Jaafari, Ibrahim

Iraqi medical doctor and Shia politician, prime minister 2005–06. A conservative Shia who had lived abroad during the regime of Saddam Hussein, he returned to Iraq after Saddam's overthrow by US-led forces in 2003 and served as vice-president in the US-appointed regime. He led the Islamic Dawa party, a key element of the United Iraqi Alliance, to poll success in Iraq's January 2005 parliamentary elections, enabling him, in April 2005, to become Iraq's first democratic prime minister since before the Saddam era. He was seen as a conciliatory figure in the new Iraq, but his government failed to end violence and improve services and, having lost political support within Iraq and from the USA, he stepped down as prime minister in May 2006.

Born in Karbala, into a Sayyid family which claimed descent from Muhammad, he studied at Mosul University to become a medical doctor. He joined the Islamic Dawa Party in 1968, which sought to overthrow the secular Ba'athist government. In 1980 he left Iraq to live in Iran and the UK, where he worked as a doctor, and to play a prominent role in the movement against Saddam Hussein.