Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi took power in June 2004
as the Coalition Provisional Authority closed up shop. He had the support
of both the United States and the United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. The
Americans quickly found several issues with the new premier. One of them was
Allawi’s constant trips outside of the country. National Security Adviser
Condoleezza Rice for example, noted
that the prime minister was always flying around the region, and could not always
be contacted. Rice asked, “Are we worried that Allawi is spending ten to eleven
days [a month] outside the country?” Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General
Richard Myers agreed with Rice that Allawi’s constant foreign travel was an
issue. The next year when Allawi was replaced as prime minister he left Iraq for
nearly four years even though he was elected as a member of parliament. When
his Iraqiya list won first place in the 2010 elections he again decided to take
extended tours around the region thinking that would help his chance to become
the prime minister once again, but that only backfired against him. Allawi’s
Iraqi National List was created
in 1990 with the help of the intelligence agencies of Turkey, the Gulf States,
and the west. He has maintained those ties ever since hoping they would help
his political career. Given most of those states antagonistic stance towards
the new Iraq they have not served him well.
SOURCES
Allawi, Ali, The
Occupation of Iraq, Winning The War, Losing the Peace, New Haven and
London: Yale University Press, 2007
BBC, “Profile: Iyad Allawi,” 3/27/10
Galbraith, Peter, “Iraq: The Bungled Transition,” New York
Review of Books, 9/23/04
Gordon, Michael and Trainor, General Bernard, The Endgame, The Inside Story Of The
Struggle For Iraq, From George W. Bush To Barack Obama, New York, Pantheon,
2012
No comments:
Post a Comment