254 Kuwait Barzani’s call for Kurdish independence, and in 1961 he renewed fighting with the Kurds From 1961 to 1963 and from 1974 to 1975, Mustafa Barzani led an armed struggle Later in the 1970s Barzani went into exile in the United States, where he died in 1979 In 1979 Masoud Barzani succeeded his father to lead the KDP With the help of thousands of armed fighters, the peshmargan, he gained control of major parts of northern Iraq After the First Gulf War the KDP emerged as one of the most significant Kurdish political organizations, operating with relative freedom to govern sections of northern Iraq while achieving the first enduring semiautonomous Kurdish state in history In the early 21st century Barzani continued to play a major role in Kurdish politics in Iraq, where he shared power with his Kurdish rival Jalal Talabani Talabani was a major Kurdish nationalist and the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which was established in 1975 Formed mainly by urban intellectuals and leftist thinkers, the PUK emerged as KDP’s main political competitor In the early 1990s he helped the Kurdish uprising against the Ba’athist state while working closely with the United States, the United Kingdom, and France to establish the no-fly zone over northern Iraq to protect the Kurds from bombing and chemical attacks by Saddam Hussein’s army After years of rivalry, the PUK joined forces with the KDP and other Kurdish parties to create the Democratic Patriotic Alliance of Kurdistan to represent the Kurds in the Iraqi National Assembly elections of 2005 and 2006 In post-Ba’athist Iraq, Talabani was named the president of Iraq on April 6, 2005, and again on April 22, 2006, by the Iraqi National Assembly Minaret towers in Kuwait City The tiny nation became the center of world attention in the early 1990s after Iraq invaded it See also Gulf War, Second (Iraq War) Further reading: McDowell, David Modern History of the Kurds London: I.B Tauris, 2004; McKiernan, Kevin The Kurds: A People in Search of Their Homeland London: St Martin’s Press, 2006; Yildiz, Kerim The Kurds in Iraq: The Past, Present and Future London: Pluto Press, 2004; Yildiz, Kerim The Kurds in Turkey: EU Accession and Human Rights London: Pluto Press, 2005 Babak Rahimi Kuwait Kuwait is one of the Gulf States, located at the head of the Persian Gulf, with Iraq to its north and east and Saudi Arabia to its south Iran is located directly across the Gulf waters The geography of Kuwait is dominated by mostly flat deserts interspersed with a few oases in Kuwait’s 6,880 square miles of territory Kuwait is a diminutive form of the word for fort The official language is Arabic From the 19th century onward the Sabah clan allied with the indigenous commercial elites, and Kuwait developed as a thriving mercantile community with an economy based on foreign trade Although never directly under Ottoman rule, the Al-Sabahs paid financial tributes to the empire and recognized the sultan’s power, but Ottoman threats to annex Kuwait pushed the Sabahs to ally with Britain An 1899 treaty gave Britain control over Kuwait’s foreign affair, and Kuwait became a British protectorate From that time forward, border issues continually plagued the country The British relinquished control in 1961