Prominent Kurdish politician Rowsch Shaways dies at 74

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – A prominent Kurdish political figure and key player in the history of the Kurdistan Regional Government has died at the age of 74. 

The family of Rowsch Shaways announced his death on Monday, saying the politician had died at a hospital in the Kurdistan Region’s capital Erbil without specifying the illness that caused it.

Shaways was a well-known political figure across Iraq and the Kurdistan Region, holding several top military and political posts in both the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) as well as its federal counterpart. 

He was the prime minister of the KRG during the 1990s. In Baghdad, he held the post of deputy prime minister under three Iraqi premiers: Ibrahim Jaffari (2005-2006), Nouri al-Maliki (2006-2014), and Haider al-Abbadi (2014-2018). He had been the vice president of the country after the toppling of former dictator Saddam Hussein. 

Born in Sulaimani in 1947, Shaways earned a PhD in engineering in Germany before joining the Kurdish armed struggle against successive Iraqi regimes. 

He came from a family with a strong political background; his father Nouri Shaways was instrumental in the Kurdish resistance movement as well as the KDP. 

Shaways was the Speaker of the Kurdistan Parliament from 1999 to 2004. 

Following the announcement of his death, both Kurdish and Iraqi political parties extended condolences to Shaways’s family. 

“Rowch Nouri Shaways was a seasoned struggler and politician,” the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) wrote in a statement on Monday. The Iraqi Parliament’s Speaker Mohammad Halbousi and his deputy likewise expressed their sadness over the death of the Kurdish politician. 

Editing by Joanne Stocker-Kelly