Ayad Allawi’s Comeback Plan

For­mer Iraqi Prime Min­is­ter and CIA asset Ayad Allawi kicks his cam­paign up a notch to get restored to the premier’s office in an op-ed for the Wash­ing­ton Post, in which he out­lines a plan for Iraq. What’s the plan? (Other than return­ing Allawi to power, of course.) First: fawn over the United States as hav­ing lit­tle blame for the prob­lems in Iraq. Sec­ond, harshly crit­i­cize Iraqi Prime Min­is­ter Nouri al-Maliki for sec­tar­i­an­ism and being unable to orga­nize a two-car parade. (Totally jus­ti­fied charges, by the way.) Three: Know which way the polit­i­cal winds in Wash­ing­ton are blow­ing and sug­gest a with­drawal of Amer­i­can troops over the next two years and a change in mis­sion before that.
After that, it’s mostly details. Declare a state of emer­gency in Iraq (which was pretty much the sta­tus quo under Allawi) and absorb the var­i­ous Sunni and Shi’ite mili­tias into the secu­rity forces. Allawi comes out strongly against a loose con­fed­er­a­tion model for Iraq and praises the Kurds for their democ­racy. It’s an op-ed long on ver­biage, but short on specifics. Just how will he incor­po­rate the mili­tias into a non-sectarian com­mand struc­ture? How will he “empower local and provin­cial insti­tu­tions at the expense of sec­tar­ian pol­i­tics and an all-powerful and over­bear­ing Bagh­dad”? No clue. One of the few specifics: The ex-Ba’athist calls for the rever­sal of the de-Ba’athification law.
Here you can read an inter­view I did with Allawi while he was still in office back in 2004.

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