- Title: Kurdish president's son and grandson fight IS on front line, say 'ready to die'
- Date: 4th November 2016
- Summary: NEAR BATNAYA, IRAQ (RECENT - OCTOBER 26, 2016) (REUTERS) WIDE OF PESHMERGA SPECIAL FORCES COMMANDER MANSOUR BARZANI AND HIS SON YASSER (SOUNDBITE) (English) GRANDSON OF KURDISH REGIONAL PRESIDENT MASSOUD BARZANI, YASSER BARZANI, SAYING: "I had other options too, to leave the country, or even outside the country when I was studying, but when I saw something like this was ha
- Embargoed: 19th November 2016 10:57
- Keywords: Iraq peshmerga Barzani son family Kurds Islamic State
- Location: NEAR BATNAYA, IRAQ
- City: NEAR BATNAYA, IRAQ
- Country: Iraq
- Topics: Conflicts/War/Peace,Military Conflicts
- Reuters ID: LVA0015713U4N
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text:Several generations of the prominent Kurdish Barzani family have been fighting on the front lines to defend their land.
Iraqi Kurdish regional President Massoud Barzani's son, Mansour Barzani, is the Commander of the Peshmerga Special Forces. His son, Yasser, fights next to him.
Instead of finishing college, Yasser left the United States last year to return to the Kurdish region in Iraq and help battle Islamic State (IS) militants.
"I wanted to come here and be part of this," said Yasser, who could be easily confused with one of the European special forces aiding the peshmerga. "I had so many other choices but I chose this myself."
Yasser, in his early 20's, was in Virginia studying English when he heard the news of Islamic State invading the Kurdish region, and decided that he would join his father on the battlefield.
"When I saw something like this was happening to my country, I decided to come back and help them, be one of them. They needed me. I thought they needed me so I came back to be one of them. I might not do a lot for them but I will do whatever I can," said Yasser standing next to his father, Mansour Barzani.
"I'm not saying this because he's my father or because he's right next to me, but because I've been with him a lot and I've seen so many things. And in my opinion what I've seen, he's a hero to this county," said Yasser.
Commander Mansour Barzani say he treats all peshmerga as family, the way his ancestors did.
"Really we learned from my father, when he said to me there's nothing different between you and other peshmerga, it means I have to say there's nothing different between my son and peshmerga," said Commander Barzani, whose father, and grandfather, both fought for Kurdistan's Independence.
In mid-October, when the Iraqi military and coalition forces launched an offensive against various positions occupied by Islamic State around the city of Mosul, President Barzani order the Kurdish peshmerga - among them the president's two sons, Mansour and Weisi, and his grandson, Yasser - to lead the charge on the front line.
The peshmerga forces successfully charged into enemy territory and cleared vast areas of road-side mines, neutralized suicide car bombers, and helped free several IS controlled villages before holding their position just a few kilometres north of Mosul.
"If we don't fight, the terrorist ISIS they will come and control our city our village and they are going to kill most of the people and (they) are not guilty," said Commander Barzani. "They're going to take our sister, our mom, our children, our daughter."
Commander Barzani heads a 6,000 man battalion of specially trained peshmerga, which includes over 200 advanced military vehicles but he claims it's not enough to fight Islamic State's well-armed military.
Despite available technology, the peshmerga have been removing improvised explosive devices with their hands, and taking heavy casualties as a result of suicide bombers, which the commander blames on lack of weapons.
One kilometre east of Mosul, another peshmerga commander Hussein Yazdanpanah, from the Kurdistan's Freedom Party, a party opposing President Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party, says he too is battling IS with even less equipment than the special forces.
In a text message, Commander Yazdanpanah confirms that he is desperately in need of advanced military weapons such as the German-crafted Milan.
His much smaller battalion, around 50 men and women, has suffered several injuries and one casualty in recent days, which the commander blames on regional and interior politics.
Commander Barzani thanked the Germans for providing the Milan, a device able to target suicide car bombs but reiterated that they need more advanced weapons.
"These two brothers, and one of his bothers, we lost September 2014 when a car bomb came between us," said the commander.
Commander Barzani, who has been injured four times himself, pointed out that they were not the only father-son or brother combination on the battlefield.
"Nazad's father with two brother's got injured, same time, we lost his brother," he said, adding that Nazad's other four brothers were still fighting with peshmerga.
Loved by the peshmerga, President Barzani joined the battlefield next to his father, the revered Kurdish leader Mullah Mustafa, when he was only 13 years old.
Mullah Mustafa was merely 5 years old when he was imprisoned with his family after a tribal rebellion. After his father, grandfather and one brother were executed by the Ottoman authorities, he joined Sheikh Mahmud Barzani, who led a series of Kurdish uprisings against the British Mandate of Iraq, created after World War I.
"Our fathers and grandfathers have fought until we get to this day. My grandfather died in a fight in 1961 with (Massoud) Barzani," said Nazad, a peshmerga.
"Being a peshmerga, first of all, it means that they go before their souls, peshmerga. And it's an honour as I said to be a peshmerga, to have that name on me," aid Yasser Barzani, "I don't think everybody can get this name, so I'm really proud that I can do something like this."
Yasser also shares his pictures from the war and thoughts about life on the social media platform Instagram, where he has close to half a million followers. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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