Herro Mustafa has been appointed Senior Advisor on the Middle East for Vice President Joseph Biden, under Biden's highly respected National Security Adviser Tony Blinken. Mustafa is the daughter of a Kurdish nationalist who fled Saddam Hussein's Iraq to find refuge in North Dakota. She grew up in the United States, and is the subject of a documentary, American Herro, about her efforts to relieve the suffering of the Kurdish people. She is a foreign service officer, and is fluent in Arabic. Kurdish, and Greek. Mustafa returned to Iraq as the Coalition Provisional Authority coordinator for Ninevah Province, including Mosul, under Paul Bremer, and worked closely with then-Maj. General David Petraeus. Subsequently, she served at the National Security Council as Iran desk officer under Elliot Abrams in the Bush White House, and then as a special assistant to Secretary of State Rice and Undersecretary Bill Burns. Earlier in her career, she served in Beirut as a consular official.