Mustafa attended the Royal King Faisal school in Sulaymaniyah and was also taught foreign languages by private tutors at an early age.

[11] During the late 1970s through the early '90s, Mustafa was the commander in chief of Peshmerga forces, conducting a guerrilla war against the Iraqi Ba'athist army and government.

In 1988, Mustafa, with Talabani and the leadership of PUK, decided to initiate a tactical retreat to the Iranian border in the hope that Saddam would end the Anfal Campaign.

Over the course of the next three years, Mustafa oversaw the reorganisation of the Peshmerga Forces whilst creating sleeper cells within the major Iraqi Kurdish cities of As-Sulaymaniyah, Arbil, Mosul and Kirkuk.

During this period, Mustafa made plans for a popular uprising,[citation needed] which would be initiated by the sleeper cells, and supported by the newly organised Peshmerga battalions which were placed along the Iraqi/Iranian border.

[13] In 2011 Worker-communist Party of Kurdistan filed a lawsuit against Nawshirwan Mustafa and four other PUK senior members at that time as the responsible for the attacks.

In an interview with the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat on 31 May 2003, he stated Iraq and Kurdistan need to "enact news laws that live up to the spirit of the age and are in line with the principles of human rights and civil society."

The company's newspaper, Rozhnama, heavily criticized Jalal Talabani for deciding in March 2008 to sack party members from the PUK for speaking out against politicians in the press.

Mustafa challenged not only Talabanis but also Barzanis, by describing them as outmoded tribal leaders[17] and that they run the Kurdistan Region along the same dictatorial lines of an ex-Soviet republic and is, in effect, a one-party state in control of every aspect of life.

[24] An Erbil court under KDP Barzani instruction issued an arrest warrant for the General Coordinator of Gorran (Change Movement) Nawshirwan Mustafa.

Mustafa's legacy has been tainted by his two sons Nma and Chia who have been embroiled in multiple corruption scandals and are held largely responsible for Gorran's demise by former and current members.