 Abu Risha was assassinated shortly after becoming an ally of the Iraqi government through forming an organisation of fellow tribal chiefs called the "Sahawat al-Anbar" (Anbar Awakening), based in Anbar's provincial capital of Ramadi, some west of Baghdad.Abu Risha was the grandson of a tribal leader in the Iraqi revolt against the British occupying forces in 1920 and the son of a commander in the Anglo-Iraqi War in 1941.Little is known about Abu Risha's life prior to the Iraq War, albeit he reportedly ran a construction and import-export business with offices in Amman in Jordan and Dubai in the UAE.