Nuri Mahmoud

He was born to a Syrian Kurdish family in Qamishli in August 1977.^[1] He attended high school where he was politically active.^[1] Therefore, he was not permitted to study further in Syria following which he emigrated to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.^[1] There he worked for the Kurdish National Council (ENKS) between 2007 and 2011.^[1] Between 2012 and 2013, he served as a member of the executive committee of the Democratic Union Party (PYD).^[1]

In 2013 he was appointed to the position of an advisor in the process of establishing a legislative council and a judiciary by the civic council of Kobanî. Following he held several positions in the Kobanî Canton until 2015.^[1] From 2015 and 2017, Mahmoud served as the director of the Semalka border crossing between the Kurdistan Region in Iraq and Syria.^[1] In 2017 he was appointed as the speaker of the YPG and in 2020 also as a commander of the headquarters of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).^[1] As the spokesperson of the YPG and in support of a UN resolution, he stressed that the YPG would hold a ceasefire of 30 days during the Turkish invasion of Afrin in February 2018.^[2] In June 2020, he offered an apology to the ENKS for the deaths caused by the forces of the YPG.^[3] In 2022, he voiced concern over an eventual Turkish attack onto Northern Syria.^[4]

In March 2023, he visited the French Senate within a delegation of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) where met with its vice-president Pierre Laurent.^[5] Mahmoud was also honored by the French Senate for his service during the fight against the Islamic State.^[6][7]