The Kurds and the KGB

Mustafa Barzani, the leg­endary Kur­dish leader, was a KGB agent code-named “RAIS,” and the Kur­dish armed rev­o­lu­tion he started Sept. 11, 1961, was in real­ity a KGB covert action to desta­bi­lize West­ern inter­ests in the Mid­dle East and put addi­tional pres­sure on the Kas­sim gov­ern­ment of Iraq.

Who­ever dares to men­tion these facts pub­licly in Kur­dis­tan would face an unknown fate, pos­si­bly forced dis­ap­pear­ance or even mur­der by sophis­ti­cated means, and the whole story of KGB-Barzani ties would be dis­missed as reck­less defama­tion by the rul­ing Barzani family.

Unfor­tu­nately for the Barzani fam­ily, these facts are not the cre­ation of some indi­vid­u­als, but the con­tents of KGB doc­u­ments that recently became acces­si­ble to schol­ars and the pub­lic, or found their way to the West with defected KGB offi­cers after the col­lapse of the Soviet Union.

The secret his­tory of the Barzani dynasty