There is always an internal belief that the death, destruction, or assassination of a leader may be the end of a revolution or a national cause, but not always. The enemies of the Kurd people realized long ago that President Mustafa Barzani was the decision-maker and the center of gravity of the liberation movement of the Kurd people, so attempts were made to assassinate him several times. The first step to eliminate him was to arrest him and isolate him, when he was three years old. The Ottoman state, because of Sheikh Abdulsalam Barzani’s revolt, imprisoned him with his family in Mosul Prison, and after that a decision was issued to transfer him to the city of Sulaymaniyah. After that, Barzani reached the age when he was able to carry a weapon, was relied upon in battles, and his name gradually became known to every Kurd.

First/ The assassination attempt on Mulla Mustafa Barzani in 1936.

After the suppression of the first Barzan Revolution and the handover of Sheikh Ahmed Barzani and Mulla Mustafa Barzani to the Iraqi royal government by the Turks and their detention with their families in the city of Mosul, and also after the outbreak of the Khoshwi revolt by Khoshwi Udeish against the royal government, especially Hasamdin Jumaa, who was then the police director and at the same time was managing the affairs of the former governor Omar Nazmi. It was believed that Mulla Mustafa Barzani was encouraging the Khoshwi movement and that they were taking inspiration from him, so in 1936 an attempt was made to poison Mulla Mustafa Barzani and poison was placed in his coffee. After that, Mulla Mustafa Barzani remained in a coma for two weeks and miraculously survived death. In the attempt to save Mulla Mustafa Barzani’s life, the following names played a role: Sheikh Ajil Yawar, the Kashmoula family, and Awin. Among the circulating reports was the presence of a French doctor who was living in Syria and had a major role in treating Mulla Mustafa.

Second/ The assassination attempt on Mulla Mustafa Barzani in 1961.

After the outbreak of Aylul Revolution on 11 September 1961 and the victory of the Peshmerga in several battles, the Iraqi government was clearly trying to approach and negotiate with the Kurdish political leaders, especially with General Mustafa Barzani, but secretly they tried several times to kill and assassinate Mulla Mustafa Barzani. They also announced the death of Mulla Mustafa Barzani several times. Abdul Karim Qasim went too far and tried to entrench his dictatorial rule in Iraq. He wanted Mulla Mustafa Barzani to relinquish the rights of the Kurdistan people and remain in the city of Barzan, and for this purpose he sent a letter to Sheikh Ahmed Barzani and asked him to persuade President Mustafa Barzani to agree to meet with them. Sheikh Ahmed did not reject this request and sent representatives on his behalf to Mulla Mustafa Barzani to persuade him to hold a meeting with Abdul Karim Qasim’s representative, Brigadier Hassan Abbud, commander of the Fifth Brigade, Masoud Barzani in the first part of the third volume of the book Barzani and the Kurdish Liberation Movement, narrates it in this way:

 On December 17, the government designated a place for the negotiators near Sarsink, but Barzani did not go to that place and remained near the village of Bamerni. After that, he sent several messengers to the meeting place to wait for the arrival of Hassan Abboud and bring him to the place chosen by Mullah Mustafa Barzani for the meeting. This was the correct thinking, because Qasim intended to eliminate Barzani and his representative Hassan at their meeting place. When Hassan left the place and headed with Barzani’s representatives to meet Barzani, the meeting place was accurately and violently bombed by four planes. Hassan Abboud saw this bombing from afar with his own eyes, and he was very embarrassed, and this situation was difficult for him. As appears from this account, the experience and insight of the late Barzani thwarted the enemies’ conspiracy, and their goal was not achieved, and their assassination attempt was foiled. Mustafa Barzani told Abboud, “I do not ask Qasim to give me anything. Let him give the Kurdish people their rights, and I will leave Iraq and go.”

 Third: The attempt to assassinate Mullah Mustafa Barzani in 1971

Although the Aylul Revolution achieved some of its goals, and for the first time and officially the independence of Kurdistan was recognized, the enemies of Kurdistan and President Barzani continued their attempts to assassinate him.

 On September 15, 1971, two religious scholars, the first named Abd al-Jabbar A'zami, a Sunni religious scholar, and Abd al-Husayn Dakhili, a Shiite religious scholar, visited Mullah Mustafa Barzani and were warmly received. The two religious scholars said that the reason for their visit was the bad situation between the revolution and the Iraqi regime and its effects on public opinion, and that they intended to announce a campaign among the religious scholars and the people in general to reduce conflict and promote the existing peace, and for this reason they needed President Mustafa Barzani’s opinion. Barzani told them his opinion and their attempt was acceptable to him, and he supported them. Up to this point, things were proceeding normally, but what was not normal was that the driver who brought both scholars was working for the Iraqi Intelligence Agency. He came to discover the security measures taken to protect Mullah Mustafa Barzani and to learn the geographical location of the area and Barzani’s office, and to know where Barzani stayed and where he received his guests. On September 29, 1971, a delegation visited the Haj Omran area, and the delegation consisted of Abd al-Husayn Dakhili, Sheikh Abd al-Jabbar A'zami, Sheikh Abd al-Wahhab A'zami, Sheikh Ibrahim Ghanim Khaza'i, Sheikh Ahmad Hiti, Sheikh Baqir Muzaffar, Sheikh Ghazi al-Dulaimi, Sheikh Nur Yasin, and Sheikh Abd al-Jalil al-Mousawi.

They had come for the purpose of resolving the dispute between the revolution and the Iraqi government. This delegation arrived in two cars; one car was a BMW Toyota type and the other a 1963 Chevrolet. Suleiman Kokhi and Hamid Kamel Ismail were riding in the cars, and at the same time they were working in the Intelligence Agency in Baghdad. At the Haj Omran checkpoint, permission was not given for the cars to pass, but one of the delegation members, Abduljabar Azami, threatened the guards with filing a complaint against the checkpoint guards with President Mustafa Barzani, so they were allowed to pass. When the delegation arrived, President Mustafa Barzani was accompanied by Dr. Mahmoud and Masoud Barzani. Then Barzani was informed of the arrival of the guests, and he was given their names, so Barzani decided to see them after the afternoon prayer.

The guests presented President Mustafa Barzani with a Quran and a religious book, and he received them from them and thanked them. After that, the person who was carrying the tea and working at the Headquarters (tea server of the Headquarters), Sheikh Hadi, entered while he was sitting in front of President Mustafa Barzani. The person distributed the tea. Sheikh Hadi was secretly carrying a sound recorder with the aim of recording Mustafa Barzani's voice, and he took advantage of the sound of the tea cups clinking and the cover provided by the tea server. He used that and put his finger on the recorder, but instead of recording, the recorder exploded. Sheikh Hadi's body was torn to pieces, and the room filled with smoke. Masoud Barzani was with President Mustafa Barzani before the explosion, and upon hearing the sound of the explosion he immediately went to the place of the explosion. He says: At first I thought that my father's house had exploded. After that I realized that at the time my father had gone to meet the guests, and there the terrorist act took place. At first I thought my father had been assassinated, but one of his guards told me that President Mustafa Barzani was only wounded by a fragment and was safe.

Masoud Barzani narrates the events after the terrorist attempt as follows: In the reception room, four of the guests who had come were killed by bomb fragments, and those sitting to my father's right and left were injured. Those who were able to escape outside fled outside. Barzani left the room and called out to the Peshmerga, "Do not kill any of them." But the drivers, because they could not reach the car, and the car was like the second car, rigged with explosives; the headlights were fitted with rockets so that if the drivers fled, they would hit any car pursuing them with them. The drivers were throwing hand grenades. At exactly 5:25, with the killing of the planners, this terrorist act came to an end. Nine of the mullahs present and the drivers were killed, and two Peshmerga were martyred and four others were wounded. After the people dispersed, the explosive Toyota car exploded, but there was no damage.



On the occasion of Barzani’s safety and their joy at the rescue of General Mustafa Barzani from the terrorist attempt, first the leadership of the State of Iraq and the Ba'ath Party sent a telegram; afterward the President of the Republic sent Abdul Sattar Jawari, who was then a Minister, to President Barzani. Both sides stated that they had no knowledge of the terrorist act, and in order to reach the truth and identify the people involved in this terrorist act, a joint Committee was formed, but it was unsuccessful. According to the information obtained by the Barasn Revolution security apparatus, it was the regime itself that had planned the operation. It is likely that Nazim al-Jazzar, the head of the Intelligence Agency at the time, had an effective role in the plan, but the decision came from higher authorities than him and he was only the التنفيذفانفذ for Masoud Barzani in volume three, part two of the book Barzani and the Kurdish Liberation Movement, Mam Jalal says: he told me that when I was in Baghdad in 1983 for negotiations, Saddam Hussein admitted that he was aware of the assassination attempt on Mulla Mustafa Barzani and was very saddened by the failure of the operation

Fourth: the 1972 assassination attempt

After the futile attempt by the Iraqi Intelligence Agency at the Barzani Headquarters, this agency did not learn a lesson and continued its terrorist attempts

On 15 July 1972, a person named Ibrahim Kabari came from Syria to Iraq because the Syrian government was pursuing him. Kabari used to visit the fifth branch of the Kurdistan Democratic Party frequently, and he established a relationship with the Iraqi Intelligence Agency, and they gave him tasks. Nazim Kazar was then the head of the Intelligence Agency. He assigned Kabari to get close to the Barzani Headquarters and try to assassinate President Mustafa Barzani, and if he could not assassinate him, he should assassinate Idris Barzani or Masoud Barzani, the two sons of the leader of the Kurdish liberation movement, or assassinate one of them. Kabari agreed to this act and headed to the liberated areas under the authority of the revolution, and there he requested a meeting with Masoud Barzani because he had very highly secret information. Masoud Barzani met Kabari and informed him of the Iraqi Intelligence Agency’s request, and Masoud Barzani told him not to abandon this act and to continue in order to find out what they would ask of him after that.

The Iraqi Intelligence Agency, in order to make Kabari believe that he was close to the headquarters of Barzani, and for this reason they asked him to take a photo with President Mustafa Barzani and Idris Barzani and Masoud Barzani. This request was carried out by Masoud Barzani. After taking the photos, Nazim Kazzar trusted Kabari and sent with him a bag full of explosives of the (TNT) type to the liberated areas under the authority of the revolution, for the purpose of assassinating Mustafa Barzani, and if he could not, to detonate the (TNT) on one of his two sons. The bag filled with (TNT) was delivered to the intelligence of the revolution, and after that the news of the futile attempt to assassinate Barzani was published in Khabat newspaper. But the Ba'ath regime, like previous terrorist acts, denied this terrorist act and claimed ignorance of it, and the Ministry of Interior denied that any of the Iraqi government departments had any relationship to this terrorist act. Saddam Hussein formed a committee to follow up and uncover the truth, and the committee was made up of Abdul Khaliq al-Samarrai, representative of the Ba'ath Party, Makram Talabani, representative of the Communist Party, Muhammad Mahmoud Abdulrahman, representative of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, and Aziz Sharif, Dar Tawfiq, and Ihsan Shirzad. The committee went to the Naw Bardan area and examined the evidence and met Ibrahim Kabari, who confessed everything and revealed the names of the officers involved in this plot, among them Officer Basil al-Araji. Abdul Khaliq al-Samarrai asked Ibrahim Kabari about the description and appearance of this officer, and it turned out that his words were true, because he knew him. Samarrai promised to raise the committee's investigative findings to his superiors, but the Ba'ath Party took no measures regarding this incident, even after Nazim Kazzar on 20 June 1973 carried out a coup to get rid of President Ahmed Hassan Bakr and seize power in Iraq. The Ba'athist regime admitted the terrorist attempt on 29 September 1971 and the terrorist attempt on 15 July 1972, saying that it was carried out by Nazim Kazzar with outside support. Besides these attempts, there were other terrorist attempts whose aim was to distort and sabotage security under the authority of the revolution, but because of the vigilance of the revolution's security agencies, none of them succeeded. More importantly, in no circumstances did the revolutionary leadership respond to terrorist attempts with terrorist attempts, and the Kurdish liberation movement. If they wanted revenge, it was against the people who carried out the terrorist act only, not against women, children, and innocent people. Mustafa Barzani believed in this principle, and he always advised the leaders and the Peshmerga Forces of Kurdistan not to carry out any operation that would claim innocent lives.

Sources

1- Masoud Barzani, Barzani and the Kurdish Liberation Movement, Volume One Aylul Revolution. 1931- 1958. First edition - Ministry of Peshmerga Press 2004

2- Masoud Barzani and the Kurdish Liberation Movement, Volume Three, Part Two Aylul Revolution 1961- 1975. First edition - Erbil, Ministry of Peshmerga Press 2004

3- Archives of the Encyclopedia Authority, the Kurdish Democratic Party encyclopedia