Ajay A. Kumar Returns to Baghdad as India's Next Ambassador to Iraq

Ajay A. Kumar, currently High Commissioner of India to Uganda, has been appointed as the next Ambassador of India to the Republic of Iraq. Kumar is a 2001-batch Indian Foreign Service officer with a career concentrated heavily in West Asia.

The Baghdad posting returns Kumar to a country where he has already served once before, giving India continuity in a relationship the MEA has flagged as a priority across energy security, trade, healthcare, education and strategic cooperation. Iraq is also a leading source of foreign students in India, with more than 10,000 Iraqi nationals having earned their PhD, Master's and undergraduate degrees at Indian institutions over the years.

Kumar first served as India's Ambassador to Iraq between May 2014 and November 2015, a tenure that included the 2014 evacuation of Indian nationals from Iraq during the militant offensive that swept large parts of the country, an operation he has described as among the most demanding of his career. His work has centred heavily on West Asia, including postings as Third Secretary and later Second Secretary and Head of Chancery at the Indian Embassy in Tehran between 2003 and 2006, followed by assignments in Bahrain from 2008 to 2012 and a return to Tehran from 2012 to 2014.

Before this appointment, Kumar was serving as High Commissioner of India to Uganda, a post he took up in March 2020 while also concurrently accredited as India's Ambassador to Burundi with residence in Kampala from November 2020. He was posted to Uganda directly from a Joint Secretary role at the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi, where he had also served as Under Secretary handling the Pakistan desk earlier in his career.

Kumar's reappointment to Iraq comes as part of the same round of ambassadorial changes that sends Soumendu Bagchi, the outgoing envoy in Baghdad, to Switzerland — continuing the MEA's practice of rotating senior IFS officers with regional expertise back into postings where they have prior first-hand experience.

In Baghdad, Kumar will oversee an embassy that has expanded scholarship allocations for Iraqi diplomats and students in recent years, alongside ongoing engagement on energy cooperation and infrastructure projects as Iraq continues its post-conflict reconstruction and diversification away from oil dependence — an agenda where his earlier Baghdad tenure gives him a working familiarity with local counterparts.

Kumar is expected to take up his assignment in Baghdad shortly, according to the Ministry of External Affairs.