Haider al-Abadi: from exile in UK to Iraq’s new PM

Iraq’s new prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, is a low-key figure who spent much of his life living in exile in Britain, before returning to Iraq after the 2003 invasion. A Shia Muslim, he has previously been touted as a replacement for incumbent Nouri al-Maliki.

Iraq’s president has appointed Abadi as PM-designate and tasked him with forming a new “inclusive” government.

Born in Baghdad in 1952, Abadi joined the Islamic Dawa party – Maliki’s political bloc – at the age of 15. His father was a prominent Baghdad doctor and inspector general at the Iraqi health ministry. After the Baathists seized power, Abadi and his family came into conflict with the Saddam Hussein regime.

Abadi studied electrical engineering in Baghdad. In the late 1970s, he moved to Britain to do a doctorate at Manchester University. He became an outspoken Saddam critic and Dawa activist. In 1982, the Baath regime executed two of his brothers and imprisoned a third for 10 years. It cancelled his Iraqi passport in 1983.

Abadi’s biography, posted yesterday on his Facebook page, says Abadi worked in Britain as an “expert in the technology of rapid transit”. In London, he ran his own small design and technology firm and in 1997, he received a grant from Britain’s trade and industry ministry for technology innovation.

He returned to Iraq in 2003, where he became a key adviser to Maliki in Iraq’s first post-invasion elected government. He held a series of senior posts, including minister of communications and, most recently, deputy speaker of parliament.

Following months of political deadlock, the moderate Dawa faction yesterday supported his nomination as prime minister. Maliki’s refusal to give up the PM’s job raises the prospect of Shia versus Shia conflict, in Baghdad and beyond.

Abadi’s urgent political task will be to stop Iraq’s rapid disintegration and to halt the rise of Islamic State (Isis), which has seized vast swaths of northern and western Iraq.

A moderate, Abadi is likely to enjoy support from Kurds and Sunnis, who have accused Maliki of a sectarian agenda and of excluding them from power. – (Guardian service)