Ibrahim al-Jaafari

Ibrahim al-Jaafari (born 1947, Karbala, Iraq) was the vice president (2004–05) and prime minister (2005–06) of Iraq.

Jaafari was an avid reader and poet from his youth, and he became an advocate of conservative religious views. In the mid-1960s he joined the Islamic Daʿwah Party, then an underground movement. After completing high school, he left Karbala to study medicine in the northern city of Mosul, where he obtained a medical degree in 1974. While in Mosul, he was given responsibility for the recruitment of Daʿwah members in Iraqi universities.

After returning to Karbala, Jaafari practiced medicine and remained active in the Daʿwah movement. By 1979 the Daʿwah had become the major Shiʿi underground party in Iraq and posed a serious threat to the regime of Pres. Saddam Hussein. Saddam ruthlessly cracked down on the group, making membership in the party punishable by death. In 1980 Jaafari was forced to flee to Iran, where he continued his activities against Saddam’s regime. Fearing retaliation against his family in Iraq, he changed his name from Ashayqir to Jaafari. He moved to London in 1989, where he met leaders of the Iraqi opposition living in exile.

Following the overthrow of Saddam’s regime by U.S.-led coalition forces in April 2003 (see Iraq War), Jaafari returned to Iraq after more than 20 years abroad. In July he was appointed as a member of Iraq’s first Governing Council. In June 2004, when sovereignty was handed over to the Iraqis, he became a vice president in the government led by Ayad Allawi. General elections held in January 2005 brought to power the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), a coalition of mainly Shiʿi organizations, in which the Daʿwah Party was a major player. After weeks of discussion and bargaining among the leading parties of the alliance, Jaafari was selected to be interim prime minister on April 7. He officially assumed the most powerful post in the Iraqi transitional government on May 3, 2005.

As prime minister, Jaafari expressed support for U.S. forces remaining in Iraq as long as necessary, and he promised to continue fighting the insurgency. He also made several trips abroad to strengthen relations with Iraq’s neighbours, including Iran, a country with which he maintained close relations. During negotiations over the drafting of Iraq’s basic law, Jaafari leaned in the direction of including conservative Islamic influences in the constitution. He indicated that the constitution “should reflect, like a clear mirror, the Iraqi fabric” and that he wanted a government in which “the majority doesn’t exclude the other but respects the other.”

During efforts to form a national unity government in 2006, Jaafari narrowly won the nomination of the UIA to be the country’s first full-term prime minister. Opponents criticized him as a divisive figure, however, and questioned both his neutrality and his ability to contain secular violence. In spite of the vocal opposition to his candidacy—including from some within the UIA—Jaafari insisted that he would not resign, a move that antagonized both opponents and allies and resulted in a months-long political crisis. Jaafari eventually abandoned his claim to the position, and the UIA nominated Nouri al-Maliki, a compromise candidate, for the post shortly thereafter.

Jaafari subsequently founded his own group, the National Reform Movement, in the spring of 2008; in June he was expelled from the Daʿwah Party when the new group began to hold discussions with the opposition. Still, he managed to lead an alliance of predominantly Shiʿi parties, which included the Daʿwah Party, during the 2010 parliamentary election. From 2014 to 2018 he served as minister of foreign affairs under Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, a senior member of the Daʿwah Party.

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