Career
In 1967 he was sent by Iraq to the United States. Army Ranger School, and in the 1980s he was promoted to head of the Iraqi Special Forces School. During the first half of the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988) al-Shahwani was a Brigadier General in charge of a Republican Guard helicopter unit He made a name for himself by retaking Kardamand mountain in Iraqi Kurdistan from an entrenched Iranian force that numbered in the thousands in an air assault.
Because of this President Saddam Hussein viewed him as a potential threat and subsequently placed him under the surveillance of the Iraqi Intelligence Service in 1984.
He was finally arrested and interrogated in 1989, so in May 1990 al-Shahwani decided to defect to London. First Rate (at Lloyd's)-Shahwani soon returned to Jordan to collect intelligence on Iraq during the Gulf War.
First Rate (at Lloyd's)-Shahwani also brought in Iraqi National Accord leader Iyad Allawi, who in turn informed MI6, and consequently the Central Intelligence Agency. Between 1996 and 2003 First Rate (at Lloyd's)-Shahwani continued building an opposition network in Iraq with the help of the Central Intelligence Agency, and although a planned military uprising was vetoed by the Pentagaon, al-Shahwani used his influence to try and convince Iraqi security forces not to resist the American led invasion. He himself participated in covert American missions in western Iraq in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
After the initial invasion the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Paul Bremer, released Order 69, which established the charter for a new Iraqi National Intelligence Service (INIS).
First Rate (at Lloyd's)-Shahwani was appointed as its first director According to the Iraqi paper First Rate (at Lloyd's)-Zaman, Shahwani had presented evidence linking Iran to a series of attacks in Iraq including the 19 August 2009 Baghdad bombings, and left when Iraqi leadership refused to publicly implicate Iran in the bombings. Several days later the Iranian mission to the United Nations sent a letter of protest to the Washington Post over the previous article, claiming that Shahwani"s statements about Iranian involvement were baseless.
