Galbraith, Peter

(1950- )

   The son of the famous economist John Kenneth Galbraith, Peter Galbraith is a U.S. diplomat who became one of the best American friends of the Iraqi Kurds when, as a staff member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, he alerted his country and the world to Saddam Hussein's Anfal campaign of genocide against the Kurds in 1988 and the impending Kurdish refugee crisis at the end of the Gulf War in 1991. He then helped convince the reluctant administration of George H. W. Bush to implement the no-fly zone to protect the Kurds upon their return. Galbraith became a bitter opponent of George W. Bush's war that removed Saddam Hussein from power in 2003 because of what he saw as the incompetent way it was being waged. He also was a strong advocate of a partition of Iraq into Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish parts.

   During the 1990s, Galbraith served as the U.S. ambassador to Croatia and then with the United Nations in East Timor. In March 2009, he was appointed as deputy UN envoy to Afghanistan but resigned in protest over the irregularities involved in the Afghan presidential election during the summer of 2009. Late in 2009, he was accused of conflict of interest concerning his earlier involvement in purchasing Iraqi Kurdish oil contracts while he also served as an advisor to the Kurds.