From the shadows to presidency: Meet Fuad Hussein

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region—The Iraqi parliament is due to meet next week to elect a new president from among a list of candidates from the Kurdistan Region one of whom is Fuad Hussein, the official nominee of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).

Hussein has the full backing of the KDP and its leader Masoud Barzani, who said this week: “The KDP politburo gave me the liberty to nominate the post for president and due to his competence, I preferred to nominate Mr. Fuad Hussein for this position.”

Born in 1946 in the Kurdish city of Khanaqin, Hussein finished his elementary and high school years in his hometown until he moved to the Iraqi capital and graduated from Baghdad University’s College of Education in 1971.

While in Baghdad, Hussein joined the Kurdish Student Union in 1967 and later the KDP.

In 1975 and after the collapse of the Kurdish armed revolution he joined the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the same year he moved to the Netherlands.

In 1976 he became head of the Kurdish students union abroad and in 1987 he became deputy head of the Kurdish Institute in Paris.

He resigned from the PUK in 1984 and remained an independent political activist and observer of Middle Eastern affairs.

Hussein is married to a Dutch woman of Protestant Christian background from the prominent Italian Montessori family.

In 1991 he participated in the Iraqi Opposition Conference in Beirut as an independent politician. The following year he attended two opposition conferences in Vienna and in Salahaddin-Erbil.

Hussein also joined two conferences of the Iraqi opposition in New York in 1999 and London 2002.

In 2003 and in the wake of the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime he was appointed senior advisor at Iraq’s Ministry of Education and played a role in drawing up new curricul for Iraqi schools.

With the formation of the Kurdistan Region Presidency, Hussein was appointed President Masoud Barzani’s Chief of Staff. He maintains strong ties with Kurdish and Iraqi political parties and politicians. Hussein has met many world leaders from Russia, to Europe, the United States and the Middle East.

He’s well connected in media and diplomatic circles and speaks Kurdish, English, Arabic and Dutch.