In 1975, after the Kurdish defeat in the Second Iraqi–Kurdish War, Hussein moved to the Netherlands, where he attained a Bachelor's and Master's degree in international relations from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

The KDP claimed the right as the largest Kurdish political party in the May general election to nominate their candidate.

[5] The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan also nominated a candidate, Barham Salih, and the two parties were unable to agree a consensus.

This meant that the decision went to a secret ballot of the newly elected MPs in the Council of Representatives—a first since the invasion of Iraq.

[9] In August 2020, during a joint news conference with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Washington D.C., Hussein said that his country had signed an agreement with U.S. oil company Chevron Corporation as a memorandum of understanding with Iraq to execute the exploration work in Iraq's southern Nassiriya oilfield, one of the country's large oil fields, which is estimated to hold about 4.4 billion barrels of crude.