Jalal Talabani

Jalal Talabani has been the President of Iraq since 2005. The first ethnically Kurdish man in this position, he has a long history of defending Kurdish rights against a pan-Arabist ideology that frequently denied their rights. After completing his compulsory military service, he joined Kurdish forces fighting against the government, commanding troops in several offensives across three decades of conflict. Off the battlefield, he advocated for the Kurds to various European and Middle Eastern nations.

After Saddam Hussein's removal from power, Talabani served on Iraq's Interim Governing Council before being appointed to the presidency in a scheme devised to ensure representation for the three major factions of Iraqis. Under the new system the President is Kurdish, the Prime Minister Shia, and the Speaker of Parliament Sunni. While Talabani had stated that he would only serve one term as President, Parliament elected him to a second term in late 2010.

For more information, see http://aje.me/AFiVxk and http://nyti.ms/xkBEJa.