At least 50,000 displaced Yazidis are still trying to find shelter inside the Kurdish north after abandoning their homes and belongings as they escaped from Islamic extremists who ousted them from their ancient lands as they advanced towards Erbil.
The US and France have rushed military aid to Erbil to help Kurdish Peshmurga forces take on ISIS, whose forces got as close as 50km from the city limits earlier in the week, before being pushed back by US air strikes.
He ordered air strikes, ostensibly to protect American officials working in Baghdad and Erbil, in northern Iraq.
The jihadists, rolling southward towards Baghdad, were soon up against a border with Kurdistan that stretches for more than 1,000km (621 miles), coming almost within artillery range of Erbil.
In Iraq, they stepped in to take areas that the federal security forces abandoned and battled to protect Erbil, the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq.
For ten years the regional government in Erbil has argued bitterly with the authorities in Baghdad over how to share the revenue from oil and what laws should apply to old wells and new ones.
Last June the jihadists of Islamic State (IS) raced across the Syrian desert and captured Mosul, Iraq's second city, barely an hour's drive from the Kurds' capital, Erbil.
Only speedy action by the American-led coalition, which bombed IS forces relentlessly, kept the jihadists at bay.Even so, IS is still a menace, recently surprising the Peshmerga with a series of attacks along the front line near Gwer (half an hour's drive from Erbil) and Makhmour.
They built the snazzy new airport in Erbil, where Americans and Europeans, among others, can enter without a visa.
These days he has a political vision and a business nose to match.As a budding property magnate, he is the driving force behind Naz City, a burgeoning housing development on the edge of Erbil, the Iraqi Kurds' capital, with some 700 Western-style flats designed to "bring something beautiful to Kurdistan".
Never before has the government in Baghdad needed the co-operation of the Kurds in Erbil so badly.
