George joffe biography

I am proud to have known and worked with George Joffe. George was on my Africa committee at the Labour Party in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.

He brought me into Chatham House to re-establish the Africa research programme. He was fun, erudite and always generous with his time and advice.

This obituary is from the Times.

Middle East expert whose advice to Tony Blair on the Iraq war was ignored

Wednesday July 13 2022, 12.01am BST, The Times

In November 2002, a few months before the opening “shock and awe” salvo of the Iraq war, six academics trooped into Tony Blair’s office in Downing Street.

George joffe biography

One of them, George Joffé, a tall, blue-eyed expert on Iraq, was keen to impress upon the prime minister how complex and volatile a country Iraq was. “What has happened in Iraq was predictable and was predicted,” he later recalled.

“Also in the room [that day] was Jack Straw, Jonathan Powell and Sir David Manning, and nobody made any comment