Haider al-Abadi

Haider al-Abadi (born 25 April 1952 in Baghdad, Iraq) is an Iraqi Twelver Shia politician and engineer who served as Prime Minister of Iraq from September 2014 to October 2018. Born into a middle-class Baghdad family, he studied electrical engineering at the University of Technology in Baghdad and later earned a doctorate from the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, where he lived in exile during Saddam Hussein's rule.

He joined the Islamic Dawa Party as a student and was forced to flee Iraq in the 1970s after the party was banned by Saddam. He lived in the United Kingdom for over two decades, working as an engineer while remaining active in Iraqi opposition politics. He returned to Iraq following the 2003 US-led invasion and won a seat in the Council of Representatives, serving in various senior positions including as head of the parliamentary Finance Committee.

He was nominated as Prime Minister in August 2014 during a political crisis following the ISIS takeover of Mosul and other major Iraqi cities. He succeeded Nouri al-Maliki, whose sectarian governance was widely blamed for fueling the conditions that allowed ISIS to rise. As Prime Minister, he oversaw the military campaign that recaptured territory from ISIS, including the liberation of Tikrit (2015), Fallujah (2016), Mosul (2017), and the declaration of victory over ISIS in December 2017. He was credited with rebuilding Iraq's military, maintaining national unity, and avoiding sectarian retribution. He lost the 2018 elections to the Sadrist-led coalition and the Iran-backed Fatah alliance, and subsequently formed the Victory Alliance political coalition.