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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    Friends like Abdul Mahdi say Allawi consults his Cabinet ministers but makes all important decisions himself and brooks no disagreement. After several months, Abdul Mahdi wrote a letter to Allawi calling for more collective decision making, but the Prime Minister stuck to his ways. When he appeared with a bandaged hand last August on Iraqi television during the crisis in Najaf, word had it that the Prime Minister had broken two bones bashing his fist on the table while berating a subordinate. Several high-ranking officials confirm the story, and it reinforces the image Allawi wants to project. Says one of them: "It's useful to have someone who bangs the table occasionally."

    Yet as Iraqis go to the polls, the nation is in dire shape. Allawi, says Dodge, "was dealt a very bad hand: a collapsed state, a nonexistent army, a police force that kept getting shot at and an insurgency that kept getting better." Allawi had no choice but to focus all his energy on subduing the insurgency. That left Cabinet ministers, many of whom he did not choose or agree with, to pursue their own agendas, treating the public to the embarrassing spectacle of frequent disagreement over central issues. Some ministers, like Abdul Mahdi, proved impressive: the interim Finance Minister managed to win debt relief from the crushing burden of Saddam's misfeasance. But others are seen as ineffective and corrupt, more intent on building up their personal ambitions and fortunes than the country's still shattered infrastructure. Iraqis who must wait for days to buy a tank of gas, who often have no running water, who still get electric power for less than four hours a day are angry. "Allawi faced a terrible mess, and he used his power to give what momentum he could," acknowledges Abdul Mahdi, a contender for the Prime Minister's job. "But he was just a caretaker."

    Allawi's biggest liability, though, is his closeness to the U.S. Wamidh Nadhmi, a respected political-science professor and an old friend of Allawi's, has been dismayed by his performance in office. "He is not the Allawi I knew," says Nadhmi. "The Americans can dictate their will to him, and he has lost his independence." For a sizable number of Iraqis, Allawi lost all credibility when he acceded to the U.S. assault on Fallujah in October. While the offensive has restored the town to government control, it wreaked huge destruction and failed to make much of a dent in the swelling violence. Says a rival official: "Now his hand is covered in Iraqi blood."

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