Dara Tawfiq

Tawfiq was born in 1932 in Sulaymaniyah. He studied civil engineering at Baghdad University, but was expelled for political activities and subsequently continued studies in Britain.^[2]

In 1956, Tawfiq helped found the Kurdish Students' Society in Europe (KSSE) in Wiesbaden.^[3]

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Tawfiq worked in Budapest as a staff member at the secretariat of the World Federation of Democratic Youth.^[2][4] At the 8th Congress of the KDP in 1970 he was elected to the party's central committee.^[2]

In the early 1970s Tawfiq was the editor of the KDP's Arabic-language newspaper Al-Taakhi ("Brotherhood"), which earned praise as Iraq's only independent newspaper at that time.^[5]

In February 1972, Tawfiq was selected to join a committee tasked with negotiations between the KDP and the Ba'ath Party on autonomy for the Kurds in Iraq following the peace agreement of 1970.^[6] During the early to mid-1970s, Tawfiq was associated with the moderate faction of the KDP; those who accepted the autonomy law proposed by the Iraqi government and who sought Kurdish cultural and economic autonomy within the national framework of that time.^{[citation needed]}

Following the defeat and exile of the KDP in the Second Iraqi–Kurdish War, Tawfiq surrendered to the authorities and was given a position within the Iraqi government,^[7] becoming director-general of the State Enterprise for River Transport by 1978.^[8]

Tawfiq was opposed to the Iran-Iraq war, which started in 1980.^[1] He was arrested by Iraqi security forces in November 1981 and was never seen again; he is presumed to have been executed.^[1][7][9]