiedattheageof83, Kurdish officials said Tuesday.

Talabani was often seen as a unifying elder statesman who could soothe tempers among Iraq’s Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. But the country’s centrifugal forces have only accelerated since he was hospitalized nearly five years ago, as it has battled the Sunni extremists of the Islamic State group and faced growing demands for Kurdish independence.

Talabani suffered a stroke in 2012 and was moved to a German hospital later that year for treatment. He died Tuesday after his condition rapidly deteriorated, according to Marwan Talabani, a relative and senior official in the office of Talabani’s son.

His death came days after the Kurds voted for independence, essentially rejecting the vision of a unified, multi-ethnic Iraq that he had championed in the chaotic years after the U.S.-led invasion.

The vote, which was led by his longtime Kurdish rival, regional President Masoud Barzani, is not expected to lead toKurdish state anytime soon and has further isolated the small land-locked region. Iraq and its neighbors have rejected the vote, and Baghdadhasbannedinternational flights and threatened to take control of the autonomous Kurdish region’s borders.

Talabani camefroma generation of Kurdish leaders who spent decades fighting forself-ruleandwhosepeople were oftenbrutally repressed by the central government.

Born in a tiny village north of the city of Irbil on Nov. 12, 1933, Talabaniwasinhis early teenswhenhe first joined the Kurdistan Democratic Party, at the time the main Kurdish political force trying to carve out an autonomous homeland for Iraq’s Kurds.

In the 1960s, he joined the Kurdish uprising against the Iraqi government. When the revolt collapsed in 1975, Talabani broke off fromthe Barzani-headedKDPto formthe PatrioticUnion of Kurdistan. To this day Kurdish politics in Iraq remain dominated by two families: The Barzanis in Irbil and the Talabanis in Sulaimaniyah.

Ayear later Talabani again took uparms against the central government and eventually joined forces with Iran in the Iran-Iraqwar. In the late 1980s, Saddam launched the Anfal Campaign, in which morethan50,000Kurdswere killed, many by poison gas attacks.

Iraq’sKurds took their first steps toward autonomy in the early 1990s under the protection of aU.S.-enforced no-fly-zone aimed at halting Saddam’s killings. But the Kurdsquickly fell into infighting. Pitched battles between forces loyal to Barzani and those who sided with Talabani killed thousands and only subsidedwhen Barzani called on Saddam’s army to help him push back Talabani’s men.

AstheU.S. preparedtooust Saddaminthe2003 invasion, thePUKworkedwith theCIA. After Saddam’s fall, Talabani and Barzani came together to govern their autonomous region, but ultimately Talabani’s high-profile appointments took him to Baghdad.

He was chosen by parliament as interim president in April 2005. Ayear later, parliament made him full president under thenewconstitution, re-electing him to a second four-year term in 2010.

His ascension left Barzani to preside over the Kurdish government alone, an irony that Talabani wryly noted in February 2005.

“He personallyprefers that I be in Baghdad and he be in Kurdistan,” Talabani said.

Before becoming president, Talabanimade clear to his fellowKurds that his role had changed. “I am casting off my Kurdish clothes and wearing Iraqi ones instead,” he said. “You must accept that.”