Word: jaafari
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...strong second in Iraq's national elections, winning 75 of the new Assembly's 275 seats. That gave the Kurds, who make up 17% of Iraq's population, enough clout to demand top jobs in the new government. While the victorious Shi'ites last week tapped Ibrahim al-Jaafari for Iraq's most powerful position of Prime Minister, Talabani, 72, has emerged as the most likely successor to Saddam as Iraq's President. And though the post is intended to be largely symbolic, Talabani plans to use the position of titular head of state to protect Kurdish interests. "I must...
...gets the top job, al-Jaafari, a physician by training, will have to display a surgeon's dexterity to hold together fractious Shi'ites, cool off restive Kurds and reach out to disaffected Sunni Arabs--all while figuring out how to accommodate a U.S. military presence that is widely resented but still indispensable to the country's security. It helps that al-Jaafari is acceptable to most of Iraq's ethnic, religious and political groups; opinion polls last year identified him as one of Iraq's most respected politicians. "He is not a divisive figure, and in Iraq today, that...
That said, al-Jaafari is a man with a past. He leads the Islamic Dawa Party, a deeply religious Shi'ite group that spearheaded a rebellion against Saddam Hussein's regime in the late 1970s. Dawa received backing from the Shi'ite regime in Iran. During the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s, Saddam made membership in the party punishable by death and brutally suppressed the movement. Like much of the Dawa leadership, al-Jaafari fled to Iran and then to Britain. The group's past activities are murky. Al-Jaafari was a member of Dawa's political wing when...
Since returning to Iraq after the U.S. invasion, al-Jaafari has worked to shore up his secularist credentials. "He may head a Shi'ite party, but he has never sounded like a Shi'ite politician," says Ammar Zain Alabideen, spokesman for the Iraqi Islamic Party, the leading Sunni political group. Dawa retains ties to the Iranian government, but al-Jaafari says that won't jaundice the way he views Washington. "The U.S. liberated Iraq from Saddam, and for that we will forever be grateful," he told TIME...
...biggest challenge facing al-Jaafari and the newly elected 275-member National Assembly will be proving they can run Iraq on their own. Al-Jaafari says he hopes to form a national-unity government, with a rainbow cabinet of all major parties, including Sunnis, most of whom boycotted the Jan. 30 election. "This is not a time to be excluding anybody," he says. Indeed, al-Jaafari will need all the help he can get. --By Aparisim Ghosh/Baghdad. With reporting by Timothy J. Burger/Washington