Abdul Latif Rashid was elected in October 2022 as the new president of Iraq, after the country was plunged into yet another round of violence due to the differences among the myriad of groups competing in the confusing local political scene.
Rashid's victory over his rival, the former head of state Bahram Saleh, was accompanied by the election of the current Prime Minister, Mohammed al Sudani, and ended months of political deadlock following the 2021 legislative elections.
An engineer by training, the current head of state held a senior position at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in the 1980s.
With more than eight decades of life behind him, Rashid has witnessed many of the violent clashes that the region has experienced over the years: from the clashes in Beirut between the Lebanese militias of Hezbollah and Amal, to those that pitted his own community, the Kurds, in the nineties.
A former spokesperson for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in the UK, the party led by the late Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani - of whom he was a close advisor - Rashid also served for years as Minister of Water after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003.