Some Find Ties to CIA, Baath Party Worrisome

As leader of Iraq’s interim government, Iyad Allawi will have to convince his countrymen that neither his long-ago membership in the Baath Party nor his longtime CIA connections will keep him from leading Iraq in just seven months to its first free elections.

Allawi, 58, who during decades in exile built a party of former Baathists and ex-military officers, was named to become interim prime minister Friday after receiving the backing of fellow Iraqi Governing Council members.

To those who want to build a democratic future on Iraq’s authoritarian past, Allawi’s record may be worrisome. In postwar Iraq, he fought U.S.-led efforts to disband the old army and purge Baathists from government. And when a Governing Council member was assassinated last year, Allawi moved to ban two Arabic-language satellite TV channels from covering government affairs, saying they had been “irresponsible.”

But as an unflinching advocate of a strong Iraqi security service and a strong government, Allawi may be what Jordan’s King Abdullah meant when he said recently that Iraq needed a “strong man” to guide it in the coming months.

“Iyad is somebody who is military-minded, wants a strong government, believes in a strong army,” said one Iraqi observer, who asked not to be named.

Having come of age amid the chaos of Iraq’s modern history, Allawi, a member of the Shiite Muslim majority, is a far cry from the dispassionate expert that U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi originally said he was hoping to find.

“I had to laugh when I heard,” said one analyst who consults with the Bush administration on its Iraq policies. “This guy is the quintessential politician.”

The Governing Council’s action requires consultation with the U.N. and the Coalition Provisional Authority before the interim government takes office July 1.

Founder of the Iraqi National Accord, an exile political party, Allawi has long been known for his close ties to the CIA. In fact, some Iraqis interpreted his elevation Friday to prime minister-designate as evidence that the CIA had trumped the Pentagon in the administration’s internal war over which agency should shape Iraq. The Pentagon’s civilian leadership had backed Allawi rival Ahmad Chalabi for years. Chalabi’s home and headquarters were raided last week by Iraqi police, backed by U.S. troops, as part of a corruption investigation.

As head of the Governing Council’s security committee, Allawi has been immersed in efforts to develop new Iraqi internal security and police forces. A cousin, Ali Allawi, is the defense minister.

Allawi’s criticism of the U.S. decision to disband the army and dismiss thousands of Baath Party members from their jobs may win him support from disaffected Sunni Muslims, one analyst said.

“As an old-time Baathist, he will be acceptable to many Sunni ex-Baathists, because he is pan-Arab and he is secular and they are pan-Arab and secular,” said Amatzia Baram, an Israeli scholar at the United States Institute of Peace who has studied Iraq for decades. “The fact that he worked with the Americans for many years, they will forgive him.”

Iraqi Shiites, Baram said, are likely to regard Allawi with greater ambivalence because of his Western lifestyle and his antipathy toward Iran, a nation with which many Iraqi Shiites identify.

Born into a prominent Baghdad Shiite family, Allawi joined the Baath Party as a youth in 1961. By his own account, he fervently embraced the party’s philosophy that promoted Arab unity and Arab nationalism. But by 1971, he had become disenchanted with how Iraqi leader Ahmad Hassan Bakr and, later, his successor, Saddam Hussein, distorted what Allawi regarded as true Baathism to build a tyrannical regime.

Allawi fled with his family to Lebanon and then to Britain. There, he became a neurologist and is believed to have begun working for the British and American intelligence services.

Allawi’s militant stance against the Iraqi regime and close ties with Britain and the U.S. made him a marked man. In 1978, a year before Hussein came to power, knife-wielding assassins believed to be from the Iraqi intelligence services attacked Allawi in his London home as he lay in bed. He fought off his assailants, but suffered serious wounds to both legs.

In 1996, Allawi’s party, backed by the CIA, attempted a coup against Hussein that failed. Allawi’s supporters and critics alike say his years of exile and his months in the tumult of postwar Iraq have prepared him for what undoubtedly will be the hardest task of his life -- leading his war-ravaged nation from the shadow of Hussein’s dictatorship and the trauma of the U.S.-led occupation to its first free elections.

Critics fear he will do that by building a strong security service that may stymie efforts to build democracy. Supporters hope he will help restore order and make democratization possible.

During his years in the tangled world of Iraqi exile politics, he became a bitter rival of another secular Shiite with close ties to Washington -- Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress.

“Allawi is from the old school of the Iraqi opposition,” said the Iraqi analyst who requested anonymity. “He knows everybody in the game and everybody knows him.”

Since last year, Allawi has paid at least three firms several hundred thousand dollars -- from money he collects from wealthy exiles and other supporters -- to help raise his profile with lawmakers and journalists.

But one Western diplomat said that Allawi’s Baathist past, his prominence as an Iraqi exile leader and his ties to the CIA had all kept him from being the preferred candidate of either the Bush administration or Brahimi. Appointing Allawi to the premiership, the diplomat said, “hardly communicates the message of a clean break with the past,” that the international community has been pushing for as a sign that the planned U.S. return of sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30 is more than symbolic.

“He’s probably not much more popular inside Iraq than Chalabi,” said Judith Yaphe, a specialist on Iraq. “There are going to be charges that he’s corrupt because he has been supported by the CIA for a long time. But nobody’s going to be pure.”

In the end, she said, the U.S. agreed because “there was a potential for the Iraqi Governing Council to try to stiff us.” And the U.S., with the clock ticking toward its self-imposed deadline, needed to find a candidate that the council would back.

In the end, Baram said, “any politician who would take this job of prime minister will be on parole and be under scrutiny to make sure he is not using the job to secure his political future.”

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Iyad Allawi profile

* Neurologist and businessman.

* Involved in the opposition since the 1970s.

* Survived 1978 assassination attempt while in exile in London.

* Founded the Iraqi National Accord, which advocated a coup against Saddam Hussein.

* While organizing Iraqi opposition in exile, Allawi had support from CIA, State Department and British intelligence officials.

Credit: AP/Los Angeles Times