Abd al-Wahab al-Shawaf

Abd al-Wahab al-Shawaf
Portrait of Colonel al-Shawaf
Native name	عبد الوهاب الشواف
Birth name	Abd al-Wahab al-Shawaf
Born	1916 Baghdad, Iraq
Died	9 March 1959 (aged 42–43) Mosul, Iraq
Allegiance	Iraq
Service/branch	Army
Rank	Colonel
Unit	Fifth Brigade
Battles/wars	14 July Revolution, 1959 Mosul Uprising

Abd al-Wahab al-Shawaf (also spelled Abdul Wahhab al-Shawwaf) (1916 – 9 March 1959) was a colonel in the Iraqi Army and played a part in the 14 July Revolution in 1958 as a member of the Free Officers Movement of Iraq.

Al-Shawaf was born in Baghdad to the prominent al-Shawaf clan of Iraq, a religious and landowning Sunni Muslim family. He attended the Baghdad Military College, then the Baghdad Staff College. He was classmates with Nazim Tabaqchali and Abdul Salam Arif. Al-Shawaf later attended the Senior Officers' School in the Great Britain. While author Mehdi Herav suggests that al-Shawaf ideologically leaned towards the Ba'ath Party, author Juan Romero says he leaned towards the National Democratic Party, who were moderate socialists.

Al-Shawaf was a member of the original Free Officers group, which plotted the overthrow of the Hashemite monarchy of Iraq, which had been in power since 1932 and was a close ally of the British. He was one of the seven leading officers that planned and executed the coup on 14 July. In one of several scenarios planned by the Free Officers, al-Shawaf and fellow Free Officer Ahmad Muhammad Yahya were to launch the revolt as their army units returned to Abu Ghraib, near the capital Baghdad, from al-Rutba, in the country's western desert, in early May 1958. Yahya refused to initiate the maneuver, however, and the Baghdad-based Free Officers would not lend support to al-Shawaf. Al-Shawaf was later discouraged from starting the revolt by one of the group's leaders, Abd al-Karim Qasim, who feared any success on al-Shawaf's part would challenge Qasim's future leadership role.