“More than any day else, today our nation and the party need the late Mam Jalal’s wiseness, vision and experience to pass the crises,” PUK said in a statement.
First post-Sadam president in Iraq and former General-Secretary of PUK Mam Jalal died in Germany aged 83 on October 3, 2017.
Jalal Hissamadin Nourallah Talabani was born in 1933 in the village of Kalkan at the base of Kosrat Mountain.
Talabani is known among the Kurds as Mam Jalal or Uncle Jalal.
He graduated from the University of Baghdad in 1959 with a degree in law. He joined the KDP, at that time the major Kurdish party in Iraq, in 1947.
He instantly gained the ranks within that party and was appointed head of KDP’s Union of Kurdistan’s Students in 1953. He became a member of the KDP politburo a year later.
Late President Mam Jalal spearheaded Kurdistan’s independence struggle and dedicated his life to the Kurdish cause.
Following the failure of the September Revolution in 1975, Mam Jalal and a group of senior Kurdish figures broke away to form the PUK and endured the Kurdish revolt against the former Iraqi Regime of Sadam Hussein.
He remained as PUK Secretary-General until his death in 2017.
He was the first elected non-Arab president of Iraq who oversaw the immediate aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Talabani was elected as the Iraqi president in 2005 and re-elected for a second term in 2010.
He is also known for his pragmatic and compromising politics that set a balance between Iraq’s various components, including Arabs and Kurds, Shia and Sunni Arabs.
Mam Jalal is portrayed as a Kurdish leader who sacrificed his entire life to achieve the cultural and national rights of the Kurds and is also highly respected in the wider Iraq and the Middle East for his prosperous peace-making policies.
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