Mustafa Barzani - Exile and Death

Exile and Death

Mustafa Barzani along with his family were settled near the capital of Iran in Tehran in Karaj. The KDP went through a chaotic period as it attempted to reorganize itself in face of the defeat at the hands of the Ba'ath in Iraq. Barzani and his aides continued trying to get support from the United States, seeing that the Soviet Union had settled for amicable relations with the new government in Iraq. The United States had only shown that it saw the Kurds as a tool, and had no interest in advancing its nationalist goals as Barzani would soon realize. The findings of the Pike Commission would confirm this, showing the CIA was only interested in the Kurds to wear down Iraq but had no intention of ever following through with Barzani's ambitions. Mustafa Barzani would live long enough to see the overthrow of the Shah, the departure of Henry Kissinger following Gerald Ford's defeat in the 1976 US Presidential Elections, and the death of Algerian President Houari Boumediene, three figures who had affected his movement negatively. Seeking to treat a lung cancer, Barzani went to the United States, and died on March 1, 1979, in Georgetown Hospital in Washington, DC. He was buried in Iranian Kurdistan in Oshnavieh after his body was flown back from the United States .

In October, 1993, Barzani's remains were brought across the border from Iran to Iraqi Kurdistan, to be reburied in his hometown of Barzan.