Ahmad Al-Basheer
Ahmad Al-Basheer, born on October 17, 1984, in Baghdad's Al-Tabba district, is an Iraqi comedic and journalistic personality and director. Raised in Ramadi, he is known for establishing and presenting the weekly political satire program, Albasheer Show. During his career as a journalist, he was employed by Iraqi state television, and between 2001 and 2011, functioned as a political correspondent for Iraq's government-controlled news outlets. He studied journalism at Nahrain University in Baghdad, but dropped out in 2006 following the death of his brother due to trauma and the ongoing war. Albasheer’s career has been marked by both professional success and personal hardship. He was injured in a suicide bombing in February 2011 while covering a poetry festival, leading him to move to Amman, Jordan, and establish his own media production company, Lagash, that same year. The Albasheer Show began broadcasting in 2014, initially on the Al Shahid Independent Channel and YouTube, later appearing on Al-Sumariya TV and Deutsche Welle Arabic. The show satirizes Iraqi politics, including corruption, sectarianism, extremism, and terrorism, and has gained significant popularity, reaching an audience of 19 million viewers by 2015 – over half of Iraq's population. It utilizes political satire and fact-checking to address controversial topics. The Albasheer Show has significantly impacted Iraqi society, playing a vital role in the 2019–2021 Iraqi protests, sometimes referred to as the Tishrin Iraqi protests. The show’s YouTube channel boasts over five million subscribers and over 900 million views as of 2021, and episodes like ‘None of Our Business’ have garnered considerable attention. Greenberg World Fellowship at Yale University in 2019. In 2019, he featured in the Netflix documentary series Larry Charles’ Dangerous World of Comedy; and in 2020, he was included in the documentary Once Upon a Time in Iraq. In December 2025, he announced his candidacy for the Iraqi presidency, though this was rejected due to his inability to attend a physical examination while in exile. He is inspired by Egyptian comedian Basem Youssef and American comedian John Stewart.
