Masrour Barzani

Masrour Barzani (Kurdish: مه‌سروور بارزانی، Mesrúr Barzaní, Arabic: مسرور بارزاني) is a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party leadership, son of the current Kurdistan Region President Masoud Barzani, and director of intelligence and security in Iraqi Kurdistan. The KDP is one of the three main Kurdish parties in Kurdistan, and is a member of the current coalition government.

He joined the Kurdish resistance fighters, known as Peshmerga or “those who face death", in 1985 at the age of 16. As such, he was an active participant in the infamous Battle of Khwakurk against Saddam Hussein’s army in 1988. He also participated in the 1991 uprising against Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf War and filmed both events.

Despite this irregular childhood given the tumultuous nature of the Kurdish resistance, Barzani was able to complete his high school education in Iran. After seeing peace restored to the region in 1992, he went to London for a year-long course in English. Having successfully completed this, he continued on to receive a bachelor’s degree with honors in International Studies from the American University in Washington, D.C. He continued studying Peace and Conflict Resolutions for his post graduate studies.

During his time in Washington, Barzani was actively involved in improving understanding of the Kurdish plight in America. He also established a Barzani Scholar-in-Residence program at American University, in order to continue these efforts into the future.

In 1998, he returned to Kurdistan and was elected by the KDP's 12th Congress to the Central Committee. Later that same year he became part of the Kurdistan Democratic Party Leadership before receiving his current appointment as the General Director of the Protection and Intelligence Agency. In 2010, he received the highest votes of the 13th Congress and was reelected to the Leadership Council and then selected as one of the Politburo members of the KDP.

Barzani is married and has three children, two sons and one daughter. He is fluent in Kurdish, Persian and English in addition to understanding Arabic.

Under his stewardship, women have been officially added to the Kurdish security services and many can now be seen publicly serving as guards outside government buildings. He was a vocal critic of many of the proposals found in the Iraq Study Group, authoring a Washington Post op-ed on the subject. He has also appeared in several television interviews on security-related matters.

Masrour Barzani has also been credited with working to ensure that veterans of the Kurdish struggle who are members of his father's political party receive their pensions.

In a January 2010 interview with the Jamestwon Foundation, Masrour Barzani said that the Iraqi Constitution has laid out a clear solution for the status of the city of Kirkuk and other disputed areas.