BAGHDAD - The interim Iraqi prime minister is
following in the footsteps of the previous president.
The rule of US-appointed Iyad Allawi is now more in the
style of the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein than a
leader of a supposedly democratic state.
Most
Iraqis celebrated the overthrow of the regime of Saddam.
But under what has developed into a brutal and bloody
occupation, people are turning against Allawi as they
turned against Saddam - some even call him "Saddam
without a mustache".
One of Allawi's earliest
moves after his appointment in May was to form a new
version of the feared secret police in Iraq. The
Economist reported that Allawi's rivals accused him of
"recruiting former torturers to man a new apparatus of
oppression".
In July, Paul McGeogh of the Sydney
Morning Herald reported that two witnesses saw Allawi
execute six people at the security center in the
al-Amadiyah district of Baghdad. The men had been
detained for allegedly attacking US forces two weeks
before the handover of power on June 28.
The
appointed interim prime minister has instituted martial
law, threatened to detain journalists and banned the
Arab channel al-Jazeera from reporting within Iraq.
Allawi's minister of justice has brought back the death
penalty and spoken of chopping off the hands and heads
of those described as insurgents.
Then came the
siege of Fallujah. At a refugee camp in Baghdad filled
with families from the besieged city, anger erupts at
the mention of Allawi's name. "Allawi says we are his
family," said Mohammad Ali, a 53-year-old refugee
wounded by US bombs in his home in Fallujah. "Can you
attack your family, Allawi? Do you attack your own
family, Allawi?"
"Allawi is a traitor to the
people of Iraq," said Dr Um Mohammed, who works at a
hospital in Baghdad. "He is an American puppet who
enjoys the killing of Iraqis." A trader in central
Baghdad, Abdel Hakim Abdulla, said Allawi has "never
made a decision that benefits Iraqis".
Anger
is building up against Allawi also over the role he
played before he was appointed interim prime minister. He
is the man many hold responsible for providing
fraudulent intelligence that Saddam posed a threat to the US.
His now-discredited statements to US intelligence that
Saddam had links to the terrorist attacks of September
11, 2001, were used to justify the invasion of Iraq. This had
shaken his credibility among Iraqis from the beginning.
The right-wing Daily Telegraph
of London published a "newly discovered" document from
Allawi of last December 14. Allawi, who was then a member of
the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), stated that the
mastermind of the September 11 terrorist attacks,
Mohammad Atta, had been trained in Iraq with support
from Saddam. This fraudulent information was cited by US
intelligence as compelling evidence that Saddam had
contacts with al-Qaeda. It was cited as justification
for the failing occupation of Iraq.
A second
part of the memo also believed to have been provided by
Allawi alleged the shipment of uranium from Niger to
Iraq. This is another claim that has been proved false.
Allawi was reported by the International Herald
Tribune to have said that Saddam had stashed billions of
dollars in banks around the world. No evidence of these
billions has emerged. Allawi was said again to have
provided the "intelligence" in a British government
dossier that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that
could be made operational in 45 minutes, according to a
report in the New York Times of May 29. This
"intelligence" has been acknowledged to be false.
Allawi, a Shi'ite Muslim, was "unanimously
nominated" to the post of interim prime minister on May 28
by the US-appointed former IGC.
Adam Daifallah
wrote in the New York Sun that Allawi heads a group
comprising primarily former Ba'athist associates of
Saddam and "has received funding from the CIA [Central
Intelligence Agency of the United States] and has
unsuccessfully worked with American intelligence for
years to oust Saddam through coup attempts".
Born in Baghdad in 1946 into a well-known
business family, Allawi became a member of the Ba'ath
Party after it rose to power. He left Iraq in 1971 to go
to university in London, and did not return to his home
country until just after the US-led invasion last year.
Allawi's father was a member of the Iraqi
parliament. His grandfather helped negotiate Iraq's
independence from Britain.
But Allawi's own
political start was marked by reversals. He entered
politics by becoming a student organizer for the Ba'ath
Party while he attended medical school in Baghdad in the
1960s. The party - marked by its readiness to take and
keep power by force - took part in overthrowing one
Iraqi government in 1963 before being deposed itself.
After launching a second coup in 1968, the Ba'athists
stayed in power until the US-led overthrow of Saddam.
That early political history worries some Iraqis, who
today often distrust anyone once closely tied to the
Ba'ath Party.
Dr Abdul Sahib Hakim is an Iraqi
human-rights activist in London who knows Allawi well.
He assesses Allawi's early Ba'athist days this way:
"This is the weakest point, or the [most] dangerous
point of his life. I received a lot of calls from inside
Iraq, I have been in Iraq five times since the fall of
the dictator Saddam, and they don't like the Ba'ath
Party members at all, even the ex-members."
Allawi's supporters describe the move to London
as an "exile" from Saddam, but some of his former
associates say he continued to work for the Ba'athists
in Europe. Then, in 1975, he had an unspecified falling
out with the party and - three years later - was nearly
killed by an assassin presumed to be a Saddam agent.
By 1990, Allawi had become the leader of his own
exile party, recruiting former and disaffected
Ba'athists. His Iraqi National Accord (INA) attempted a
CIA-backed coup against Saddam in 1996. But Saddam's
agents detected the conspiracy and many of the officers
who were supposed to lead their troops against the
regime were killed.
Mahmoud Othman is an
independent Kurdish politician who was a member of the
IGC. He says that when the US handed over political
power to Iraq's first post-Saddam sovereign government
in June, Allawi received the post of prime minister
because of his security experience.
"When the
Americans proposed Allawi through the Governing Council,
we had a majority for Allawi and we supported him," he
said. "We preferred him over the other candidates
because of one main reason. He was responsible for
security in the Governing Council and he was the head of
the joint security committee between us and the
Americans at the time. So, because the main problem we
had was security, we thought he may be the best of these
people to deal with these issues."
One of
Allawi's first moves after becoming interim prime
minister was to announce that Saddam would be tried in
Iraq. He said that Saddam would receive a fair trial and
that the proceedings would mark a firm break with the
past.
"Well, [the trial] will show that justice
will prevail, ultimately, regardless of how long it will
take to be implemented. We would like to show the world,
also, that the new Iraqi government means business and
wants to do business and wants to stabilize Iraq and put
it on the route and the road to democracy and peace."
But some observers say that if Allawi hopes to
convince Iraqis fully that they are in charge of their
own destiny, he will have to overcome several major
challenges. Among the biggest of these is winning
widespread domestic approval for his unelected interim
government. Many analysts call such approval crucial if
the government is to play a larger role in securing the
country - a task now in the hands of the US-led
coalition forces.
Former IGC member
Othman says Allawi's government has yet to demonstrate that it can
reach out to ordinary Iraqis. "When this government came
to power, people were expecting good things from it. But
what happened is that the Iraqi administration couldn't
get away from the American control. They are all living
in one area which is totally protected by the Americans,
called the Green Area. They should have tried to reach
the people, to go to the provinces, to see their own
people, to talk to them, to see what are the problems,
and try to isolate the [hardcore Saddam loyalists and]
terrorists from the other type of people who are not
satisfied, who are against occupation, who are [reacting
to the daily activities of the Americans.] Instead of
that ... [they] were touring countries outside."
Allawi's government is charged with taking the
country to a first round of elections in January to
select a transitional National Assembly. The National
Assembly is to choose a transitional government to lead
the country to direct election of a representative
government by the end of next year.
(Inter Press
Service)
(Additional reporting by Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty.)
