Also, after the Kurdish People's Liberation Movement led by General Mustafa Barzani, September Revolution entered into peace negotiations with the Iraqi government, playing a role in these negotiations Idris Barzani It cannot be ignored, so the enemies are trying to find a way to destroy it, and to do so, they will take every opportunity and try more than one.
After the March 11 agreement, the Ba'ath Party leadership requested President Mustafa Barzani to appoint Mr. Idris as the Vice President of Iraq, but Barzani did not agree. Idris Barzani also visited the United States and met with senior American officials, including the head of the US intelligence agency Richard Helms and the US Deputy Secretaries of State and Defense. Although this visit was secret, it is not known whether the Iraqi intelligence agency was aware of it. These two steps reaffirm that Idris Barzani has not only had a role and influence in the social and military fields, but has also gained political credibility.
All this fame and his active role encourage the Ba'ath regime to try to eliminate and kill Idris Barzani. On 01.12.1970, to follow up and discuss how to implement the agreement of March 11, 1970, especially the fate of the Peshmerga and the creation of the Border Guard Force from the Peshmerga September Revolution, Idris Barzani visited Baghdad and met with then-Iraqi President Ahmed Hassan Bakr and Vice President Saddam Hussein, but there was an attempt to assassinate him. The President Masoud Barzani In his book Barzani and the Kurdish People's Liberation Movement, he records this event as follows:
In order to implement the March 11 agreement, especially the issue of the composition of the border guards, on December 1, 1970, Idris Barzani visited Baghdad with a number of Peshmerga leaders, including Hamid Barwari, and met with the president, his deputies, and some officials. He was supposed to stay in Baghdad for 3 days, but he sent a letter stating that the president had asked him to stay for a few more days, but our uncle Sheikh Babo, who was visiting us in Haji Omaran, wanted to return to Barzan and was waiting for Idris to return and go to Barzan with him. On December 6, my uncle asked me if I could know the decision to return to Idris. If he returns in three days, I will wait for him, if he stays longer, I will go on my own, I tried to talk to Idris on the phone, but the phone line was weak and I couldn't understand anything, then I called the Erbil police chief, Sheikh Riza Gulani, and told him to try to call Idris and tell him that my uncle is in a hurry to return to Barzan, if he returns after three days, I will wait for him, otherwise he will return to Barzan alone, God wanted Sheikh Riza to understand that Idris' return is very important and he must return immediately.
Idris had sent the Mercedes that had been gifted to him by the Iraqi president to the garage to fix some problems, so he did not wait for his car to be repaired and returned to Erbil by taxi. Unbeknownst to anyone, the Mercedes was brought back that evening, and Hamid Barwari and Muhammad Aziz, who had come to Baghdad with him and stayed there, were supposed to return the next day. On the evening of Idris' departure from Baghdad on December 6, Hamid Barwari and Muhammad Aziz went to a dinner party in their Mercedes. It seems that some of the guards had made plans with the cooperation of the director of General Security Nazim Gizar to eliminate Idris. I personally do not think it is far-fetched that some high-ranking Iraqi officials were involved in this plan. The teams that were involved in the plan set up ambushes at many strategic points to prevent the car from reaching it, thinking that Idris was in the car. At 10 p.m., the car was shot at, and they thought that Hamid Barwari is Idris because they look a bit alike, Hamid Barwari was seriously injured, the wound later became an illness and he suffered from it, more than 50 bullets hit the car, but Muhammad Aziz and his driver were not harmed and their survival was truly a miracle, the driver was named Hasan Kavani and he was a fast and alert driver and quickly drove the car to a place far from the ambush. In this way, Idris' fate was such that he escaped the assassination plot, because the plotter thought that Idris was in the car that the president had given him, while Idris was returning to the country without anyone knowing.
The terrorist attempt to assassinate Idris Barzani failed and only Hamid Barwari was injured. The Iraqi government, as usual, distanced itself from the incident and demanded that the revolutionary leadership provide them with any information they had in order to find and punish the perpetrators. The KDP, through its Baghdad branch, provided all the information they had on Saddam Hussein.
Saddam sent a handwritten letter to President Mustafa Barzani, emphasizing that what had been done was against the March 11 agreement and that there were those who wanted the agreement not to be implemented.
People who wanted Idris Barzani The perpetrators of his murder were revealed and punished through the Seurat Court, but those who ordered his assassination remained hidden until the Nazim Gizar coup in 1973, after which the Iraqi government admitted that Nazim Gizar had done this.
Source:
- Masoud Barzani, Barzani and the Kurdish Liberation Movement, Volume III, Part II, September Revolution 1961-1975, First Edition (Hewlêr, Peshmerga Ministry Printing House, 2004).
