The strongman of Baghdad

13 November 2004

Andrew Gilligan on the murky past of Iyad Allawi, who this week cleared the way for the attack on Fallujah

The man who was actually supposed to make the choice — the UN special representative Lakhdar Brahimi — certainly sounded a little peeved at the news, describing the ‘terrible pressure’ he had been placed under during the process and how the US administrator, Paul Bremer, was ‘almost the dictator of Iraq’. Brahimi had wanted to appoint an apolitical technocrat who could hold the fort until the elections, forcing the largely unknown exiles to try to muster popular support. But Mr Allawi’s appointment has given him an enormous artificial head-start in the race.

Since his elevation to provisional power, Mr Allawi has been busily closing down TV stations, having his opponents arrested on trumped-up charges and sanctioning air raids on his own citizens — exactly the sort of thing that used to get Saddam into such trouble. But it would be wrong to suppose that the Iraqi people necessarily mind the strong-man approach. Urban myths circulating in Baghdad (and even in the Western press) that the Prime Minister is not above personally executing the odd prisoner have done Mr Allawi no harm at all.

Much of the Prime Minister’s political strategy is sensible, coupling sticks for the intransigent with carrots for the co-operative: ex-Baathists, whom he wants to re-employ, and many insurgents, whom he wants to amnesty. But the Americans are resisting the carrot part of the operation. The showdown with Muqtada al-Sadr earlier this year was bungled, leaving the pimply cleric yet again the winner. The voters don’t mind toughness, but they do demand results. As the violence in Iraq begins to make daily life almost impossible, Mr Allawi’s political honeymoon has come to an end and the frailty of his political position has been exposed.