Iyad Allawi: A premier for all
reasons By Ehsan Ahrari
The
selection of Iyad Allawi to become prime minister of the
interim government of Iraq from July 1 is a surprising
development, and, like everything involving Iraq, it is
fully immersed in a variety of controversies. The
question that has been uppermost since last Friday, when
the news of his selection was leaked, however, is
whether he is really an "American candidate" or a
candidate of the United Nations. The answer to that
question, and, more important, Allawi's performance as
the prime minister of the interim government will
determine whether he will be perceived by the Iraqis as
their representative.
If UN representative
Lakhdar Brahimi wanted to select a "dispassionate
expert" to head the interim government, Allawi does not
at all fit the bill. He, like Ahmad Chalabi - the head
of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and co-aspirant for
prime ministership - has a controversial and, indeed, a
shady past. Chalabi was once the golden boy of America's
neo-conservatives and the Pentagon. According to the
original plans of the neo-conservatives, he was to be
crowned as a successor to Saddam Hussein, and a
torchbearer of the neo-cons' grand strategy of
transforming the Middle East.
Allawi, the
founder of Iraqi National Accord (INA), is a former
Ba'athist and an ex-military man. He built his career as
an anti-Saddam expatriate by consistently cooperating
with, and supplying intelligence to, the British MI6 and
the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Consequently,
his nomination as prime minister is perceived, at least
in Washington, as a success for the Department of State
and the CIA, both of which despised Chalabi, promoted
Allawi's candidacy, and could not have been happier to
see Chalabi's fall from grace.
According to
reports filtering out of Iraq, the selection of Allawi
may have been as a result of maneuverings between the
members of Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) - all
hand-picked by the Americans - along with back-channel
participation of L Paul Bremer, the head of the
Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), and Robert
Blackwill, President George W Bush's special envoy to
Iraq. As these reports indicate, Brahimi was serious
about picking someone with no IGC or US connections so
that the Iraqis should have little doubt about the
integrity of such a prime minister. Allawi was on
Brahimi's short list of candidates for premiership, but
definitely was not his first choice.
However,
Brahimi was reportedly surprised by the IGC's choice of
Allawi and the speed with which Bremer and Blackwill
endorsed that selection. Realizing that he was clearly
outmaneuvered, Brahimi found it expedient to accept
Allawi's selection as fait accompli. As Fred
Eckered, spokesman for UN Secretary General Kofi Annan,
noted: "This is not the way we expected this to happen,
no, but the Iraqis [ie, members of IGC] seem to agree on
this name, and if they do, Mr Brahimi is ready to work
with him."
There is little doubt that the
precedence thus established would lead to the selection
of president, two vice presidents and other cabinet
members from the ranks of the IGC members. Consequently,
fears the UN side, the interim Iraqi government is
likely to encounter a major problem of lack of
credibility among the Iraqis. As a nameless Western
diplomat was quoted as saying, the appointment of Allawi
to the premiership of the interim Iraqi government
"hardly communicates the message of a clean break with
the past".
Iyad Allawi is regarded as a
secularist, a Ba'athist and a pan-Arabist. As such, he
should be acceptable to the Sunni groups of Iraq that
also subscribe to Ba'athism and pan-Arabism. However,
these very characteristics of his candidacy are likely
to become great liabilities for him between next month
and next January, when the first election is scheduled.
For now, it is difficult to state with confidence that
secularism will emerge as an important force, or
secularists would emerge as an important force in Iraq.
On the contrary, all present trends point to some sort
of Islamic democracy emerging after next year's general
elections, especially if the Shi'ite clerics of the
predilection of the Grand Ayatollah al-Ali al-Sistani
have any say over influencing the thinking of their
followers.
Allawi was involved in an aborted
coup against Saddam in 1996. His organization, INA, is
also infamously known for passing on intelligence to MI6
that claimed that Saddam could launch a
weapons-of-mass-destruction attack within 45 minutes. In
the post-Saddam era, and as a current member of the IGC,
he has also built his reputation as someone who is
copiously focused on security-related issues.
He
ran the IGC's security committee, which is responsible
for training the new Iraqi police, army and intelligence
services. However, an overall impression within informed
circles in Iraq is that his excessive focus on security
will push him in the direction of building strong
security at the expense of even stymieing efforts to
build democracy.
This characteristic is likely
to cause considerable controversy, given the strong
security-related obsession during the dictatorship of
Saddam. Critics of Allawi's strong preoccupation with
security may have a point when they become wary about
the implications of such a preoccupation for the growth
of democracy. On the other hand, supporters of Allawi
also have a point when they argue that without increased
security inside Iraq, no one can even begin to talk
about the realistic prospects for democracy. As much as
Brahimi and Bremer are cognizant of this dilemma, there
is nothing they can do to resolve it.
So we must
return to the question posed earlier, whether Allawi
will be perceived as an American candidate, or as a
person who was picked by the UN for his integrity and
his commitment to bring Iraq a clean government that
should be ready for a democratically elected corps of
leadership after next January. Based on his past
affiliations with the US and British intelligence
agencies, the answer may be that he will be regarded as
anything but a man of integrity to achieve all those
things. However, Allawi still has ample opportunities to
surprise his Western interlocutors and doubters of his
native land, by working assiduously to establish a clean
and independent government for a slate of elected
officials. But he must establish a record of credible
performance rather quickly. Otherwise, his countrymen
will regard him, like Ahmad Chalabi, as just another
puppet who was hand-picked to do the bidding of the
United States. Such a conclusion will not bode well for
the post-occupation Iraq.
Ehsan
Ahrari, PhD, is an Alexandria, Virginia, US-based
independent strategic analyst.
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