Masoud Barzani President of the Kurdistan Region in Iraq Masoud Barzani was elected President of the Kurdistan Region in Iraq by the Kurdistan National Assembly in June 2005. He was born on 16 August 1946. At the time of his birth, President Barzani’s father, the late Mustafa Barzani, was head of the military of the short-lived Kurdish Republic of Mahabad that was declared in Kurdistan in Iran. When the Republic fell, Mustafa Barzani fled to the USSR with five hundred followers. When he returned to Iraq 12 years later, he and the rest of his family were deported to the southern parts of the country. With the overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy in 1958, the new Republic of General Abdulkarim Qasim welcomed Mustafa Barzani and his followers back to Iraq. Masoud Barzani was 12 years old when he was finally reunited with his father. The family moved back to their home village of Barzan. Soon afterwards the Iraqi government resumed its repression against the people of Kurdistan. With no alternative, in 1961 the KDP, under the leadership of Mustafa Barzani, launched an armed struggle. Barzani together with his late, elder brother Idris, took part in the delegation that signed an autonomy agreement with Baghdad in March 1970. When the Iraqi government reneged on the agreement, the Kurdistan armed struggle resumed. Once again, Masoud Barzani took part at the side of his father. After the death of Mustafa Barzani in March 1979, Masoud was elected as the new president of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), at the party’s 9th congress. Since then he has been re-elected as the KDP’s President in each successive congress. He is married with eight children. He speaks Kurdish, Arabic and Persian and has an understanding of English. .