Thousands of Iraqi Kurdish mourners, Iraqi officials and world dignitaries attended the funeral of former Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, the country’s first president after the reign of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and once a symbol of national unity.
Talabani was on Friday laid to rest in Sulaymaniyah, the second-largest city in Iraq’s Kurdish region, after his casket — draped in the Kurdish flag — was flown from Berlin, where he died at a hospital earlier this week.
From the airport in Sulaymaniyah, a motorcade carried the casket to a nearby hill for burial. Crowds poured into the streets, following the funeral procession on foot, carrying flags and posters bearing Talabani’s image and the emblem of the political party he founded more than three decades ago, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
Photo: AP
While Talabani traces his roots to a small village in Iraq’s north, Sulaymaniyah is the seat of his political power.
A long-time champion of Kurdish self-rule, Talabani also established himself as a national statesman after accepting the largely symbolic office of the presidency two years after the 2003 US invasion toppled Saddam.
He held the post from 2005 to 2014, but faded from Iraqi political life after suffering a debilitating stroke in 2012.
During his time as president, Talabani was seen as a symbol of unity, a politician able to manage tensions between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds that in Iraq often erupt into violence.
Talabani’s death in Germany on Tuesday came as Iraq struggles to manage the fallout of a controversial referendum on Kurdish independence spearheaded by his long-time Iraqi Kurdish political rival, Iraqi Kurdistan President Masoud Barzani.
While Barzani was present at the funeral and laid a wreath of white flowers on Talabani’s casket, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi was not in attendance. Iraqi Minister of the Interior Qasim al-Araji traveled to Sulaymaniyah to pay his respects in al-Abadi’s place.
Also in attendance were Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif; Iraq’s current president and fellow Kurd, Fuad Masum; US Ambassador to Iraq Douglas Silliman; and Jan Kubis, the top UN envoy in Iraq.
Baghdad, along with neighboring Turkey and Iran, has rejected the Kurdish referendum and is demanding Kurdish leadership do the same.
While the vote is nonbinding and will not immediately create an independent state, many saw it as a symbolic affirmation of the Iraqi Kurdish dreams for a state of their own.
Iraq’s central government has banned international flights from servicing the Kurdish region’s airports and Turkey and Iran, fearful of their own restive Kurdish minorities, have threatened further punitive measures.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened a total blockade and has not ruled out the possibility of military invasion.
As Talabani’s coffin arrived at Sulaymaniyah airport, Iraqi state TV hailed the late president as a national leader who would not have approved of the referendum called by Barzani.
However, Talabani had not made any official statement on the vote and his political party was split on the subject.
Iraq’s Kurds have been politically divided for decades.
Shortly after securing an autonomous zone in the 1990s with the backing of a US-enforced no-fly zone, Talabani’s and Barzani’s rival factions were drawn into a bitter civil war that killed thousands of civilians and fighters on both sides.
Deep distrust remains to this day, but across the political spectrum, the dream of an independent state is a central rallying point.
Both the referendum vote and Talabani’s death whipped up nationalist sentiment throughout the Kurdish region.
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