Peter Woodard Galbraith (born December 31, 1950) is an American author, academic, commentator, politician, policy advisor, and former diplomat.

[nb 1] As an author and commentator, Galbraith, a longtime advocate of the Kurdish people, has argued for Iraq to be "partitioned" into three parts, allowing for Kurdistan independence.

[5] Beginning in 2003, Galbraith acted as an advisor to the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq, helping to influence the drafting process of the Iraqi Constitution in 2005; he was later criticized for failing to fully disclose financial interests relevant to this role.

[20][21] During the 1991 Iraqi Kurdish uprising, Galbraith visited rebel-held northern Iraq, and narrowly escaped capture by Saddam Hussein's forces as they retook the region.

[23] In 1992, the Kurdish parties gave Galbraith 14 tons captured Iraqi secret police documents from northern Iraq detailing the atrocities committed against the Kurds.

He was involved in airlifting the documents to the United States where he deposited them in the files of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the National Archives.

[1] Galbraith's work in Iraqi Kurdistan was discussed in Samantha Power's Pulitzer-Prize-winning book A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.

[27] Galbraith and UN mediator Thorvald Stoltenberg went on to lead negotiations which led to the Erdut Agreement that ended the war by providing for peaceful reintegration of Serb-held Eastern Slavonia into Croatia.

[citation needed] Galbraith helped devise and implement the strategy that ended the 1993-94 Muslim-Croat war, and participated in the negotiation of the Washington Agreement that established the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

[29][30][31] During the war years, Ambassador Galbraith was responsible for U.S. humanitarian programs in the former Yugoslavia and for U.S. relations with the UNPROFOR peacekeeping mission headquartered in Zagreb.

Galbraith diplomatic interventions facilitated the flow of humanitarian assistance to Bosnia and secured the 1993 release of more than 5,000 prisoners of war held in inhumane conditions by Bosnian Croat forces.

[32] Beginning in 1994, on instructions from then-President Clinton, Galbraith tacitly allowed weapons to be shipped into Bosnia through Croatia in violation of a UN arms embargo; this policy generated controversy when made public, with a Republican-led House of Representatives committee referring criminal charges against Galbraith, National Security Advisor Anthony Lake and other Clinton Administration officials to the Justice Department.

[35][42] From January 2000 to August 2001, Galbraith was Director for Political, Constitutional and Electoral Affairs for the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET).

[citation needed] During his tenure, Galbraith conducted successful negotiations with Australia to produce a new treaty governing the exploitation of oil and gas in the Timor Sea.

[citation needed] As a Cabinet member, he wrote the regulations that created East Timor's National Parks and Endangered Species Law.

[48][better source needed] Galbraith favors the independence – legal or de facto – of the northern region of Iraq known as Iraqi Kurdistan.

"[7] Reidar Visser, a research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, said it was "quite scandalous" that Galbraith had been receiving payment from an oil company while participating in high-level negotiation sessions.

[52] Galbraith responded that, because he had left the U.S. government at the time of the drafting of the constitution, he was acting as a private citizen, in a merely advisory role (not actually negotiating) with no ability to force any particular provision through.

[62] Galbraith explained that the internal discussions concerned avoiding a constitutional crisis, that any solution would have required the consent of both Karzai and the opposition, and the UN's involvement was consistent with its good offices role.

He noted that Kai Eide, his chief accuser, proposed replacing Karzai with an interim government a month later in a meeting with foreign diplomats in Kabul.

[63] On March 3, 2021, Peter Galbraith successfully negotiated the reunion of children born to young Yazidi women who had been kidnapped by the Islamic State in 2014 and used as sex slaves (Sabbaya).

[64] Galbraith organized the July 17, 2021 rescue of Amina Bradley, an American orphan who had been hidden by radical ISIS women in Roj Camp in Northeast Syria.

"[69] Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks called Galbraith the "smartest and most devastating" critic of President George W. Bush's policies in Iraq.

"[71] Meanwhile, the New York Review of Books wrote that "[w]e regret that we were not informed of Mr. Galbraith's financial involvements in business concerning Kurdish oil.

"[72] In a response, Galbraith defended his involvement in the constitutional process as an informal advisor, but apologized for failing to better disclose his interests as a commentator.

[83] According to the Vermont Senate Journal, Galbraith proposed amendments aiming to raise the minimum wage to $12 per hour,[84] to ban corporate campaign contributions, to prevent wealthy persons from evading campaign finance limits, to delete a $5 million appropriation for IBM, to extend Vermont's bottle bill to non-carbonated beverages, to create a subsidized public option on the Vermont Health Connect exchange, to protect large tracts of roadless forest from development, and to return $21 million to ratepayers as a condition of the GMP-CVPS merger.

[9] Galbraith ran on an "unapologetically progressive" and "unconventional" platform which included raising the minimum wage, eventually to $15 per hour; establishing universal health care or universal primary health care; and banning campaign contributions from corporations; putting a moratorium on new industrial wind turbines; and eliminating "special interest" tax breaks.

[16][89] Galbraith was a good friend of the twice-elected Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto, dating back to their time together as students at Harvard and Oxford Universities; he was instrumental in securing Bhutto's release from prison in Pakistan for a medical treatment abroad during the military dictatorship of General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq.