[Media-watch] Occupier of a prime ministers chair

[David J McKnight]

** Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches **


   November 23, 2004


     Occupier of a Prime Minister's Chair

Dahr Jamail

BAGHDAD, Nov 23 (IPS) - The prime minister is following in the footsteps 
of the last president. The rule of Ayad Allawi, the U.S. appointed 
interim prime minister of Iraq, is now more in the style of the 
dictatorship of Saddam Hussein than a leader of a supposedly democratic 
state.

Most Iraqis had celebrated the overthrow of the regime of Saddam 
Hussein. But under what has developed into a brutal and bloody 
occupation people are turning against the interim prime minister as they 
turned against Saddam.

One of Allawi's earliest moves after his appointment was to form a new 
version of the feared secret police in Iraq. The Economist reported that 
Allawi's rivals accused him of ?recruiting former torturers to man a new 
apparatus of oppression.?

In July Paul McGeogh of the Sydney Morning Herald reported that two 
eyewitnesses saw Allawi execute six people at the security centre in the 
al-Amadiyah district of Baghdad. The men had been detained for allegedly 
attacking U.S. forces two weeks before the handover of power.

The appointed interim prime minister has instituted martial law, 
threatened to detain journalists, and banned the Arab channel al-Jazeera 
from reporting within Iraq. Allawi's minister of justice has brought 
back the death penalty and spoken of chopping off the hands and heads of 
those described as insurgents.

Now comes the siege of Fallujah. At a refugee camp in Baghdad filled 
with families from the besieged city, anger erupts at the mention of 
Allawi's name.

?Ayad Allawi says we are his family,? said Mohammad Ali, a 53-year-old 
refugee wounded by U.S. bombs in his home in Fallujah. ?Can you attack 
your family, Allawi? Do you attack your own family, Allawi??

Allawi is a traitor to the people of Iraq, said Dr. Um Mohammed who 
works at a hospital in Baghdad. ?He is an American puppet who enjoys the 
killing of Iraqis.? A trader in central Baghdad Abdel Hakim Abdulla said 
Allawi has ?never made a decision that benefits Iraqis.?

Anger is building up against Allawi also over the role he played before 
he was appointed interim prime minister. He is the man many hold 
responsible for providing fraudulent intelligence that Saddam Hussein 
posed a threat to the United States.

His now discredited statements to U.S. intelligence that Saddam Hussein 
had links to the terrorist attacks of Sep. 11 were used to justify the 
invasion of Iraq. This had shaken his credibility amongst Iraqis from 
the beginning.

The right-wing Daily Telegraph of London published a ?newly discovered? 
document from Allawi Dec. 14 last year. Allawi, who was then a member of 
the Iraqi Governing Council stated that the mastermind of the Sep. 11 
terrorist attacks Mohammad Atta had been trained in Iraq with support 
from Saddam Hussein.

This fraudulent information was cited by U.S. intelligence as compelling 
evidence that Saddam Hussein had contacts with al-Qaeda. It was cited as 
justification for the failing occupation of Iraq.

A second part of the memo also believed to have been provided by Allawi 
alleged shipment of uranium from Niger to Iraq. This is another claim 
that has been proved false.

Allawi was reported by the International Herald Tribune to have said 
that Saddam Hussein had stashed billions of dollars in banks around the 
world. No evidence of these billions has emerged.

Allawi again was said again to have provided the 'intelligence' in a 
British government dossier that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction 
which could be made operational in 45 minutes, according to a report in 
the New York Times May 29 this year. This 'intelligence' has been 
acknowledged to be false.

Allawi, a Shia Muslim, was ?unanimously nominated? to the post of 
interim prime minister May 28 by the U.S.-appointed former Iraqi 
Governing Council.

Adam Daifallah wrote in the New York Sun that Allawi heads a group 
comprising primarily former Baathist associates of deposed dictator 
Saddam Hussein and ?has received funding from the CIA (Central 
Intelligence Agency of the United States) and has unsuccessfully worked 
with American intelligence for years to oust Saddam through coup attempts.?

Born in Baghdad in 1946 into a well-known business family, Allawi became 
a member of the Baath party after it rose to power. He left Iraq in 1971 
to go to university in London, and did not return to his home country 
until just after the U.S.-led invasion last year.


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