Career
He joined the Iraqi Army in 2004 after the invasion. He quickly rose through the ranks of the military ladder, becoming the commanding officer of the Iraqi Special Operations Forces (ISOF), an elite special forces detachment trained by the United States Army's Special Forces and equipped with American weaponry. In this capacity, he has been directing Iraqi Special Forces in the 2014 Anbar campaign
He was born in 1966 in the Iraqi province of Dohuk, an area primarily inhabited by Kurds.
In his late teens, he joined the Peshmerga, a Kurdish resistance movement that opposed the Ba'athist government.
Prior to joining the Iraqi Army in 2004, he was still apart of the Peshmerga.