Shafaq News
In the
modern political memory of Iraqi Kurdistan, Nechirvan Barzani occupies an
unusual space. He is neither the romantic insurgent of old legends nor the
modern populist who rallies public squares by force of charisma. Instead, he is
a practitioner of balance—an operator who prefers the corridor next to the
stage, the handshake to the headline, and incremental gains over dramatic
standoffs.
That quiet
style helped produce what many in the Kurdistan Region came to describe as a
“golden decade” after 2003: a period of relative security, expanding services,
an opening to the world, and an attempt—imperfect, often contested—to shift
politics from party trenches to state institutions.
This profile
traces that project and its limits: how a politician rooted in the Barzan
mountains learned to turn measured steps into policy—without romanticism and
without erasing the system’s structural weaknesses.
Roots and
Formation
Nechirvan
Idris Barzani was born on September 21, 1966, in Barzan, a village north of
Erbil known as much for its rugged geography as its political lineage. His
grandfather, Mullah Mustafa Barzani, is the central figure of twentieth-century
Kurdish nationalism in Iraq and the founder of the Kurdistan Democratic Party
(KDP), the largest political force in the Region. His father, Idris Barzani,
bridged battlefield politics and negotiation, arguing that institutions had to
be built alongside resistance.
The family
environment resembled a permanent situation room more than a private
home—negotiations with Baghdad, tribal mediation, and logistics of war were
frequent topics. The 1975 Algiers Agreement between Iraq and Iran—collapsing
the Kurdish rebellion—pushed the Barzanis into exile.
Nechirvan
spent formative years in Iran, moving between Karaj and the Kurdish regions in
the west. He absorbed Persian, encountered a different bureaucratic culture,
and witnessed a revolution’s aftermath. Those years added range: Kurdish in
identity, conversant in Persian political idiom, later fluent in Arabic and
English.
By the
mid-1980s, he was already engaging with Kurdish student circles in Iran, where
debates on governance and diaspora politics foreshadowed the technocratic
streak that would later mark his leadership.
The
multilingualism and exposure to multiple centers of power—Ankara, Tehran,
Baghdad, and Western capitals—would become professional assets when the
Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the autonomous authority established after
the 1992 elections and later anchored in Iraq’s 2005 constitution, sought
external partnerships.
Following
the 1991 Kurdish uprising and the creation of a de facto safe zone in much of
northern Iraq, the Barzanis returned. Nechirvan’s rise through the KDP
apparatus was swift: by 1989, he was on the Central Committee and soon after
joined the Political Bureau.
Unlike peers
who cultivated public charisma, he leaned toward management and planning.
Masoud Barzani, his uncle and KDP leader, channeled him early into governance
portfolios—economic rehabilitation, public services, and institutional
design—areas where he could be evaluated on delivery rather than rhetoric.
The ethos he
absorbed from Idris Barzani’s generation—build institutions even in
adversity—would become his own grammar of politics. As he would later put it in
a 2007 speech to civil servants: “The building of our homeland will only be
complete when hearts and positions come together.”
From Party
Habits to State Templates
When
Nechirvan Barzani assumed the premiership in 1999 in Erbil, Kurdistan was still
bifurcated by the scars of the 1994–1998 intra-Kurdish conflict between the KDP
and its chief rival, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the second-largest
Kurdish party founded in 1975. The split produced parallel administrations. The
challenge was not only reconstruction, but also the partial depoliticization of
government machinery.
He favored a
“quiet transition” strategy: slowly widening the space for technocrats,
standardizing procedures, and signaling that ministries should answer to a
cabinet and not only to party offices.
Records show
that during his first premiership (1999–2009), the number of technocrats
holding ministerial or deputy ministerial posts doubled compared to the early
1990s party-era cabinets.
Symbolism
mattered for Nechirvan. He brought women and representatives of smaller
communities into cabinet posts and senior roles—an early indication that the
Region would be framed publicly as a political mosaic rather than a monochrome
project.
Inside
government, committees and rotating leadership posts—imperfect but
visible—nudged decision-making toward collective forms. Outside, he pursued
reconciliation with the PUK headquartered in Al-Sulaymaniyah, preparing the
ground for the 2006 unification of the dual KRG administrations. That step,
while far from eliminating party rivalry, gave the Region a single
institutional face for legislation, budgeting, and external outreach.
The template
that emerged did not claim a clean break from party politics; no such rupture
occurred. Instead, it used institutions to discipline competition and make it
predictable, rewarded coalition partners with inclusion, and kept adversaries
at the table, even if only on minimum terms.
The method
relied on patience, the routinization of meetings, and a preference for
compromise over brinkmanship.
Economy as
Governance Tool
In the early
2000s, daily life in Kurdistan was still fragile: electricity shortages,
degraded roads, and limited administrative capacity. Nechirvan’s governing
argument was straightforward: legitimacy comes from delivery. He linked
state-building to visible services—paying salaries, expanding electricity
supply, paving roads that shortened travel between rural districts and city
markets, and opening airports to connect Erbil and Duhok to the outside world.
A
cornerstone was the 2006 Investment Law, which offered tax incentives and legal
guarantees to draw capital, and the creation of the Kurdistan Board of
Investment to shepherd projects.
According to
the Board of Investment, more than 600 licensed projects worth over USD 30
billion were approved between 2006 and 2013, reshaping the skylines of Erbil
and Duhok.
The aim was
not construction for its own sake, but a middle-class foundation for
stability—an ecosystem where private firms, universities, and a growing service
sector could absorb young graduates instead of pushing them toward emigration
or public-payroll dependency.
Energy
policy gave the Region leverage. Starting in 2007, the KRG signed
production-sharing contracts with firms such as DNO and Genel Energy,
eventually enabling exports through a 2013 pipeline to Turkiye’s Ceyhan.
Baghdad objected repeatedly, and the dispute remains one of the most sensitive
files in federal politics, bound up with interpretations of the constitution
and federal court rulings.
By 2013,
exports through the pipeline had reached roughly 280,000 barrels per day,
though Baghdad insisted all sales had to pass through the State Oil Marketing
Organization (SOMO).
From
Nechirvan’s perspective, however, without the ability to monetize
resources—within or alongside federal arrangements—the Region would remain
vulnerable to budget cuts originating in national politics. The pipeline
created both revenue and risk: revenue when prices and flows cooperated; risk
when courts, federal ministries, or geopolitics interrupted exports.
The 2014 oil
price collapse and the war against ISIS—which absorbed budgets and flooded the
Region with displaced families—forced crisis management: austerity measures,
arrears to public employees, short-term borrowing, and improvised revenue
tools.
Critics read
the turbulence as proof that the model over-weighted oil and real estate.
Supporters argued that in the absence of the earlier build-out of roads, power,
and airports, the Region would have cracked under the humanitarian strain.
Both points
contain truth. What is clear is that the economy, in Nechirvan’s hands, doubled
as diplomacy: “every investor became a messenger to their home capital that
Kurdistan was a place where contracts could be honored and people could land
safely,” he said on an occasion.
His economic
view was never framed as a spreadsheet alone. He articulated it in social
terms: a functioning economy must reach the last classroom and the furthest
clinic. He often told ministers that budgets were not abstractions but daily
guarantees of credibility—summed up in his pragmatic line on public servants:
“It is a basic and natural right of employees to be paid.”
Schools,
Universities, and a Pact of Stability
The most
durable shift of the post-2003 era may not be measured in barrels or building
permits, but in classrooms. Nechirvan framed education as security by other
means: if young people saw a future in their own towns and cities, the politics
of grievance could be tempered.
Between 2003
and 2013, primary school enrollment increased by nearly 40%, according to KRG Education
Ministry data, with the gender gap in early grades dropping to less than 5%.
A Private
Schools Law in 2012 codified standards for a fast-growing sector, including
international-curriculum institutions. As he liked to say in policy forums:
“Education is the backbone of any living society.”
Before 2003,
the Region had three public universities (Salahaddin, Sulaimani, Duhok). Within
a decade, a network took shape: Hawler Medical University (2005); Kurdistan
University–Hewlêr (2006), the first public English-language university; Soran
and new universities in Zakho, Raparin, Garmian, and Halabja; polytechnic
universities in each province; and private institutions such as American
University of Iraq–Sulaimani and Cihan University of Sulaimaniya.
By 2014, the
total number of universities in the Region—public and private—had surpassed 30,
compared to just three before 1992.
Degree
programs shifted toward medicine, engineering, and applied sciences, and
scholarship schemes sent cohorts to Turkiye, Europe, and North America. The
goal was not elite credentialing but workforce alignment—producing technicians
and professionals for the Region’s hospitals, construction sites, energy
fields, and municipal services.
Language policy
combined identity and openness: Kurdish remained the core medium, but Arabic
classes served displaced families and helped inter-Iraqi mobility, while
English and French expanded as global gateways. For readers beyond Iraq, the
significance is simple: the KRG sought recognition as authentically Kurdish
while signaling compatibility with international business, health, and academic
standards. That combination—local roots and external fluency—became part of
Nechirvan’s political brand.
His
educational approach intersected with a larger social message. In a single line
that echoed across schools, stadiums, and book fairs, he summarized the “pact
of stability”: “Every school that opens, every stadium that lights up, every
book that is printed is another stone in the wall of peace.”
Youth,
Culture, and Sports: Building Civic Texture
Physical
reconstruction and school expansion did not automatically translate into
reasons to stay. Nechirvan’s teams tried to widen the civic ecosystem: youth
centers, small business programs, public libraries, and municipal theaters.
Grants and
partnerships with consulates supported book fairs and translation initiatives.
The Erbil International Book Fair evolved into a recognizable regional event,
bringing Iraqi, Kurdish, and foreign authors to the same halls.
Sports were
leveraged as social infrastructure. Clubs such as Erbil SC and Duhok SC
received direct and indirect support during lean years, with Erbil reaching the
AFC Cup final in 2012—a symbolic lift for a generation whose memories included
sanctions, civil war, and displacement. The message was simple: civic pride can
originate on a football pitch as readily as in a parliament chamber.
Cultural
policy, likewise, tried to move beyond ceremony to access: funding streams for
young artists, theater groups, and filmmakers; municipal venues that could be
booked without prohibitive costs; and local media that covered culture as a
beat, not a filler.
Civil
society organizations multiplied after the 2011 NGO Law, working on the
environment, women’s rights, humanitarian relief, and cultural production. The
Region also became a refuge for journalists during the years when reporting in
Baghdad was perilous.
By 2015,
more than 2,500 NGOs were registered with the KRG, a steep rise from fewer than
300 a decade earlier.
A 2007
Journalism Law that prohibited imprisonment for publication offenses did not
eliminate pressure on the media, and incidents of harassment and lawsuits
persisted. But in comparative regional terms, the legal framework and relative
security in Erbil and Al-Sulaymaniyah gave writers and editors more room than
they had elsewhere in Iraq.
The civic
map was not an accessory to the political project; it was one of its
foundations, extending the idea that stability needed spaces where young people
could belong, create, and be seen.
Women,
Communities, and Pluralism by Design
One of the
earliest signals of a widened political horizon was the appointment of a female
minister in the KRG—initially exceptional, later part of an emerging pattern. A
30% parliamentary quota for women, support for girls’ schooling, micro-credit
schemes for women-led businesses, and the creation of a Supreme Council for
Women’s Affairs gave the inclusion agenda institutional backing.
By 2018,
women held 111 out of 375 municipal council seats across the Region, a
proportion higher than the Iraqi national average.
Progress was
uneven and remains debated; nevertheless, the visibility of women in cabinet,
parliament, and professional roles altered public life.
Pluralism
was built into parliamentary allocation for communities too often described
merely as “minorities”: Christians (Chaldeans, Syriacs, Assyrians), Yazidis,
Turkmen, Armenians, and Feyli Kurds.
The Region
reserved 11 parliamentary seats for these communities, and Erbil alone became
home to more than 30 minority-language schools by 2014.
The Region’s
response to the Yazidi genocide after ISIS’s 2014 onslaught included the
establishment of an Office for Rescuing Kidnapped Yazidis, which coordinated
with families and international actors to free and support survivors.
For the KRG,
this was both a moral imperative and a statement about the Region’s identity.
Nechirvan’s summary line captured it without ornament: “The Region will have no
dignity unless every citizen, whatever their faith, ethnicity, or language,
feels at home.”
The
inclusion architecture did not erase grievances or resolve all representation
disputes—particularly in mixed districts outside the core provinces—but it
reshaped the Region’s internal map so that citizenship was not imagined as a
single ethnic or religious profile.
Erbil’s
External Turn: Consulates, Corridors, and Bridge Diplomacy
As the
security situation in the rest of Iraq fluctuated after 2003, Nechirvan pushed
an external strategy: make Erbil an accessible, predictable hub. He encouraged
the opening of dozens of consulates and diplomatic missions, turning the city
into a venue for UN, EU, and development conferences, and into a logistics base
for NGOs and firms.
By 2019,
Erbil hosted more than 35 foreign consulates and representative offices, second
only to Baghdad in Iraq.
In practice,
a foreign business traveler could land in Erbil, meet local partners and
officials, and be in a bonded warehouse or factory the same day. That
efficiency—rare in the region during those years—had outsized reputational
effects.
Managing
neighbors required different playbooks. With Turkiye, energy and trade formed
the spine: the pipeline to Ceyhan, cross-border commerce, and a pragmatic
dialogue with Ankara, even as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) issue
complicated security.
With Iran,
familiarity bred during Nechirvan’s youth and continued channels in Tehran
prevented breakdowns and enabled coordination on border security and trade
corridors.
In the Gulf,
ties with the UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia mixed investment with political
signaling: red-carpet treatment in Abu Dhabi and the presence of Emirati
companies in Erbil translated into third-party endorsements of the Region’s
stability.
Western
partnerships were built through steady, low-drama engagement. French presidents
hosted him at the Élysée; US administrations across party lines received him in
Washington and at global forums; and Pope Francis’s 2021 Mass in Erbil offered
an image of pluralism that no press release could match.
The approach
was less about headline agreements and more about a bank of trust—a ledger of
kept appointments, predictable behavior, and punctual follow-through that made
Erbil usable for others’ agendas. In turn, that usability became political
capital for the KRG.
This
outward-facing posture reinforced an inward message: Kurdistan’s cause would
gain strength not only through battlefield history but through showing the
world a functioning political and economic system—something that could be
partnered with, invested in, and visited.
Baghdad,
Budgets, and the Art of the Possible
The most
consistent constraint on the KRG’s project has been fiscal dependence on the federal
budget and the unresolved constitutional mechanics around oil and disputed
territories.
Article 140
of Iraq’s 2005 constitution laid out a process—normalization, census, and
referendum—to determine the status of disputed areas such as Kirkuk. The steps
never reached their conclusion, leaving the question in limbo and inviting
cyclical tensions.
Budget laws
in Baghdad frequently conditioned or delayed transfers to the Region; in
response, Erbil sought revenue autonomy through oil exports and local taxation.
Each move sparked counter-moves: lawsuits in federal court, customs directives,
and ad hoc bargains to unlock salaries.
For example,
in 2019, the federal government froze transfers for three months, leaving
nearly 1.3 million KRG public employees facing delayed salaries until a
temporary deal was struck.
Nechirvan’s
method in Baghdad earned him a reputation as “the open door”—a leader who would
meet adversaries and critics, go personally to break deadlocks, and keep
communication channels alive even during public escalation. That habit produced
incremental gains rather than structural resolution: a tranche of salaries
here, a memorandum there, a temporary framework for revenue-sharing that lasted
a few months longer than expected.
For public
employees in the Region, the technicalities mattered less than the outcome.
Salary delays damaged trust and compressed household budgets for teachers,
nurses, and municipal workers. Nechirvan acknowledged the hardship repeatedly
and made salaries a stated priority, while pressing for predictable transfers
from the federal treasury.
The
combination of oil price cycles, federal politics, and geopolitics around
export routes kept the problem recurrent. Yet his posture remained consistent
with his core line about stability’s social foundations: “The stability we
enjoy is the fruit of shared sacrifices, and Kurdistan will not be fully built
unless we preserve and develop this stability together.”
2014 and
After: Crisis as Stress Test
The ISIS
offensive in 2014 was the Region’s stress test. Cities absorbed massive
displacement; schools became shelters; hospitals and municipal services faced
surges beyond their design. Oil prices fell; border trade slowed; federal
transfers became uncertain.
At its peak
in 2014-2015, the Kurdistan Region hosted nearly 1.8 million internally
displaced persons and refugees, according to UNHCR—equivalent to almost
one-third of its resident population.
The KRG’s
response—imperfect and strained—relied on the earlier expansion of facilities
and on external partnerships that Nechirvan had cultivated. UN agencies and
NGOs used Erbil as a base; donor conferences found a venue; investment
protections were renegotiated rather than entirely abandoned.
Domestically,
the political center held but frayed. Public-sector arrears eroded trust;
younger citizens, newly globalized through language and internet access,
demanded more than stability—they wanted transparency, mobility, and
opportunity outside government employment.
Those
demands suggest the next phase of statecraft: diversification, labor-market
reform, and a deeper rule-of-law consolidation that protects contracts and
speech not only by custom or leadership personality but by institutions that
outlast leaders.
Nechirvan’s
posture during the crisis remained consistent with his long-held method: move
quickly to convene adversaries; protect social services first; leverage
external confidence to shore up internal gaps; and avoid escalations that can
spin out of control.
He
summarized the underlying logic in language that linked policy to social
meaning: education, culture, and basic services are not ornaments of stability;
“They are the architecture that keeps the ceiling from falling.”
Method and
Mindset
Nechirvan
Barzani’s political method is neither ideological nor dramatic. It is
procedural: put people at the same table who would rather avoid each other;
define the minimum they can live with; and use the calendar—deadlines, budgets,
visits—to turn that minimum into a decision. He relies on patience, repetition,
and the idea that relationships are capital.
Such an
approach may not always produce a decisive break with structural problems, but
its advantage is that it reduces the frequency of disasters.
For readers
beyond Iraq, the comparative regional context matters. In a Middle East where
many sub-state authorities have either militarized governance or slid into
factional paralysis, the KRG under Nechirvan’s watch tried to normalize:
airports that function, consulates that issue visas, schools that open, and a
recognizable bureaucracy that citizens can navigate.
The Region’s
politics are still deeply competitive and sometimes abrasive, but the behavior
of its institutions since 2003 is not accidental. It is, in part, the product
of a political culture followed by Nechirvan Barzani that rewards tempering
impulses and treating adversaries as future counterparts.
Next Tests
for Leadership
Several
files define the horizon of Nechirvan’s work:
-Revenue
architecture: Even with legal disputes unresolved, the KRG needs diversified
revenue beyond oil—industrial zones tied to regional supply chains,
agribusiness modernized for export, and service sectors (health, higher
education, logistics) that capture regional demand. The pipeline to Ceyhan was
a milestone; resilience will come from multiple streams.
-Institutional
distance: The next credibility gain lies in making ministries less sensitive to
party rotation and more bound to rules—procurement standards, audits, and
civil-service incentives that reward performance. Depoliticization is not a
switch but a sequence of decisions that outlast any one cabinet.
-Federal
compact: A durable Baghdad–Erbil understanding on budget transfers and
energy—less tactical, more formulaic—would stabilize salaries and planning.
That compact is political before it is technical, and depends as much on
coalitions in Baghdad as on documents. Here, Nechirvan’s reputation as “the
open door” remains an asset, but it will need to be paired with structural
guarantees.
-Civic
contract: Young Kurds will measure success not only by stability, but by
mobility—the ability to start firms, move between universities and labor
markets, and live under predictable regulations. Education’s gains will mean
more if paired with growth sectors that can absorb talent and if the cost of
participation—permits, utilities, financing—does not crowd them out.
None of
these aims rests on one person. But Nechirvan’s roles—as KRG prime minister
across multiple terms and, since 2019, as President of the Kurdistan
Region—make him one of the few figures with the relationships and habits
required to stitch together incremental progress. The same method that governed
his earlier tenure—quiet persistence, external partnerships, and a bias for
deal-making over grandstanding—will likely define his approach to the next
round.
Legacy and
Lessons
Profiles
often over-credit individuals for collective work or over-blame them for
structural constraints. A balanced accounting of Nechirvan Barzani avoids both
traps. He did not build Kurdistan’s institutions alone, but he was central to
how they were built: gradually, through inclusion, and by turning external
credibility into internal room to maneuver.
He did not
solve the Region’s deepest problems, but he helped prevent their worst
outcomes. His style lacks theatricality: its register is administrative.
In a
landscape accustomed to loud claims, that quiet register is easily missed. Yet
it is visible in the daily routines that define statehood. The “golden decade”
was neither myth nor miracle; it was a period in which incremental governance
created a platform that, while tested, did not fully crack when the storm came.
There is
unfinished business, but the record shows a leader who approached politics as
craftsmanship, not spectacle—more conductor than soloist, more architect than
orator.
In
Kurdistan’s evolving story, that combination—competence, patience, and
negotiated confidence—is its own kind of power. And it rests on a principle he
voiced in the language of both aspiration and restraint: “The building of our
homeland will only be complete when hearts and positions come together.”
Written and
edited by Shafaq News staff.
