Ayad Allawi

Ayad Allawi (إيَاد عَلَّاوِي ; born 31 May 1944) is an Iraqi politician.

Allawi was born in 1944 to a prominent Shiite merchant family; his grandfather helped to negotiate Iraq's independence from Britain and his father was an Iraqi Member of Parliament.

He became involved in Ba'athism at a young age and organized against the government of Abdul Karim Qassim.

In the 1960s, he studied at medical school in Baghdad at Baghdad University.

Previously, he had attended high school and college at Baghdad College, a Catholic, Jesuit high school and college.

He obtained his master's degree at University College in London and performed a residency at Guy's Hospital.

Allawi has three children, one of them, Hamza, studies in a school in Surrey.

In 1971, he moved to London due to increasing differences with the Ba'ath party and in order to continue his medical education.

He resigned from the Ba'ath party in 1975, "having decided that Saddam was exerting too much control over it".

Allawi himself states that he remained active in the international Ba'athist movement, but had no ties to the Ba'ath Party's Iraqi Regional Branch.

At first Saddam, then Iraq's vice president, pressured Allawi, who was in contact with senior military and party officers that were increasingly critical of Saddam, to rejoin the Ba'ath Party.

In 1978, friends told Allawi that his name was on a liquidation list.

In February 1978 Allawi was awoken in bed one night by an intruder in his Surrey home, who proceeded to attack him with an axe.

The intruder left, convinced that Allawi was dead as he lay in a pool of blood.

He survived the attempted murder, and spent the next year in hospital recovering from his injuries.

His first wife, Atour, was also wounded in the attack.

It is presumed that the attack was an assassination attempt ordered by Saddam Hussein.

He separated with his wife after mutual agreement.

While still recovering in hospital from the attack, Allawi started organising an opposition network to work against the government of Saddam Hussein.

Through the 1980s he built this network, recruiting Iraqis while traveling as a businessman and for the UNDP.

In December 1990, Allawi announced the existence of the Iraqi National Accord (INA).

Six years later, using disillusioned Ba'athists in the military and government, it mounted an unsuccessful coup in Baghdad.

One of Allawi's allies in the INA was Salah Omar al-Ali, a former member of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council and ambassador to the United Nations.

The INA received open backing from the UK, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United States.

A prominent Iraqi political activist who lived in exile for almost 30 years, Allawi, a Shia Muslim, became a member of the Iraq Interim Governing Council, which was established by U.S.-led coalition authorities following the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the INA provided intelligence about alleged weapons of mass destruction to MI6.

Allawi has lived about half of his life in the UK.

His wife and children still live in the UK for their security.

Previously he was interim prime minister of Iraq from 2004 to 2005 and the president of the Governing Council of Iraq (38th prime minister of Iraq) in 2003.

He became Iraq's first head of government since Saddam Hussein when the council dissolved on 1 June 2004, and named him prime minister of the Iraqi Interim Government.

His term as prime minister ended on 7 April 2005, after the selection of Islamic Dawa Party leader Ibrahim al-Jaafari by the newly elected transitional Iraqi National Assembly.

A former Ba'athist, Allawi helped found the Iraqi National Accord, which today is an active political party.

He survived assassination attempts in 1978, in 2004, and on 20 April 2005.

Allawi's first name is sometimes rendered as Iyad or Eyad.

He served as the vice president of Iraq from 2014 to 2015 and 2016 to 2018.

Allawi is related to Ahmed Chalabi, another prominent former exile who died in 2015, through Chalabi's sister.

Former minister of trade Ali Allawi is Chalabi's sister's son as well as Ayad Allawi's cousin.

The relationship between Chalabi and Allawi had been described as alternating between rivals and allies.

In addition, Nouri Badran, interim Minister of Interior, is married to Iyad Allawi's sister.

He is also a cousin of Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi.