Kurdistan’s Man In Washington Preps For New Role Back Home

Qubad Talabani, the longtime Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) envoy to Washington, will move to Kurdistan this summer after a twelve-year run representing Iraqi Kurdistan here that has seen the US invasion and withdrawal from Iraq.

Talabani, 34, the son of Iraq’s president Jalal Talabani, will head up a new strategic policy coordinating body reporting to the Kurdistan region's prime minister, Nechirvan Barzani. He will be based in the provincial capital of Erbil, and accompanied by his family-- his wife Sherri Kraham, a managing director in the Millenium Challenge Corporation (MCC) policy department, and their two year old son, Ari.

“Clearly, professionally, this is a step in the right direction for me,” Talabani told me in an interview Tuesday. “I have worked my whole professional career on international relations, and this gives me an exciting opportunity to work on [Kurdish] domestic policies and the strategic development of Kurdistan as a region.”

"After twelve years of being here, I am sad to leave this great city but excited to start a new challenge,” he said. “If I was ambassador, I would have been one of the longest serving."