BAGHDAD — For spiritual inspiration, Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer reflects on the morals and values of the Shamar tribe, of which he is a leading member.
But for help with daily life and business, the Iraqi president refers to Stephen Covey’s “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” the best-selling management book.
“I read books that improve my abilities and capabilities,” Mr. al-Yawer said during a 45-minute interview in his office last week. “Sometimes I read history and I spend, like, six months reading history.
“Then I switch and read geography or psychology, especially women’s psychology. I can understand how men think but I don’t know how our better halves think.”
Mr. al-Yawer, like Iraq itself, presents a curious mix of modern ways and the nation’s pious, tribal heritage. He talks on a mobile phone and types e-mails while dressed in a traditional white robe, or dishdasha, and head dress called a guthra.
Almost all members of the now-dissolved Governing Council demanded his nomination as president last month over the objections of U.S. chief administrator L. Paul Bremer and U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. Mr. al-Yawer, they said, would be the bridge that links the government of mostly exiles to the Iraqi mainstream.
Indeed, since his nomination, Mr. al-Yawer has consistently been rated the most popular figure in the interim government.
“Al-Yawer is viewed by the Iraqis as an individual person with strong nationalist credit,” said Abdul Aziz Said of American University. “His support derives largely from his family legacy, dating back to the first modern Iraqi state.”
Mr. al-Yawer is a leader of Iraq’s largest tribe. But he is also a businessman, having served as an executive of a Saudi Arabian telecommunications firm.
And he is a family man who dotes on his educated wife and four children, who for security reasons are living outside Iraq.
“Before I accepted being president, I even consulted with my 10-year-old boy” by phone, Mr. al-Yawer said. “He said, ’Come back. Come back.’ When I told him why I’m staying here, he said, ’You have to stay there.’ ”
Before rushing back to Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein to take a position on the Governing Council, the 46-year-old structural engineer worked as president of a telecommunications firm.
He studied at George Washington University in Washington — not at Georgetown, as was incorrectly reported by the coalition — and in Saudi Arabia. Although he has little political experience outside his stint on the Governing Council, Mr. al-Yawer said politics “runs in our veins.”
“If you go to the tribal society, you see how careful you have to be, how diplomatic you have to be,” he said. “I grew up with this.”
He said he also learned to distinguish between the interests of his countrymen and those of his tribe — among the largest in the Middle East, with members in Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the smaller Persian Gulf states as well as Iraq.
The tribe “is very powerful,” he said. “It’s been involved indirectly in the politics of Iraq for the last 300 years. But I’m here as an Iraqi. I’m here as a politician. I pledge allegiance to Iraq and only Iraq.”
In order to remain vital in the modern world, he said, the tribe must be a fount of values and culture, not of politics.
“Tribes should be a social power that shores up the political arena and civic life in Iraq,” he said. “I have great pride out of my tribal background.
“I learned frankness and honor and how to respect other people and level with people. I learned how to keep peace with other factions. I learned how to fear God. But, definitely, I don’t think tribes have to be directly involved in Iraqi politics.”
Good-humored, speaking fluent colloquial English and at ease with Westerners, Mr. al-Yawer describes himself as a regular “corporate guy,” fascinated by the accoutrements of the contemporary world and nurturing a modern, nuclear family.
For his children, it’s as if he’s on a business trip. “We talk on the phone,” he said. “We e-mail. I still believe in letters. It’s old-fashioned. I send them via hand.”
Iraqis will get a taste of Mr. al-Yawer’s down-to-earth style during a new weekly television show he’ll be hosting on Al Iraqiya, the U.S.-funded Iraqi television station.
“People from the streets can come and ask me any question, whatever question,” he said. “As long as they don’t get personal, they can criticize me. I would respect that. I would welcome that. I would learn from that.”
As host of the show, he’ll certainly continue to wear the traditional Arab tribal costume he wears now.
“I find myself comfortable in these clothes,” he said. “These clothes and this thing on my head keep reminding me of the ethics and the principles and the self-negligence I have to retain.”
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