Monday, January 17, 2005

The Real Iyad Allawi: Jon Lee Anderson of the New Yorker thought that I was unfair to him in a previous post. Here he has a long and informative article on Iyad Allawi appearing this week in the New Yorker which provides the most detailed account about Allawi's background and previous life. But here are my comments: Anderson relies too much on Allawi's own account about his background--he corrects that later in the article; he should have run some claims by Allawi with the historical records. Allawi typically brags to an American reporter that he met with people "on the fringes" of the resistance. He is lying, again. He would never dare say that to Arab reporters who know the truth. Evertime he meets with tribal leaders, he tells Western reporters that he has met with "resistance leaders" and the New York Times reporters are quick to be impressed with the "tough" puppet. Also, Anderson start with the account of the meeting with Majid Abdur-Razzaq As-Sulayman. of the Dulaymi tribe. He is not the "chief" of the Dulaymi tribe. There are several, and often rival, chiefs of the Dulaymi tribe, and this is one of many. Also, Anderson early on talks about Allawi's involvement with the Ba`th in its early years, although he later on talks about his involvement until--in Allawi's own words--1975, long after the long bloody record of Saddam's regime. Allawi denies his involvement with the Iraqi Mukhabarat because according to him it did not exist prior to 1973. 1), he was involved with the regime until 1975; and 2) more importantly, the Mukhabarat existed prior to the use of the name mukhabarat. He is playing on words here with Anderson. At one point, when Saddam was in charge of the mukhabarat, it was simply known as "Office of Public Relations", I kid you not; 3) If there was no Mukhabarat before 1973, what did the brutal torturer Nadhim Kzar, who is praised by Allawi in his bio-epic on Al-Arabiyya TV do in his post which he held UNTIL 1973? Allawi's claim that he was inovlved in the 1968 coup (a dubious honor unless you were a Saddam Ba`thist) is not substantiated in any credible history of the era. Also, Allawi was in Lebanon at the time, and remote control technologies were pretty primitive back then. Allawi of course obfuscates when talking about his role as HEAD of the Iraqi Ba`thist activities in Europe. What were the Ba`thists doing in Europe at the time, when they were aligned with the notorious Abu Nidal, except assassinations, harrassments, thuggery, crimes, and surveillance. Anderson states that Allawi's relations with CIA began in 1992, and the liar Allawi told Al-Arabiyya that the did not meet with the Americans until 1993. Anderson talks about Allawi's "business" in Yemen, but does not mention the embezzlement suits still pending against him there. Anderson should also have mentioned Allawi's ties with Saudi, South Yemeni, Egyptian, and other intelligence services. I agree with Anderson that Allawi may be behind the rumors of his execution of Iraqi prisoners to send a tough guy image about himself in Iraq. Like Newt Gingrich, Allawi divorced his 1st wife after she got ill. This quotation from the article sums up the views of this criminal Saddam thug/car bomber/embezzler that US installed in Iraq: "[Allawi] said Iraqis had become liars and cheats and murderers, and only respected brute force, and that was how he had to deal with them." I disagree with this racist description of course but I do believe that Allawi is indeed a liar, cheat, and a murderer.