The Allawi question:patriot or pawn?

His past ties to Saddam and the CIA have polarized his countrymen.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- In just three weeks in power, Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has threatened to annihilate the country's insurgents -- and publicly mulled an amnesty for fighters who come in from the cold. He's praised unpopular U.S. airstrikes on Fallujah and reopened the newspaper of a renegade Shiite cleric that was shut down by the Americans.
And while he's promising to shepherd Iraq to democracy, his principal public moves have been to reconstitute Iraq's domestic spy network and pass a law that would give him martial-law powers if he deems it necessary.
Allawi, who spent 28 years in exile, is Iraq's improbable new tough-guy leader. Much of his time outside the country was spent in intrigues with the likes of Britain's MI6 and the CIA against the regime of Saddam Hussein. With close ties to many of the Baath Party officials who served the old regime but also deeply reliant on the United States, he has sought to blend pragmatism and threat into a cocktail that will co-opt some insurgents and leave the hard-core ones isolated and withering.
His approach was perfected by one of his earliest political allies: Saddam. But, unlike his long-ago co-conspirator, Allawi promises he is seeking only to get Iraq on sound enough footing to hold elections by the end of next January.
Yet his early political career wasn't exactly a model of democratic commitment. Allawi participated in coups and served time in jail for his activities. Later, he survived being axed by would-be assassins sent by Saddam, underlining his tough guy credentials. He was also the source for some of the controversial prewar intelligence that proved to be false.
Two views
Allawi's past ties to Saddam, and his later close working relationship with foreign intelligence, either provide him with the contacts and guile needed to pacify a deeply fractious and unstable nation or make him wholly unsuited to the job, depending whom you talk to.
"We're meant to believe that this CIA agent is independent and acts in the interests of the Iraqi people?" asked Mahdi Ahmed al-Sumaidi, a Sunni preacher who favors the establishment of Islamic law here and backs the insurgency against the U.S. presence and the interim government.
His aides and close friends say such criticism is badly misplaced.
"This man is a great patriot," said Col. Imad al-Shibib, now head of the Iraqi National Accord's political bureau. The INA is Allawi's party. Before that, Shibib served as the director general of Iraq's civil defense department for 15 years under Saddam. "Allawi is a man of principal, clear-minded and patient. And he knows how Iraq works. He's not going to expand his circle of enemies unnecessarily."
Indeed, Allawi is tentatively reaching out to some potential opponents. On Sunday, his office announced that the Al-Hawza newspaper of the militant Shiite cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr will be allowed to reopen. The U.S. closed the paper in April, sparking large protests. Allawi has also met with representatives from some of the fighters in Fallujah.
Insurgency continues
The extent of the challenge before Allawi has been starkly illustrated in the weeks since he took power on June 28. A wave of car bombings and assassinations has shown that the U.S. decision to install an interim government hasn't undermined the will of the insurgency. Allawi recently vowed to "annihilate" his opponents.
On Sunday, a group headed by Al-Qaida ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi offered $282,000 for the assassination of Allawi, according to a note on an Islamist Web site -- part of an ongoing war of words between the two men.
To his friends, Allawi is just the man to back up his tough talk. But his first few weeks in power have also seen the former Baathist dodging controversy. His foreign-intelligence ties have made him an easy target from domestic opponents.
He has also been accused of murder. Over the weekend, Australia's The Age newspaper cited two anonymous sources as saying they witnessed Allawi murder six alleged insurgents with a pistol at an Interior Ministry compound in mid- to late June. The report drew vigorous denials from Allawi and his aides.
But the story was widely believed because of Allawi's past. And that's not necessarily a draw-back. The most popular things he's done so far have been to reinstate the death penalty and to order mass arrests of alleged criminal gang members, with police delivering public beatings to many of the suspects.