Profiles

Profile: Jawad al-Maliki

Jawad al-Maliki, the number two in the Dawa party, has been a major player in Iraq's political arena since 2003.

The 56-year-old Maliki, a senior advisor to Ibrahim al-Jaafari, announced on Thursday that his boss was willing to relinquish his nomination for a second term as prime minister if it ended the deadlock that has gripped the nation since the Shia political bloc selected him in February.
  
On Friday, the Shia alliance rallied to the bearded, eloquent Maliki to rescue the country from its political impasse after Iraq's Kurds and Sunni Arabs made clear they rejected Jaafari's candidacy.
  
If the other parliament factions approve Maliki to become Iraq's next prime minister, he will need to curb growing sectarian violence and rein in the Shia militias that have been accused of infiltrating Iraq's interior ministry and operating unchecked under Jaafari.
  
Maliki will also have to tackle Iraq's largely Sunni-based insurgency as well as take steps to pull the country out of economic crisis.
  
The Dawa party, founded in the 1950s, is the oldest of Iraq's Shia political parties and took up arms against former president Saddam Hussein in the late 1970s.
  
When Saddam initiated a crackdown, Maliki fled to Iran in 1980.
  
Maliki has a Baghdad University master's degree in Arabic and served as an education official in his hometown of Hilla, 120km south of the capital.
  
From 2003-2004 under the US occupation, Maliki served on a de-Baathification committee to rid the country's government and civil service of Saddam supporters.
  
However, the committee quickly earned the reputation of being overzealous and it purged thousands of people who had only joined Saddam'sBaath party in order to climb up the career ladder.
  
In April 2004, the then top US official in Iraq Paul Bremer conceded the de-Baathification committee had overstepped its boundaries and moved to install teachers and military veterans to their old jobs.
  
Maliki has been vocal in condemning attacks on Iraq's Shia majority population and served in parliament's security committee.  He was an architect of tough counter-terrorism legislation that entered into force last year.
  
He is married, and has a son and three daughters.