Ahmed, Ibrahim

(1914-2000)

   Ahmed was a longtime Iraqi Kurdish rival of Mulla Mustafa Barzani, as well as the father-in-law and political mentor of Jalal Talabani. He graduated from the faculty of law at the University of Baghdad and published his thesis on Arab-Kurdish relations in 1937. Although he flirted with communism—as did many Kurdish intellectuals in those days — and even spent three years in prison for communist activities in the early 1950s, Ahmed can best be described as a leftist Kurdish nationalist. With brief interruptions, he served as the secretary-general of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) from 1953 to 1964. With Jalal Talabani, Ahmed led the KDP Politburo faction, a leftist, intellectual, Marxist-oriented wing, during the 1960s against the more conservative, traditional, tribal wing of the KDP associated with Barzani. Eventually Ahmed was defeated, although his beliefs were taken up by the younger Talabani and his Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) established in 1975. Ahmed lived many years in exile in London, from where he continued to be active in Kurdish causes right up until his death as an old and honored Kurdish nationalist.