Ala Talabani

Ala Talabani is a Kurdish politician and former head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan bloc in the Iraqi parliament. She is a three-time member of the Council of Representatives of Iraq.

Early life and education Ala Tahseen Talabani was born in the Kurdish Iraqi city of Kirkuk. She graduated from Palestine high school for girls.

Career In 1986, Talabani became a member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). She was kept in custody for two days and lost her teaching and engineering jobs for being an ethnic Kurd and refusing to join the Ba'ath Party. She left Iraq for the UK in 1991 following Saddam Hussein's anti-Kurdish policies. Here she was a member of a delegation which met the British prime minister Tony Blair.

After the fall of Saddam Hussein, she returned to Iraq. With Zainab Al-Suwaij, Talabani established a group called the Kurdish Women's Union (later known as Women for a Free Iraq) and is also a co-founder of the High Council for Iraqi Women.

Talabani opposed the Resolution 137 of the Iraqi Interim Governing Council, which if passed would have eroded the rights of women in Iraq. She is the leader of PUK in the Council of Representatives.