IranWire:

Having the right friends in US intelligentsia is perhaps the most important asset an aspiring independence movement could wish for. For the Kurds of Iraq, who are to hold an independence referendum on September 25, one such friend is Peter Galbraith, a leading US diplomat who has publicly backed the independence effort.

On September 19, Iraq’s highest court ruled that the Kurdish referendum should be suspended, and the Iraqi prime minister demanded it be called off. But despite this, and opposition from Iraq, Iran and Turkey, as well as the United States, Kurdish leaders insist the vote will go ahead.

Galbraith’s ties to the region go a long way back. In the late 1980s, when the Iraqi regime under Saddam Hussein faced little criticism from the US or even the UN while it massacred many of its own Kurdish citizens, Galbraith was one of the first who drew attention to its deadly use of chemical weapons. Saddam’s massacre of the Kurds on Bloody Friday, when his forces launched a chemical attack on the border town of Halabja on March 16, 1988, has since become a watershed moment in Kurdish history. Years later, when Iraq was invaded by the United States and the Saddam regime was toppled, Galbraith acted as an advisor to the Kurdish Regional Government.

Galbraith was also good friends with a progressive icon of the region, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan, whom he knew from their time together at Harvard and Oxford. He later used his influence to push for the release of Benazir from prison, when she was held under the Islamist dictatorship of General Zia ul-Haq. In addition to many European languages, Galbraith is known to speak Persian, which probably has something to do with his role, in 2009, as UN’s Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan, tasked with overseeing the 2009 presidential election.

But perhaps most pertinent to the Kurdish question is Galbraith’s front-row seat to the dissolution of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. He served as the first US ambassador to independent Croatia, from 1993, just months after Washington DC had strongly urged the Croats to not pursue independence. Lesser known is Galbraith’s role in the secession of another oil-rich state from a Muslim-majority country: East Timor. Galbraith served as a cabinet member in East Timor’s first transitional government and is hailed by many Timorese for his role in re-negotiating oil and gas contracts with Australia.

Galbraith is currently in Croatia, where a documentary is being made about his role in the country’s first few years. He spoke to IranWire on the phone about his thoughts on Kurdistan and the referendum:

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