One of the great things about not being in school anymore is reading for pleasure. Now that I don’t have a paper due tomorrow, I can tick off books that have long languished on my reading list and consume articles in newspapers and magazines (online, mind you, I’m not buying these things) when I want. While I apologize to those still toiling away at their syllabi, to those getting their leisurely read on: keep livin’ the dream.
So in light of my newfound literary freedom, I’ve decided to offer a weekend installment of recommended reading. So sit back, relax, and let yourself go. It’s Sunday afternoon (and it’s not like you’re watching the pro bowl).

Barzani getting the pat down after setting off the metal detector. Eyyyyyy.
This weekend, courtesy of a reader of this blog, I offer you the transcript of Masoud Barzani’s visit to the Brookings Institution last Wednesday. Kak Masoud Barzani is President of the Kurdistan Regional Government, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, and general godfather figure of Iraqi Kurdistan. According to Brookings’ Middle East Policy Director Ken Pollack’s sycophantic description:
Masoud Barzani is one of those figures whose importance is hard to describe to people who don’t know anything about Iraq or about the Kurdistan region. I was thinking about it this morning. It occurred to me that in some ways the place that Masoud Barzani occupies in Iraqi politics and Middle Eastern politics is a little bit like the place that Paris occupies in France — all roads lead to him.
Jesus. You were thinking about that this morning? Right. I’m sure it was just before the shower and the shave…
But just think for a minute if that actually were true, and how sad an indictment that would for Iraqi politics. In a country tied with Sudan as one the top five most corrupt in the world, Masoud and his tribal fiefdom are the embodiment of Iraq’s most profound political flaws. Last year he used his political hegemony to force a dramatic overhaul in the Kurdish Constitution, which potentially extended his presidency eight years and substantially expanded his presidential powers at the expense of an increasingly impotent parliament. Oh, and we would be remiss in failing to mention his deliberate policy of antagonizing Baghdad over highly sensitive issues in an attempt to consolidate bargaining power. All roads lead to Masoud Barzani indeed.
Anyway, we’re full-on into election season and there was a lot of talk about it, so let’s see what was said.
Speaking in Kurdish and translated by Falah Mustafa Bakir, a KRG minister and the Head of the Office of Foreign Relations of the KRG, Barzani called for transparency and worried about terrorist attacks tainting Iraq’s second national election. At the end of his conversation with Mr. Pollack, Barzani stepped back and reflected on the currently perilous nature of Iraqi democracy:
In fact, issues related to Iraq as a whole — a commitment to the Constitution, participation in the power-sharing arrangements, the governance system in Iraq, the culture of self-imposition and culture of unilateral decisional ruling in the country.
After the first 16 pages of the transcript they open up the floor to Q&A, which I would also recommend. Particularly noteworthy is Barzani’s evasion on the question of the banning of 500-odd Iraqi politicians posed by Robert Dreyfuss of The Nation magazine. “We in the Kurdistan region of Iraq have overcome this issue and we have sold it,” said Barzani, “We have got rid of it because we don’t have the culture of retaliation and revenge in Kurdistan.”
I highly recommend this transcript not for any noteworthy insights, but simply as a great way to get to know one of Iraq’s elite power brokers. Iraq elections are a-comin’, and they are quickly becoming the only kind of March Madness I’ll get to enjoy since my poor east coast Huskies can’t stop losing. I mean, Providence, really? Come on!