[Media-watch] "A man for all intrigues" Iyad Allawi - Salon.com/Cockburn - 29/05/2004

[Julie-ann Davies]

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/05/29/allawi/index.html

A man for all intrigues
Iyad Allawi, the new choice to lead Iraq, isn't Ahmed Chalabi -- but that's
about the only thing to commend this wily member of the old-boy,
CIA-sponsored exile club.
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By Andrew Cockburn

May 29, 2004  |  There could be no more perfect evidence of the desperation
among U.S. officials dealing with Iraq than the choice of veteran Baathist
and CIA hireling Iyad Allawi as prime minister of the "sovereign" government
due to take office after June 30. As one embittered Iraqi told me from
Baghdad on Friday: "The appointment must have been orchestrated by Ahmed
Chalabi in order to discredit the entire process." He was not entirely
joking, given the fact that Chalabi joined the rest of the Governing Council
in voting for Allawi despite their long and vicious rivalry.

Though he is Shiite, Allawi was once upon a time an active Baathist, a
member of Saddam Hussein's political party, and is thought to enjoy much
support among the officer corps of the old Iraqi army, and by extension
among many former Baathists and influential Sunni. Indeed, there are reports
that the reason Ahmed Chalabi, the neoconservative favorite, urged his
friends in the White House to dissolve the army last year -- a decision now
acknowledged to be the most disastrous of the occupation -- was Chalabi's
fear of the support enjoyed by his rival (and cousin -- everyone in Baghdad
is related) within the military.

Allawi cut his political teeth as a strong-arm Baathist student organizer
before being dispatched by the party to London to run the Iraqi Student
Union in Europe. Apart from the Iraqis he dutifully monitored, other Arab
students with whom he came in contact were of considerable interest in
Saddam's Baghdad, since they tended to be drawn from elite circles in the
Middle East. They were also of more direct value to Allawi personally,
garnering him a fruitful array of connections in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere,
which he then used with great effect in various business enterprises in the
region. By the late 1970s he had become wealthy.

However, Allawi never lost his taste for the intrigue of intelligence
operations and the company of intelligence officers. Soft-spoken, eloquent
and persuasive, always ready to hint at a powerful connection or make a
promise, he proved adept at telling them what they wanted to hear in
language they could understand. In 1978, this mutual affection almost proved
fatal. By that time, Allawi had reportedly entered into a relationship with
the British security services, who were naturally keen to have a willing and
well-informed source in the large and faction-ridden Arab student community
in London. Word of this relationship reached the suspicious ears of Saddam's
secret police, the Mukhabarat, who dispatched a team armed with knives and
axes to Allawi's comfortable home in Kingston-upon-Thames to deal with the
problem in summary fashion. Bursting into his bedroom, the assassins hacked
at him as he lay beside his sleeping wife and were prevented from finishing
the job only by the fortuitous appearance of his father-in-law, who happened
to be staying in the house. The would-be killers ran off and the badly
injured Allawi lived to make more money and pursue his connections with
British intelligence.

At the time of the 1991 war, Allawi scented the interest of Saudi
intelligence and joined forces with his fellow ex-Baathist, Salih Omar, in
producing the Voice of Free Iraq. The pair soon fell out, however,
reportedly because of a dispute over a $40,000 check from their Saudi
paymasters. Omar gradually faded from sight, while Allawi retained control
of the group they had founded, the Iraqi National Accord (Al Wifaq), into
which he steadily recruited former Baathist Sunnis, and was soon back in
London, awaiting fresh clients. He found them among his old connections at
British intelligence, MI6, and, a few years later, the CIA, which was
simultaneously funding Ahmed Chalabi's exile organization, the Iraqi
National Congress (INC).

"The two were supported by different factions at the agency," recalls one
veteran of the Iraq program. "Iyad Allawi was the more likable of the two;
he didn't act the grand pasha like Chalabi used to. But there was no there
there -- he didn't have anyone inside Iraq. It was like recruiting a White
Russian [pro-Czarist] to overthrow Stalin in 1938."

Nevertheless, in 1996 the CIA invested its hopes in a coup against Saddam
plotted by Allawi and his INA group. It proved a total bust, perhaps because
INA officials in Amman, Jordan, boasted of its imminence to a Washington
Post reporter. Whatever the reason, Saddam rounded up all the conspirators
he could get his hands on, while sending derisive messages to the CIA
reporting his victory.

Licking its wounds, the CIA harbored dark suspicions that Chalabi had
betrayed the coup to Saddam, while Allawi went unpunished for his failure.
Though his public reputation suffered from the undiluted stream of abuse
broadcast by Chalabi's efficient propaganda machine, he retained his
supporters both at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., and at MI6.

Just as Chalabi did, Allawi, in his quiet way, supplied the requisite quota
of misinformation on Saddam's WMD to justify the Bush-Blair war program. The
infamous lie about Saddam's ability to deploy biological weapons in 45
minutes that Blair put out in his dossier came from Allawi's organization.

When Coalition Provisional Authority head L. Paul Bremer handed out
patronage rewards to the motley group of expatriates assembled in the
Governing Council last year, Allawi secured the important plum of
chairmanship of the Defense and Security Committee. His nominee became
minister of the interior (though there were some awkward questions asked
when 19 billion dinars of ministry money mysteriously turned up in a private
plane at Beirut airport, unencumbered by a satisfactory explanation as to
what it was doing there.) Thus Allawi is well placed in the "power
ministries" with oversight of the nascent military and police. (Ali Allawi,
the current minister of defense, is a cousin of Iyad's, as well as being
Ahmed's nephew, but is generally considered to be his own man.)

Behind the scenes, Allawi and Chalabi have been waging a ferocious struggle
for the spoils of power, particularly in the oil sector. Although Chalabi
was able to get control of key posts at the powerful ministry of oil, Allawi
scored a significant victory when his nominee managed to secure the agency
for the oil trading giant Glencore, which had formerly been on close terms
with Chalabi. In response, the Chalabi forces swore to ensure that Glencore
could not buy Iraqi oil, an embargo that may change now that Iyad Allawi is
becoming prime minister.

In recent days, Allawi and Chalabi joined forces, along with other former
expatriate politicians, to prevent the nomination of Hussein Shahristani to
the post of prime minister. Shahristani, a devout Shiite, would have been an
inspired appointment. A man of extraordinary courage and integrity, he once
told Saddam Hussein to his face that Iraq should not build a nuclear weapon.
Predictably, he was tortured and put on trial for espionage, in the course
of which he blithely insulted Saddam's parentage. He spent 10 years in
solitary confinement in Abu Ghraib. "I probably survived execution because I
was there on the direct orders of Saddam," Shahristani once told me. "And he
simply forgot to sign my death warrant." He escaped disguised as a prison
guard during the 1991 war after suborning a trusty who unlocked his cell and
helped him flee.

Finding refuge in Iran, Shahristani refused to move on to comfortable exile
in the West, preferring instead to stay in Iran and organize aid for
otherwise friendless Iraqi refugees as well as the resistance inside Iraq
itself. His unshakable independence eventually drove the Iranians to force
him to move to London.

Returning to Iraq immediately after the war, Shahristani eschewed the
trappings of power and cash rewards sought by other returning exiles and
even refused to enter the U.S. Green Zone headquarters on the grounds it was
occupied territory. He soon earned the trust and respect of Ayatollah
Sistani. But that was not enough to protect him from self-interested
intriguers like Allawi, Chalabi, and the representatives of the Islamist
parties SCIRI and DAWA. "The Islamist Shia said they wouldn't take someone
who wasn't one of them, which Shahristani is not, and the secular Shia said
they wouldn't have someone who is religious, meaning Shahristani," explains
a despondent Iraqi official and Shahristani supporter.

The United Nations, charged with coming up with the new government, was
taken by surprise by Allawi's selection. U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said he
"respects" the decision and is willing to work with Allawi, according to
U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard. But the world body was less than effusive about
the choice. "Let's see what the Iraqi street has to say about this name
before we decide to write it off," Eckhard said. Brahimi, who is not
permitted to leave the U.S.-controlled Green Zone in Baghdad, has previously
confided to friends that he feels immense pressure from the U.S. to endorse
its choice.

Having settled on a prime minister, National Security Council aide Robert
Blackwill, who has the Iraq portfolio, and Brahimi will soon announce the
Iraqi president. As of Friday evening, the hot favorite was a senior member
of the powerful Shammar tribe named Ghazi al Yawar, who is distantly related
to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah and who has spent many years in Saudi Arabia.
However, the former favorite, courtly octogenarian Adnan Pachachi, who sat
beside Laura Bush in her box at the State of the Union address, is reported
to have edged back into the running and may still stand a chance. No one is
asking the Iraqi people who they want, at least not yet.


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      About the writer
      Andrew Cockburn is co-author of "Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of
Saddam Hussein" and has reported from Iraq for years.