Haider Al-Abadi

Dr Haider Al-Abadi (Arabic: حيدر العبادي‎) is an Iraqi politician and spokesman for the Islamic Call Party or Islamic Dawa Party.

He was appointed Minister of Communications in the Iraqi Governing Council on 1 September 2003. A Shia Muslim and electronic consultant engineer by training with a PhD degree from Manchester university, England in 1980, and a BSc degree from Baghdad University in Electrical engineering in 1975. Al-Abadi lived in exile during the time of Saddam Hussein in London.

In 2005 he served as an advisor to the Iraqi Prime Minister in the first elected Government.

He was elected member of Iraqi Parliament in 2005 and chaired the influential parliamentary committee for Economy, Investment and Reconstruction.

Dr Al-Abadi was re-elected as member of Iraqi parliament representing Baghdad in the general election held on 7 March 2010.

While in exile Al-Abadi's past positions also include:

• DG of a small high tech vertical and horizontal transportation Design and Development firm in London, (1993–2003).
• a top London Consultant to the industry in matters relating to people movers, (1987–2003).
• Research Leader for a major modernization contract in London, (1981–1986).
• Registered a patent in London in rapid transit system, (2001).
• Was awaded a Smart grant from the UK Department of Trade and Industry, (1998).
• Politically he is one of the top leaders of the popular Daawa Party, the head of its political office and a spoksman for the party. He became a member of the party in 1967 and a member of its executive leadership in 1979. The Baath regime executed two of his brothers and imprisoned a third brother for ten years.

While Al-Abadi was a minister of Communications, the CPA awarded licences to three mobile operators to cover all parts of Iraq. However minister al-Abadi was not prepared to be a rubber stamp and he introduced more conditions in the licenses among them that a sovereign Iraqi government has the power to amend or terminate the licenses and introduce a fourth national license which caused some frictions with the CPA. In 2003 press reports indicated Iraqi officials under investigation over a questionable deal involving Orascom, an Egypt-based telecom, which in late 2003 was awarded a contract to provide a mobile network to central Iraq. However in 2004 a US Defense Department review suggested telecommunications contracting had been illegally influenced by a senior Pentagon official, and not by Iraqis.

Dr Al-Abadi's name was circulated as a prime minister candidate during the formation of the Iraqi government in 2006 during which Ibrahim Al-Jaafari was replaced by Noori Al-Maliki as Prime Minister. Once again Mr Al-Abadi was strongly tipped as a possible Prime Minister during the tough negotiations between Iraqi political blocs after the elections of 2010 to choose a replacement to incumbent PM Noori Al-Maliki.

References

• BBC News (2003-09-01). "Iraq's post-war cabinet". http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3199561.stm. Retrieved 2006-02-24. 
• Council on Foreign Relations (2006). "The New face of Iraq's government". http://www.cfr.org/publication/10515/new_face_of_iraqs_government.html#4. Retrieved 2006-06-06.