Untitled Document
(AP) Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Shiite politician in line to become Iraq's next prime
minister, spent more than two decades in exile, mostly in Iran, leading anti-Saddam
Hussein opposition forces following a bloody crackdown by the Iraqi dictator against
Shiites.
Al-Jaafari, one of the top leaders of the Islamic Dawa Party, fled to Iran
in 1980 and remained there until 1990, organizing cross-border attacks. He was
seen as the leader of a pro-Tehran faction of Dawa with close ties to Iran's
clerical government -- though he denies any such links.
The Dawa was Iraq's first Shiite political Islamic party, headed by one of
its most popular Shiite clerics, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Sadr, who
was executed by Saddam's regime in 1980.
Al-Jaafari, 58, fled in 1980 amid a fierce crackdown by Saddam's forces against
a bloody Dawa Party uprising that began in the late 1970s and was crushed in
1982. The group said it lost 77,000 members in its war against the toppled Iraqi
dictator.
From Iran, al-Jaafari is believed to have orchestrated a series of cross border
attacks against Iraqi forces while studying Shiite theology in the holy city
of Qom.
Along with the Supreme Council for the Islamic Republic in Iraq's Badr Brigades,
the Dawa party led a cross border struggle against Saddam's forces, particularly
during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
In the early 1980s, Dawa carried out several suicide bombings in Baghdad targeting
Saddam's regime, and there was speculation that al-Jaafari was behind an attempted
assassination of then Iraqi-allied Kuwait's emir. But he has denied involvement
in the attack.
During his exile, he changed his surname from al-Ushayqer to al-Jaafari, fearing
Saddam's intelligence services would hunt him down.
In 1990, al-Jaafari left Iran for England during a time when the Dawa Party
split into two camps -- one which backed closer ties with Iran and the other
opposing Iranian influence.
He returned to Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 that toppled Saddam's
regime and became a key member of the United Iraqi Alliance, a Shiite-led political
coalition that included the Dawa Party and the Supreme Council for the Islamic
Revolution in Iraq, the country's other main Shiite faction.
The coalition was endorsed by Iranian-born Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani,
Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric. Al-Jaafari's wife is a distant relative
of al-Sistani's.
From 2003 to 2004, al-Jaafari was a member of the U.S.-picked Iraqi Governing
Council, which was dissolved a few weeks before the U.S. occupation authority
handed over sovereignty to the interim government in June 2004. He was the first
of the council's nine rotating presidents.
Al-Jaafari told The Associated Press recently that Iraq will not become a battleground
for other countries to fight the United States.
"No country in the world will be permitted to turn Iraq into a front line
for confrontation with America or any others," he said.
Al-Jaafari was born in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, south of Baghdad, and
was educated at Mosul University as a medical doctor.
A wily politician known for playing his cards close to his chest, he told The
Associated Press in a recent interview that suspicion over his links with Iran
was a "widespread, mistaken belief."
"An Iraqi remains an Iraqi all his life, wherever he goes," he said.
