Quick Facts
Biography
Qubad Talabani (born 21 July 1977) is an Iraqi Kurdish politician who has been the deputy prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government since 2005. Formerly serving as the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) representative in the United States, Qubad is the second son of Iraqi former President Jalal Talabani.
Early life
Qubad grew up in Surrey, United Kingdom with his maternal grandparents, Ibrahim Ahmed, a novelist, poet and a founder of the modern intellectual Kurdish movement and Galawejh Ahmed (also a novelist). After graduating from High School, Qubad took a keen interest in Engineering, obtained his Diploma in Motor Vehicle Engineering at Carshalton College, and later received a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering (majoring in Automotive Systems Engineering) at Kingston University in Greater London.
During the mid-nineties, Qubad worked on and off as a car-mechanic for a dealership that specialized in Lancia, Suzuki and Maserati vehicles.
Representative to the KRG
From 2001 - 2003, Qubad worked as a special assistant to Barham Salih, at that time the Representative of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (one of Iraq's leading Kurdish political parties) in Washington D.C., and later as the Deputy PUK Representative. In 2003, he returned to Kurdistan for one year and served as the PUK's Senior Foreign Relations officer to the coalition forces and the Coalition Provisional Authority. He also acted as a liaison officer between the PUK and U.S. military forces in Iraq. He was a leading negotiator in the drafting of the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL), the first Iraqi constitution since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
In April 2004, Qubad returned to the US, and was stationed as the Representative of the PUK and the Kurdistan Regional Government.
In 2006, with the unification of the two administrations in Kurdistan and following the forming of the Democratic Patriotic Alliance of Kurdistan and the establishment of the Kurdish National Assembly., Qubad was appointed as the first representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government, a position he has held until the present.
Personal life
He is the son of Jalal Talabani, the leader of Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and Hero Ibrahim Ahmed. Qubad lives in Erbil with his wife Sherri Kraham whom he married in great secrecy in Il Castello del Palagio in Italy in 2005. He is the younger brother of PUK political figure Bafel Talabani. He appears frequently on major television networks and in the press where he discusses Iraqi and Kurdistan issues.