Nawshirwan Mustafa (22 December 1944 – 19 May 2017) (Kurdish: نەوشیروان مستەفا) was an Iraqi Kurdish politician who served as the General Coordinator of the Movement for Change and the leader of the opposition in the Kurdistan Region from 1 April 2009 to his death on 19 May 2017.
Nawshirwan Mustafa was born on 22 December 1944 in the old quarter of Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, the son of Mustafa Émin Khider. Sulaymaniyah has been home to the Mustafa Émin Khider family since the city was established in 1784. Unlike Kurdistan's other prominent political leaders Masoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, Mustafa hails from a city, not a village, and is not a member of a tribe, Nawshirwan built his reputation on being a republican who opposed family rule and hereditary political parties.
Mustafa attended the Royal King Faisal school in Sulaymaniyah and was also taught foreign languages by private tutors at an early age. He went on to study political science at Baghdad University and international law at Vienna University.
He also spoke German, English, Arabic and Persian.
Political, military and media career 1960–2017
Mustafa joined KDP in 1960 where he was active in the youth branch. He allied himself with Barzani's opponents in the politburo and resigned from the party before the KDP split, he did not accept hereditary nature of the party.
Mustafa published the Razgari magazine in 1968, which represented the views of nationalists calling for greater autonomy for Kurds.
Mustafa was Secretary General of the clandestine Komalai Ranjdaran also known as Revolutionary Organization of Toilers of Kurdistan or Kurdistan Toilers League which was dissolved into the PUK in 1992. Komala was influenced by Marxism–Leninism and Maoism. In 1970 Mustafa was sentenced to death by the Revolutionary Court in Baghdad. As a result, he went into exile in Austria.
PUK represented three different movements: the "Green Line", consisting mainly of Talabani's personal followers, the Marxist–Leninist Komala, and the Socialist Movement of Kurdistan, the most influential of these groups was Mustafa's Komala Randjaran.
During the late 1970s through the early '90s, Mustafa was the commander in chief of Peshmerga forces, conducting a guerrilla war against the Iraqi Ba'athist army and government. After inflicting serious damage on the better equipped Iraqi army, the Ba'athist government turned to chemical warfare. Using biological weapons such as nerve gas and mustard gas, Saddam Hussein initiated the Anfal Campaign in early 1987, with sustained use of chemical weapons and the mass genocide of hundreds of thousands of Kurdish civilians.
In 1988, Mustafa, with Talabani and the leadership of PUK, decided to initiate a tactical retreat to the Iranian border in the hope that Saddam would end the Anfal Campaign. Over the course of the next three years, Mustafa oversaw the reorganisation of the Peshmerga Forces whilst creating sleeper cells within the major Iraqi Kurdish cities of As-Sulaymaniyah, Arbil, Mosul and Kirkuk. During this period, Mustafa made plans for a popular uprising, which would be initiated by the sleeper cells, and supported by the newly organised Peshmerga battalions which were placed along the Iraqi/Iranian border.
In the spring of 1991, Mustafa, initiated his plan and on 5 March the town of Rania was liberated from Iraqi forces. Mustafa oversaw and conducted the operation, which resulted in the liberation of all the major cities, ending with the liberation of Kirkuk on 21 March 1991. Mustafa is known as the architect of the uprising because he oversaw the liberation of Kurdistan of Iraq for the first time since the creation of the state of Iraq. This subsequent autonomy has led to the current Kurdistan Regional government which is an autonomous region in Northern Iraq.
In the 1980s, he had the primary role in the PUK's numerous attacks on the communist groups. In 1983, Mustafa led the PUK forces to attack the Communist Party of Iraq's main base in the village Piştaşan, killing 150 communists.
In July 2000, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan attacked the bases of Worker-communist Party and organizations close to it. During the attacks five were killed and some injured, also hundreds of party members were arrested. In 2011 Worker-communist Party of Kurdistan filed a lawsuit against Nawshirwan Mustafa and four other PUK senior members at that time as the responsible for the attacks.
Mustafa has had a long history of pushing for free media in the region. In an interview with the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat on 31 May 2003, he stated Iraq and Kurdistan need to "enact news laws that live up to the spirit of the age and are in line with the principles of human rights and civil society."
In March 2007, Mustafa established the Wusha Corporation in Sulaimaniyah. When asked why he had established such a vast media outlet, he stated, "We have attempted to change Kurdish politics from the inside, now let us attempt it from the outside."
He established the Wusha Corporation which consisted of, Kurdish News Network, TV news channel, Rozhnama, weekly newspaper, Sbeiy.com, news website, Dangi Gorran, Kurdish–Arabic radio station.
The company's newspaper, Rozhnama, heavily criticized Jalal Talabani for deciding in March 2008 to sack party members from the PUK for speaking out against politicians in the press.