6th President of Iraq. He served as the 6th President of Iraq from April 7, 2005 to July 24, 2014. He also served as the President of the Governing Council of Iraq from November 1, 2003 to November 30, 2003. He got involved in politics at an early age when he joined the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) at age fourteen and four years later, was elected to the party's central committee. In 1956 he founded the Kurdistan Student Union and later became its secretary-general. After earning a law degree from Baghdad University in 1959, he served as the commander of a tank unit in the Iraqi army. When the Kurds revolted against the government of ʿAbd al-Karīm Qāsim in 1961, he became a part of the resistance, leading a successful campaign to force the Iraqi army out of the district of Sharbazher. He subsequently undertook several diplomatic missions in Europe and the Middle East on behalf of the Kurdish leadership. In 1975 he, along with other Kurdish activists and intellectuals, broke with the KDP and formed a new political party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he helped to organize Kurdish resistance to the regime of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. He was forced to flee Iraq after the Iraqi government's military campaign against the Kurds. After the Persian Gulf War in 1991, he returned to Iraq to help lead a Kurdish uprising against Saddam, but it failed after U.S.-led forces refused to intervene to support the rebels. He later worked with the United States and other countries to establish a "safe haven" for the Kurds in the far north and northeast of the country. After Saddam Hussein was overthrown in 2003, he became President of the Iraqi Governing Council, which developed Iraq's interim constitution. He was elected the interim president of Iraq by the National Assembly in 2005 and a year later, was elected to a new four year term. He was reelected in 2010 and served until 2014 when he stepped down. During his tenure as president, he worked to reduce sectarian violence and corruption within Iraq and to improve relations with Turkey, which had accused Iraq of allowing Kurdish rebels within Turkey to operate from bases in Iraqi Kurdistan. In 2012 he suffered a stroke and mostly spent the last two years of his term in Germany, receiving medical treatment.