Note To My Successor

For most of his life, al-Jaafari thought less about how to run a government and more about how to topple one. In the 1970s, al-Jaafari, a physician, was a rising star in the Islamic Dawa Party and fled with the leadership to Iran and then Britain in the 1980s when Saddam outlawed the movement. He speaks English well but not with the facility of a native speaker and prefers to conduct interviews through an interpreter. Since becoming Prime Minister, al-Jaafari has lived within the Green Zone in what had been one of Saddam's favorite palaces. But al-Jaafari knew not to make himself too comfortable. Boxes are backed up in the corner of his office, never unpacked. Framed pictures lean against the wall, unlikely to be hung. He often recalls a discussion he had as a young student in the holy city of Karbala, when he told a friend of his ambition to launch an opposition movement. The friend stopped him and warned that managing Iraq would be much harder than getting to power. "He was right about this," al-Jaafari says. A lesson the next Prime Minister should note.