They fomented a mini war in March 1995 between Kurdish groups and the Iraqi Army that went wrong when the insurgents failed to secure American military air support.

Al-Samarrai moved to Syria and eventually made his way to London in 1998, where he headed an opposition group called the Higher Council for National Salvation which is based in Denmark.

Following his defection, Qusay Hussein told senior Iraqi officials, including Ra'ad al-Hamdani, that al-Samarrai had been an undercover agent for Jalal Talabani and Iran since 1982.

[5] In 2003, he returned to his hometown Samarra, Iraq and remained there until he was appointed the national security advisor to President Jalal Talabani in 2005 and moved to the Green Zone in Baghdad.

[7] On 6 March 2008, the Iraqi presidency website publicized a judicial decision to lift off all restrictions imposed on General Wafiq al-Samarrai, including a freeze on his assets, after Supreme Criminal Court Judge Adnan Al Badri reportedly announced that a probe found no evidence implicating al-Samarrai[citation needed] in 1991 Iraqi Army attacks on Kurds and Shia.