The Candidate

Iyad Allawi says he's the tough leader Iraq needs. Do voters believe him?

By Johanna Mcgeary/Baghdad Monday, Jan. 31, 2005
    • GHAITH ABDUL-AHAD / EPA / POOL

    CAMPAIGNING: Allawi presses the flesh with senior religious leaders in Baghdad

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    Even in his dealings with the Bush Administration, Allawi has dared to talk straight. In Washington last September, he called on Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, also noted for his bluntness, to discuss Iraq's overwhelmed security forces. After his obligatory thanks for the U.S. training program, Allawi said he considered that just 11% to 12% of the ostensibly trained personnel were actually ready for duty. Then, according to a U.S. official, Allawi added that the only thing some recruits seemed to have learned was "what day they come to collect their paychecks." Armitage got the message. When he next appeared before a congressional committee in late September, he hedged about optimistic Administration assertions that Iraq had 100,000 men under arms, acknowledging that some had only the sketchiest training. And State Department officials say Allawi's willingness to confront harsh truths made them focus on expanding the training regimen.

    Allawi was reared for obduracy during his early years in the Baath Party. Critics say that's where he developed a taste for secret intelligence and claim he spied for the mukhabarat, the Iraqi secret service, as a student in London in the early 1970s. Though he broke with Saddam about the same time out of disgust at his friend's murderous ways, rivals say he developed a tolerance for torture and killing after participating in cruel interrogation sessions of Baathist enemies. He has always denied that he personally engaged in torture or killing. But he clearly engaged in some direct, even brutal action. Raja al-Khuzai, a medical-school classmate now running on Allawi's ticket, says that in 1962 Allawi used a machine gun to intimidate fellow students who were taking an exam rather than joining a university protest against the government. But like his failed attempt to overthrow Saddam many years later, the incident endangered his fellow Iraqis without having any political effect. Still, his determination to do whatever it took to give Iraq a government to his liking was cemented, says al-Khuzai. "Politics is in his blood and genes."

    But his term as Prime Minister has been an unhappy one. Allawi seemed to start off strong, imposing martial law and reinstating the death penalty for terrorists--moves that conveyed a resoluteness to suit the Iraqi mood. But when he talked of an amnesty for rebels with nationalist motives if they agreed to lay down their arms, the U.S. torpedoed the plan because it might have given a pass to fighters who had killed American soldiers. Despite his dependence on the U.S., Washington did not always serve him well. What forces Allawi can command are still ill trained and ill equipped. An official tells of how Allawi went looking for military supplies in the United Arab Emirates. The ruling sheiks told him to take whatever he wanted from their huge stockpiles of weaponry. But when the ships carrying the arms arrived at Basra, U.S. commanders insisted on decommissioning all the weapons, lest they fall into the hands of the insurgents. While Allawi has led the charge alongside U.S. forces to hunt and kill the rebels, he has also opened channels to the Sunni resisters in hopes of striking some kind of deal. But his willingness to bring old Baathists back into the tent deeply offends Shi'ites.

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