And even to this day, although the two parties now rule the state together, those geographic delineations exist with al-Barzani and his opposite number, Talabani, holding most authority in areas they traditionally oversaw.
In Talabani’s territory, around the city of Sulaymaniyah, his wife, businesswoman Hero Ibrahim Ahmad, heads the PUK party’s key branch there. Other Talabani relatives – sons, brothers, uncles, spouses – head other important commercial, administrative and security departments.
And in what many saw as a tit-for-tat response to the appointment of Masrour al-Barzani to the newly formed Security Council, the Iraqi Kurdish cabinet undertook to form another new government authority, with the interesting name of the Department of Coordination and Follow Up.
The department as to be related to the office of the Iraqi Kurdish Prime Minister and its tasks would apparently involve coordinating the work of various different government institutions. Additionally the department was to be headed by Talabani’s son, Qubad, who has been working in Washington as Iraqi Kurdistan’s representative to the USA up until recently.
Local writer and political observer, Rayan Mohammed, believes that giving Qubad the post is a response to the job al-Barzani’s son, Masrour, just got. And Mohammed thinks that in this way Talabani is also grooming his son for success at the top of the political food chain.
By appointing their offspring to such prominent positions though, Mohammed believes that the two ruling families of Iraqi Kurdistan are damaging the aspirations of the local electorate for a truly democratic state of their own.
“What Talabani and al-Barzani are doing just confirms that any high ranking positions in Iraqi Kurdistan are now being handed out on a kinship basis, rather than on the basis of a person’s competence and capacity,” he argues. “Distributing senior government positions like this leads to a closed political system; it smacks of some kind of monarchy.”
Mohammed also argues that Talabani and al-Barzani are working with an outdated system, imported from neighbouring Arab countries, that is no longer acceptable to most voters in the region.
Referencing the Arab Spring protests that saw so many non-democratic leaders in the Middle East toppled, Mohammed concludes: “the experiences of these Arab countries prove that there is no longer a place for this kind of inherited authority. And when the people’s anger grows, the father and son figureheads are removed.
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