Iraqi leaders exchange insults

LAT: "Six months after agreeing to form a national unity government, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and his secular rival Iyad Allawi are again exchanging insults and cannot agree on such basic issues as who should run the nation's police and army.

The rift, though unlikely to send Iraq back into sectarian violence, does have Iraqi and Western analysts concerned that the country will continue on a dysfunctional path as American troops move to complete their withdrawal by year's end, nearly nine years after the invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein."

Allawi backs out of agreement

By Alice Fordham, LAT: "Former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, whose Iraqiya party won the most seats in Iraq's elections last year, has refused to head a long-planned strategic council in parliament, saying Thursday that Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has broken promises about its role.

In an interview on Iraqi TV, Allawi alleged that he was being watched by intelligence services and said that he would not head the proposed National Council for Strategic Policies. The council, backed by the United States, was conceived as a counterweight to the power of the prime minister to end the months-long deadlock on forming a government.

A secular Shiite politician whose bloc won the backing of the majority of Iraq's Sunni Arabs, Allawi was persuaded to head the council within a government headed by his rival Maliki. The collapse of the deal threatens a fragile power-sharing agreement which is the basis of the government and which took nine months to reach after elections in March."

Divisions in Iraq not new

Anthony Shadid: "As the U.S. completes its drawdown of military forces in Iraq, the country is solidifying its own sectarian and ethnic divisions — the culmination of a process that began with the invasion in 2003. Not that these divisions are new in Iraq. They simmered even as the country was created after World War I and assumed stark form under Saddam Hussein. He ruled by empowering members of his own Sunni tribe; he waged a genocidal war against Iraq’s Kurds in the north and crushed an uprising among the Shiite majority in the south. But after deposing Hussein and the Baath Party, the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority constructed something unprecedented: a political system that ignored class, nationalist and other dynamics in favor of a simple calculus of Sunni, Shiite and Kurd.

Whether that system will become permanent was tested last year. The national parliamentary elections in 2010 were supposed to give Iraqis a solid basis on which to retake control of their country. The leading parliamentary lists were headed by two familiar names: Ayad Allawi and Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. Allawi was a secular Shiite from an elite family, a burly man, born in 1945, who was active in Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party until he fell out with the leader and went abroad in 1971. Based in London, Allawi devoted himself to shadowy exile politics, leading a group called Iraqi National Accord and cultivating ties with the Central Intelligence Agency and Britain’s MI6, all aimed at the eventual overthrow of Hussein. Nuri al-Maliki was a very different person: a Shiite believer from relatively humble origins, five years younger than Allawi, whose political career depended on advancing Shiite interests. He fled Iraq in the late 1970s after being sentenced to death. In exile, he toiled with the Shiite Dawa Party, an Islamist group that he joined as a college student in 1970 and that Hussein outlawed. Maliki built relationships with Syria and Iran. He was chosen as prime minister in 2006 on the assumption that he would be a weak and malleable leader, but he proved to be both an able schemer and ruthless when he needed to be, including in the use of military force. After four years in office, he was by far Iraq’s most powerful politician. In the 2010 elections, Maliki led, in essence, the Shiite list, aimed at advancing the interests of the Shiite majority, while Allawi led a more diverse set of parties and politicians with a broad commitment to a secular future for Iraq."

The ploy to eliminate election rivals

'Allawi, a secular Shi'ite who said he survived an assassination attempt by Baath party agents for his opposition to its rule, said he supported punishment of party members proven to have committed crimes against the Iraqi people.

But he said the candidate ban before the election, seen as crucial to solidifying Iraq's young democracy and settling disputes over territory and vast oil reserves, was indiscriminate and a ploy to eliminate election rivals and detract from the current government's failures.

GROSS FAILURE

"Frankly what I see is the gross failure of the government in providing services, in providing security, in reducing unemployment and having a clear cut foreign policy...to cover these failures they are attacking others," Allawi said.'

Ayad Jamal Aldin

From Wikipedia:

'Ayad Jamal Al-Din (in Arabic : إياد جمال الدين) is an Iraqi member of parliament as part of the Iraqi National List. An islamic state secularist, he advocates the separation of church and state. He is quoted as saying:

We are like a bird born in a cage — America broke the cage open, but the bird does not know how to fly.

He is a young, Shia cleric, best known for his consistent campaigning for a new, secular Iraq. He first rose to prominence at the Nasiriyah conference in March 2003, shortly before the fall of Saddam, where he called for a state free of religion, the turban and other theological symbols. In 2005, he was elected as one of the 25 MPs on the Iraqi National List, but withdrew in 2009 after becoming disenchanted with Iyad Allawi’s overtures to Iran. He wants complete independence from Iranian interference in Iraq. He now leads the Ahrar party for the 2010 election to the Council of Representatives, on a policy platform to clean up corruption and create a strong, secure and liberated Iraq for the future.

He was born in Najaf in 1961 which remains home for most of his family, although he now lives in Baghdad. He has several brothers and sisters and his late father was a literary scholar, with over 50 books to his credit, and his uncle was the famous poet Sayed Mustafa Jamal Aldin. Although he eventually trained as a cleric, he was brought up in an environment where science, culture, poetry and religion were studied hand-in-hand. That is where his belief that our problems are ‘human problems first’, and not Sunni or Turkmen or Kurd problems.

Well known in Iraq for his stand against corruption, he is on record as saying that his mission is to see an end to the corruption that has seen politicians subvert religion to their own needs, and use their sects to determine their success.

His first public appearance was at the age of 16, when he protested against the state’s attempt to prevent other Shias from making a pilgrimage to Karbala. And that is why he campaigns for ALL parties to declare who is funding them, how they are controlled, and for an end to outside interference in Iraq’s politics.

He paid for his protest with his freedom, being exiled to Syria and later Iran, where he studied the Qu’ran and Shari’a for eight years and earned his masters degree in Philosophy. He is on record saying that he does not want a secular state in order to reduce the role of God in people's lives; he wants to liberate religion from the state. He wants to see an end to the political sectarianism that puts Kurd against Shia and Turkmen against Sunni, believing that “we have a shared history, and we have a shared destiny”. He has consistently argued that freedom, tolerance and security walk hand-in-hand.

He is the father of six children – three boys and three girls.'

Allawi got a Ba'athi endorsement??

I find it odd that former Iraqi Prime Minister and US ally Iyad Allawi has been endorsed by the Ba'ath party. Religiously inclined Iraqi Shia like Shaqawa dislike Allawi. Sunni Arabs have hated him since the beginning, and especially since the big battles of Falluja and Najaf, so the Baathi endorsement of Allawi seems quite bizarre. I have always thought that Allawi would be good for Iraq - he is a secular nationalist who fought Saddam's regime for decades, but he did terribly in the last elections, presumably BECAUSE he is secular. His close ties with the CIA does not help his case either. The Ba'athi endorsement of Allawi has probably hurt his standing with Iraqi Shia, but what do the Sunni Arabs think of him now? What do the Americans think of him?


Allawi Gets a Ba'athist Endorsement
Thursday, Aug. 30, 2007 By BOBBY GHOSH/AMMAN, JORDAN

'Iyad Allawi's bid to become Iraq's Prime Minister again has received an endorsement from an unexpected source: the Ba'ath Party. A spokesman for the exiled leadership of Saddam Hussein's old party told TIME that Allawi "is the best person at this time to be given the task of ruling Iraq." He said he hoped that Allawi would pave the way for the Ba'ath Party to "return to the political life of Iraq, where we rightfully belong."

The spokesman, known only as Abu Hala, said the Ba'ath leadership under Saddam's deputy, Izzat al-Douri, were "more than willing to work with Allawi, because we see him as a nationalist and Iraqi patriot, and not a sectarian figure." He said the party didn't agree with all of Allawi's policies when he headed a transitional Iraqi government in 2004, but "we have no doubt that he would represent the interests of Iraq, not of Shi'ites or Sunnis or any other group." '

Allawi visits Kingdom of Saud

Hashemi goes to Iran, and Allawi goes to KSA. I wonder what they talk about at these meetings.

Iyad Allawi Makes Surprise Saudi Visit
Unclear Why Former Iraqi PM in Riyadh; Speculation He's Hoping For Comeback

Riyadh, March 13, (VOI) - Former Iraqi Premier Iyad Allawi arrived on Tuesday in Riyadh on an official visit to Saudi Arabia, an official source said. Iyad Allawi, former Iraqi Prime Minister and head of the secular Iraqi National parliamentary bloc, arrived on Tuesday in the Saudi capital Riyadh on an official visit to discuss with officials the latest developments in Iraq, an official source told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI). Allawi's visit coincides with presence of Iraq’s Kurdistan’s president, Massoud al-Barazani, also currently on a visit to Riyadh. Allawi is head of the Iraqi National List, holding 25 seats out of the 275-member parliament.

Allawi Plotting to Bring Down Maliki?

Allawi Plotting to Bring Down Maliki?

Sadrist Site Warns of Opposition Efforts to Depose Government

Iraqi MPs, led by former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi, may make a play at replacing the Maliki government with a government of "national salvation," the Sadrist website nahrainnet.net is warning.

The site refers to broadcast reports from Sawt al-Iraq which suggest a plan involving ex-PM Allawi and his "Iraqi National List" bloc, along with the Iraqi Accord Front, and some members of the governing Shi'a bloc, with the goal of "pulling the rug out" from under the governing coalition and achieving a no-confidence vote in PM Maliki himself.

According the the report, the major goals of this bloc include the repeal of the de-Ba'thification law, and the reintegration of some former Ba'thists into the state. The Sadrist site, naturally, opposes this policy. Nahrainnet.net also wonders if this rumor is part of a larger plot to strike down the new-found power of the Iraqi Shi'a, and push back the Sadrist current.

In another report, nahrainnet.net points to meetings that Allawi held in Iraq and in Amman, Jordan, with various Iraqi opposition leaders as further evidence of this alleged upcoming maneuver.