Eagleton, William

(1926- )

   Over the past half century, Ambassador Eagleton has distinguished himself as one of the U.S. State Department's foremost experts on the Middle East. Until recently, he also was one of the State Department's very few Kurdish specialists. Many Kurds admire him for writing what remains the definitive history in English of the Mahabad Republic of Kurdistan, The Kurdish Republic of 1946 (1963). He also produced an illustrated study of Kurdish rugs.

   He began his career as a member of the U.S. Foreign Service in 1949 after serving two years in the U.S. Navy. His foreign postings included Damascus (1951-1953), Beirut (1953-1954), Kirkuk (1954-1955), and Tabriz (1959-1961). It was in the latter two posts that he first became expert on the Kurdish issue. He also was in Mauritania in 1962 and South Yemen in 1967-1968, and he was the chief U.S. diplomat in Algeria (1969-1974), Libya (1978-1980), Iraq (1980-1984), and Syria (1985-1988). He then served six years as the deputy commissioner-general of the UN Relief Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). Subsequently, he served in senior UN capacities in Bosnia and Western Sahara before returning to northern Iraq in 2003 as an advisor to the U.S. Department of Defense.