Nov. 10--His dad is the president of Iraq. And if his Kurdish homeland in northern Iraq were a country, 30-year-old Qubad Talabani would be its ambassador.

Instead Talabani, who'll visit Anchorage on Friday to address an Alaska World Affairs Council luncheon about his nation's future, carries the title of "representative to the United States" for the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq.

And Talabani is hoping that this title, along with Kurdistan's close diplomatic ties to America, will continue under President-Elect Obama as it has under President Bush.

A year and a half ago, in an interview with Esquire magazine, Talabani worried out loud that a precipitous withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq would have catastrophic consequences for his people.

And now?

"I still feel that way," Talabani said Friday, speaking by telephone from his office in Washington, D.C. "But there are withdrawals, and then there are withdrawals.

"I don't think anyone is talking about such a (quick) withdrawal. ... They want to see a responsible, fair and safe withdrawal. ... I'm pretty sure that the incoming administration will listen to the commanders on the ground."

Probably no one suffered more under the brutal Bathist regime of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein than the Kurds. Through a series of genocidal attacks in the late 1980s, the people of Kurdistan saw hundreds of their villages razed and more than 50,000 civilians killed. Accordingly, no one probably welcomed the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and Hussein's subsequent capture as much as the Kurds.

Including Talabani.

Since the invasion, his Kurdish homeland in the north has quietly recovered while the violence in central and southern Iraq has garnered all the headlines. "It is the safest part of the country," Talabani said. "It is the 'other Iraq.' "

There are about 4 million Kurds in Kurdistan, an area roughly a sixth the size of Oregon, which has the same number of people. They speak Kurdish, an Iranian language, and never fully embraced the post-World War I "solution" by Britain that cobbled them together with the Shia and Sunni Arabs in a Republic of Iraq.

Nearly 50 years ago, Talabani's father -- Jalal Talabani -- served as one of Kurdistan's earliest freedom fighters. In 1975 he founded the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or the PUK, and began leading an armed resistance that festered inside Iraq for about a decade until he was forced to flee to Syria.

Qubad Talabani grew up in England. He attended college at Kingston University near London and graduated with a degree in automotive engineering.