Nouri al-Maliki
Prime Minister of Iraq
Incumbent
Assumed office
20 May 2006
President : Jalal Talabani
Deputy : Rafi al-Issawi
Preceded by : Ibrahim al-Jaafari
Born : 20 June 1950 (age 59)
Babil, Iraq
Political party: United Iraqi Alliance-State of Law-Islamic Dawa Party Alma mater
Usul al-Din College
Religion : Islam
Nouri Kamil Mohammed Hasan al-Maliki , transliterated Nūrī Kamil al-Maliki; born June 20, 1950), also known as Jawad al-Maliki or Abu Esraa, is the Prime Minister of Iraq and the secretary-general of the Islamic Dawa Party. Al-Maliki and his government also succeeded the Iraqi Transitional Government. His 37-member Cabinet was approved by the National Assembly and sworn in on May 20, 2006.
He is married to Fareeha Khalil, and has four daughters and two sons. He started in politics as a Shia dissident under Saddam Hussein’s regime in the 1970s and rose to prominence after he fled a death sentence into exile more than 20 years ago. During his time abroad he became a senior leader of Dawa, coordinated the activities of anti-Saddam guerillas and built relationships with Iranian and Syrian officials whose help he sought in overthrowing Hussein.
Al-Maliki’s constitutional mandate will last until 2010. On April 26, 2006, al-Maliki stopped using the pseudonym Jawad.[1] However the pseudo- or code name “Abu Esraa” (father of Esraa - his eldest daughter) is still heard on Iraqi satellite media every now and then, because it is very common in Arabic culture (and in Iraqi culture in particular) to call someone with his eldest son/daughter’s name especially by his close friends and followers.
Early life
In 1950 Nouri Kamel al-Maliki was born in Abu Gharaq, a central Iraqi town lying between Karbala and Al Hillah. He attended school in Al Hindiyah (Hindiya). Al-Maliki received a bachelor’s degree at Usul al-Din College in Baghdad, and a master’s degree in Arabic literature from Baghdad University.[2] Al-Maliki lived for a time in Al Hillah, where he worked in the education department. He joined the Islamic Dawa Party in the late 1960s while studying at university.
Al-Maliki’s grandfather, Muhammad Hasan Abi al-Mahasin, was a poet and cleric who served as Iraq’s Minister of Education under King Faisal I.[3]
Exile and return to Iraq
In 1979 al-Malki fled Iraq after hearing the government of Saddam Hussein planned to execute him. He was sentenced to death in absentia in 1980. According to a brief biography on the Islamic Dawa Party’s website, he left Iraq via Jordan in October 1979 and soon moved to Syria, adopting the pseudonym “Jawad.” He left Syria for Iran in 1982, where he lived until 1990, mostly in Tehran, before returning to Damascus where he remained until the 2003 US invasion toppled Hussein.[4] In Syria he worked as a political officer for Dawa, developing close ties with Hezbollah and particularly with Iran, supporting that country’s effort to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime.[5] From Syria, he also directed the efforts of Dawa guerillas to topple Hussein throughout the 1990s.[6]
While in Damascus he edited the party newspaper Al-Mawqif and rose to head the party’s Damascus branch. In 1990 he joined the Joint Action Committee and served as one of its rotating chairman. The committee was a Damascus-based opposition coalition for a number of Hussein’s opponents.[4] The efforts of the now-defunct Joint Action Committee helped lead to the founding of the Iraqi National Congress in 1991, a group of Iraqi exiles dedicated to ousting Hussein that came to rely heavily on United States funding.[7] The Dawa Party participated in the congress between 1992 and 1995, withdrawing because of disagreements with Kurdish parties over how Iraq should be governed after Hussein’s eventual ouster.[8]
Returning home after Saddam’s fall, he became the deputy leader of the Supreme National Debaathification Commission of the Iraqi Interim Government, formed to purge former Baath Party officials from the military and government.
Al-Maliki was elected to the transitional National Assembly in January 2005. He was considered a tough negotiator in drawn-out deliberations over the new constitution, and was the senior Shi’ite member of the committee that drafted the new constitution that was passed in October 2005.
