Who
Is Allawi?
By Ghali Hassan
19 June, 2004
Countercurrents.org
On
30 June 2004, Mr. Iyad Allawi will switch his position from the Iraqi
Governing Council (IGC) to be come the Iraq's new Prime Minister in
the new named Iraqi Interim Government (IIG), another creature of the
U.S. Nothing will change for the Iraqi People. The Iraqi people are
very sceptical and despised those expatriates the U.S. piggybacked to
Baghdad. For Mr. Allawi and his clique, they will be richer and brutal.
Mr. Allawi will appear on American TV screens as often as possible,
simply to legitimise the occupation of Iraq.
Mr. Allawi is a
secular of prominent Moslem merchant family. He was a former member
of the Baath Party underground movement, and was in Saddam's regime
unti1 1979. His wealthy family was close to the royal family that ruled
before Saddam Hussein took power. After falling out of favour with Saddam,
Allawi sought exile in London, where he developed a relationship with
Britain's MI-6 intelligence service during the 1980s, and eventually
he also formed a relationship with the CIA. Allawi and Chalabi are related
by marriage, have been alternately rivals and allies. Chalabi had a
bitter break-up with the CIA in the 1990s but became close with the
Pentagon. Meanwhile, Allawi and his Iraqi National Accord (INA) organization
have solid relationships with the CIA and State Department.
In 1991, Allawi
with Salih Omar Ali Al-Tikriti founded the INA as an opposition to Saddam's
Baath Party. Both were ex-Baathist and former supporters of Saddam's
regime. Salih Al-Tikriti viewed as unsavoury by the U.S. The INA constituted
of disillusioned former Baathists from the military and security fields.
With support from the CIA and MI-6, the INA instigated a coup d'étate
within the Iraqi Army, but Saddam was not so stupid and the attempt
ended disastrously. In London, Allawi's job was to keep an eye on Iraqi
students studying in the UK. After moving to London in 1971 as a medical
student he received payment from the Iraqi embassy there. It is also
alleged that he did not quit the Baath party until 1975, and that he
escaped an assassination attempt on his life in 1978.
According to Patrick
Cockburn of The Independent of London, "[Allawi] is the person
through whom the controversial claim was channelled that Iraqi weapons
of mass destruction could be operational in 45 minutes". This big
lie, helped prepare the British citizens to support Tony Blair messianic
war on Iraq. In January 2004 a New York spokesman for Allawi acknowledged
this was in fact "a crock of shit." Almost sounds like the
new Prime Minister has learned his skill of lying from his masters in
London and Washington.
The Iraqi Girl Blog,
Baghdad Burning, wrote on 18 June 2002: "Iyad Allawi is completely
America and Britain's boy. He has been on the CIA's payroll for quite
some time now and I don't think anyone was particularly surprised when
he was made Prime Minister. The cabinet of ministers is an interesting
concoction of exiled Iraqis, Kurdish Iraqis who were in the northern
region and a few Iraqis who were actually living inside of Iraq".
Like Chalabi, Allawi
too was appointed to the IGC. He has been responsible for overseeing
the council's security committee of the IGC. His position in the IGC
was to recruit new army, police and intelligent members, a job he had
under Saddam. Allawi was a member of Hunein, a security apparatus headed
by Saddam Hussein. He has always opposed to the purging of members of
the Baath party from senior government posts. I wonder if Mr. Allawi
is not able to resurrect some of "Saddam's doubles". The mainstream
media and particularly the BBC used to be obsessed with Saddam's doubles.
Where on earth are Saddam's famed look-alikes?
The choice of Iyad
Allawi as Iraq's prime minister of the upcoming IIG was "forced
by the United States as a fait accompli on the UN and the Iraqi people.
He was an American candidate than one of the UN or the Iraqis themselves.
"When we first heard the news today, we thought that the [IGC]
had hijacked the process", a senior U.N. official said. Lakhdar
Brahimi, the UN special envoy to Iraq resigned as a result of his failure
to stand up to the U.S. and show some credibility in Iraq. Once again,
the UN failed the
Iraqi people and denied them their legitimate human rights. Allawi's
choice and his close ties with the U.S. came in a country where public
opinion has grown almost universally hostile to the Americans. Recent
polls reveal that Mr. Allawi has almost 5 percent supports, just below
the president, with a 7
percent approval rating.
In Washington and
London, Mr. Allawi is well connected, but in Iraq everyone mistrusts
Mr Allawi. Extensive PR campaign last year to built support in Washington
rather than in Baghdad seemed to pay off. Danielle Pletka, a Middle
East analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think
tank, said: "It was a bid for influence, and it was money well
spent". "Allawi has always assumed, in many ways correctly,
that he didn't need a constituency in Iraq as long as he had one in
Washington", Pletka added.
According to report
by Jim Drinkard of USA Today: "Lobbying records show that the law
firm of Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds and the New York public
relations firm of Brown Lloyd James engaged in a flurry of contacts
on Allawi's behalf beginning in late October. Most were aimed at setting
up meetings with influential members of Congress and their staffs, administration
officials, think tanks and journalists". The money paid by a wealthy
Iraqi expatriate in London.
Dr. Haifa al-Azawi,
a California-based gynaecologist and a U.S. citizen who went to school
with Allawi in Baghdad in the 1960s, remembered Mr. Allawi as: "big,
husky man. The Baath party union leader, who carried a gun on his belt
and frequently brandished it terrorizing the medical students, was a
poor student and chose to spend his time standing in the school courtyard
or chasing female students to their homes. His medical degree is bogus
and was conferred upon him by the Baath party, soon after a World Health
Organization (WHO) grant was orchestrated for him to go to England and
study public health accompanied by his Christian wife, whom he dumped
later to marry a Muslim woman. In England he was a poor student, visiting
the Iraqi embassy at the end of each month to collect his salary as
the Baath party representative. According to his first wife and her
family members, he spent his time dealing with assassins doing the dirty
work for the Iraqi government, until his time was up and he became their
target". It is not uncommon in Iraq during the Baath Party rule
to give special favours for those who choose to serve its agenda.
A report in The
New York Times described the INA (funded by the CIA of course), as "a
terrorist organization. In the early 1990's the INA sent agents into
Baghdad to plant bombs and sabotage government facilities under the
direction of the C.I.A., several former intelligence officials say,
they also bombed movie theatres and school buses full of children".
Furthermore, the Times reported "[i] n 1996, Amneh al-Khadami,
who described himself as the chief bomb maker for the Iraqi National
Accord and as being based in Sulaimaniya, in northern Iraq, recorded
a videotape in which he talked of the bombing campaign and complained
that he was being short-changed money and supplies. Two former intelligence
officers confirmed the existence of the videotape."[W]e blew up
a car, and we were supposed to get $2,000 but got only $1,000' Mr. Khadami
alleged told The Independent in 1997". Who the Americans are fighting
in their "war on terror"?
The Iraqi born novelist
and artist, Haifa Zangana wrote in The Guardian of London: "The
CPA also ignores the violent activities of the four militias in Iraq,
which have taken the law into their own hands: the peshmergas of the
two Kurdish parties; the Badr brigade of the Supreme Council for Islamic
Revolution in Iraq; Ahmed Chalabi's troops; and the ex-Ba'athist Mukhabarats
under Iyad A[l]lawi's national accord. These militias are run by members
of the IGC and no one can touch them. No high-ranking official of Saddam's
regime has yet been prosecuted either, despite the wish of most Iraqis
that they be bought to justice".
In September 2003,
Akila Al-Hashimi, a female member of the council, was shot and died
later of her wounds. A rotating president of the U.S.-appointed council
was assassinated on May 17 in a car-bomb attack on his convoy west of
Baghdad. At least 1000 professionals and intellectuals have been murdered.
"Many academics fear a deliberate brain drain is not being executed
through murder. The mukhabarat (secret intelligence) of all the surrounding
countries are active here: Mossad, the Iranians, Turks, Kuwaitis, Jordanians,
Syrians," said an unnamed academic. "They are settling scores
with each other, with the Americans and the Americans with them".
"Why are they still detaining university professors if they are
re-analysing their own intelligence on whether Iraq possessed weapons
of mass
destruction?" Gulshan Husayn, wife of Dr Ali al-Zaak, detained
dean of Genetic Engineering at Baghdad University told Al-Jazeera.
The U.S. is not
interested in genuine democracy, the democracy of one citizen, one vote.
In fact, the U.S. refused to allow local elections in Iraq last summer.
The U.S. administration is interested in a U.S-controlled democracy.
The kind of democracy enforced on the people of Latin America. In Allawi's
Iraq, if he survived, elections will be an open contest but that candidates
have to be vetted in an opaque process achieved by the return of many
thugs of the old regime.
After more than
thirty years in exile (London and Washington) and a "bogus"
medical degree, the Iraqi people expected "their" Prime Minister
to speak their language, not broken English. Unfortunately, Dr. Allawi
has failed the Iraqi people. How can Dr. Allawi and those around him
watch their compatriots (the Iraqi people) abused, tortured, raped and
murdered by the same occupying forces they are collaborating with. He
should learn to speak the language of the vast majority of the Iraqi
people. He should learn to say: End the occupation; free the Iraqi people
from America's violent militarism.
Ghali Hassan lives
in Perth, Western Australia. He can be contacted on:
[email protected]