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.
