For the last seven decades, Naser Tawfiq Barwari has seen a great deal of history pan out in front of his eyes — from the overthrow of the British-backed Hashemite monarchy in 1958 to the Baath regime's reign of terror and, finally, the broken system that Iraq's Kurds inherited from the Baathists in 1992.

Known among the locals in Dahuk as Naser Beg — in this lush corner of Iraqi Kurdistan near the Turkish border where the tribes still wield enormous political and military power — he is not happy with the status quo in the Kurdistan Region and has high hopes among his Barwari tribesmen to be elected to Iraq's parliament as one of the representatives of the people of Dahuk. But Naser Beg has taken a gamble and broken ranks with the Kurdish elites, as he is listed as the No. 1 candidate on Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s Al-Nasr list in Dahuk. “I believe in Abadi, and I think he is a constitutional person,” Naser Beg told Al-Monitor.

Such statements are unheard of in Iraqi Kurdistan, where the ethnic divide of Arab versus Kurd plays an important role in Kurdish elections and those who side with Arabs are often labeled as "jash," a derogatory term meaning "mule."

But this is not the first time Naser Beg has broken ranks with the Kurdish nationalist movement. He was a Kurdish tribal "mustashar" — or adviser — with the Baath regime from the late 1960s until 1983, commanding a regiment of his tribesmen allied with the Iraqi army against Kurdish peshmerga forces. “I want to go to Baghdad to defend the Kurds,” Naser Beg told Al-Monitor. When asked about his time with the regime, he replied, “I defended the Kurds when I was a mustashar. I defended the imprisoned Kurdish civilians and the peshmerga. That is all I did.” He said that he fell afoul of the Baath regime and fled in 1983, handing over his arms and regiment to Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) leader Massoud Barzani.