How Iraq's first free leaders bore a London legacy 'like rings on a tree'

Twenty years ago, the US handed sovereignty back to Baghdad and figures who lived in the UK's capital took control

Ibrahim Al Jaafari, left, and Ayad Allawi in Baghdad in 2004, after returning from exile in London. Getty Images

Related: Former prime minister issues bleak warning about Iraq's future

In the suburbs of north London sits a house with a pleasant if nondescript exterior that belies the role its owner played in shaping Iraq.

Haider Al Abadi, one of the first batch of Iraqi ministers after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's Baathist rule, and who a decade later became prime minister, made his home here while in exile.

Neighbours in the adjoining property in the Wembley area of north London, where the arch of the famous football stadium looms in the distance, recall Mr Al Abadi fondly.

“He’s very nice, an absolute gentleman, and we used to see him from time to time, but not since he became prime minister,” a neighbour tells The National.

Mr Al Abadi was a key player in Baghdad by the time the interim government was formed to take over from the Coalition Provisional Authority 20 years ago today. It involved an Iraqi prime minister taking the reins from US authorities for the first time in the post-Saddam era.

For Mr Al Abadi, it might have been bitter-sweet, as he lost the communications minister role he had held since his return from exile. Alongside a clutch of familiar faces who lived for years in disparate parts of west and south London, he was to play a key role in shaping post-invasion Iraq, including a stint as prime minister from 2014 to 2018.

The Iraqis went on to swap lives in the leafy suburbs of the UK’s capital for the cauldron of politics in their homeland.

The interim government was led by Ayad Allawi, a neurologist and businessman who also had a home in London, whose medical training was completed in the city where he worked in a hospital.

As well as Mr Al Abadi and Mr Allawi, key figures in the government included Ibrahim Al Jaafari, who also went on to become prime minister, Mowaffak Al Rubaie, current President Abdul Latif Rashid, and Thamer Al Ghadban, interim oil minister, all with strong links to London.

Key players

Toby Dodge, professor of international relations at the London School of Economics, told The National that the UK capital played an important role in shaping the government’s disposition to the West.

By November 2003, the US was forming plans to cut its losses and hand over power to local figures, he explained. By the following summer, a plan was in place to wrap up the US-controlled CPA and its associate, the Iraqi Governing Council.

Mr Al Abadi served as communications minister immediately after the invasion, when mobile phone networks were established.

“The interim government was an attempt to kind of square the circle, get out as quickly as possible, but still leave the new government in the hands of allies,” said Prof Dodge.

“So the interim government was the last big pro-western government, which is because it had a much larger makeup of formerly London-based politicians.”

The seeds of an Iraqi exile community were sown when monarchists first began arriving in numbers after the 1958 coup that overthrew the British-backed king, said Oula Kadhum, an expert on the Iraqi diaspora from the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies.

The UK’s colonial links to Iraq, its relative geographical proximity and the fact many Iraqis had been educated in the UK, often on scholarships, made it a natural destination.

After the 1963 Baathist coup there was more migration of the middle classes, including professionals, such as engineers and doctors, as well as artists and intellectuals, said Ms Kadhum.

Communists and supporters of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, who were persecuted by the Baathists, also made their way to London.

“This created a thriving cultural and social scene in London, which then became a melting pot for these significant social and cultural activities, spawning numerous Arab publishing houses and newspapers,” Ms Kadhum told The National.

“In a pre-internet era, these newspapers became a vital part of Iraqi diasporic life and transnational connection to the homeland.”

One big wave of migration came after 1979 when members of the opposition left Iraq in the wake of Saddam consolidating his grip on the country, explains another Iraq expert, Maria Luisa Fantappie. The arrival of activists and dissidents continued through the 1980s and the early 1990s.

Prominent former Baathists and former officials, who became dissidents and defected or escaped abroad, were also to be found in the UK capital, including Mr Allawi and Salah Al Ali, who was Iraqi minister of culture and information from 1968 to 1970.

“In a nutshell, London in the '90s really is the hub of where all the different strands of the Iraqi opposition meet,” said Ms Fantappie, who leads the Mediterranean, Middle East and Africa programme at Italy's Institute for International Affairs.

“There were people from different backgrounds – not only different communal backgrounds, but also different opposition backgrounds.”

Home from home

The Iraqi diaspora had existed in the British capital since the royal era which led the country to independence. It was a centre of opposition to the Saddam regime, allowing for an independence of mind that made it an easier place from where it could organise.

The different opposition groups came together for a conference in December 2002 to discuss the future of Iraq, though the show of unity masked deep divisions.

Both Mr Al Abaadi and Mr Al Jaafari, who became prime minister in 2005, were members of the Islamic Dawa Party, which had grassroots support in Iraq and leaders drawn from an educated and professional middle class.

Thousands of its members were jailed or killed because of their opposition to the regime.

Mr Al Jaafari, who completed his medical training at Mosul University, moved to Iran in 1980 and then in 1989 to London, where he became Dawa’s spokesman. While in the UK capital he worked as a family doctor in Wembley.

Mr Al Rubaie, also a Dawa member, was a surgeon and neurologist for 24 years. He also set up a successful business providing locums in west London.

Mr Al Rubaie was tortured in Iraq and fled in 1979. He became national security adviser in the interim government and witnessed the execution of Saddam.

Also prominent in the early years was Hazem Al Shaalan, who was defence minister. He had a home in the same area of London and, according to a BBC report, owned commercial properties in Marble Arch.

He was later embroiled in a corruption scandal that saw him sentenced to two jail terms. He fled the country to avoid prison.

In Wimbledon, south London, Mr Allawi was involved in a different kind of exile politics.

While his family were Shiite, they were secular and Mr Allawi was active in the Baath party until he fell out with the leadership in 1971 and moved to London, where he completed his medical training.

He survived an assassination attempt in 1978, believed to have been ordered by Saddam, when he was attacked in his bedroom with an axe, nearly severing his right leg and inflicting a deep wound in his chest.

After a year in hospital, he began to organise a network of opponents to Saddam, travelling extensively in the Middle East to hold meetings with other exiles and cultivating links with rebel army officers still in Iraq.

Mr Allawi set up the Iraqi National Accord, an exiled opposition group consisting mainly of military and security defectors.

Not too far away but a little further out, where London meets the county of Surrey, Mr Rashid had established a home and business.

He arrived in the UK in 1962 to study for an engineering degree at the University of Liverpool and then a doctorate at the University of Manchester in 1976.

The veteran Kurdish politician became an active member of the PUK in the mid-1970s, and eventually its spokesman in the UK.

Mr Rashid was the water resources minister in the interim government and was elected president in 2022.

Life in London

The extent to which all of these figures were integrated into life in the UK varied. While many settled after obtaining degrees and spoke fluent English, others were less integrated.

“What's interesting is that Abadi, who speaks very good English and has a PhD from Manchester University, established himself as an electronic engineer,” said Prof Dodge.

“But Jaafari, although a doctor, can't speak English. So he was integrated into the Iraqi exile community and didn't ever learn English.”

Where they lived also depended on when they arrived, as London’s notoriously expensive property prices pushed those from later generations farther towards less fashionable areas of the city, explained Prof Dodge.

“If you go around to Iraqi exiles' houses, where they live depends on the year they came, because of property prices so it’s almost like rings around a tree,” he said.

“So you've got these different younger generations coming but with a lot of them with a lot less money so then they go out to the suburbs.”