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Tuesday, August 10, 2004
Prime minister reseats strongman rule to Iraq
News-Journal Editorial
In the last week alone, the Iraqi prime minister shut down the offices of Al-Jazeera, the Arab news channel, restored the death penalty (declaring it applicable to a disturbingly broad list of offenses) and ordered his chief political rival arrested. And he vowed to crush Shiite insurgents with American forces, without negotiations or cease-fires.
Has Saddam Hussein been replaced with Saddam Alawi? The question is relevant to the American electorate if the president continues to promise, as he did last week in Minnesota, that he's keeping "our commitments to help . . . Iraq become democratic, free and therefore peaceful."
The American occupation authority appointed Ayad Allawi prime minister in June, shortly before handing sovereignty back to Iraqi leaders. Allawi's reputation was troublesome. He'd been a Baathist operative and ally of Saddam in the early years of the regime, in charge of tracking exiles critical of Saddam. He became an exile himself, disappearing for many years, re-emerging as an operative for the British and American intelligence services, and surviving an assassination attempt. Last February, The Economist reported that, as chairman of the interim governing council, he had "begun creating a new version of the feared secret police," and his rivals accused him of "recruiting former torturers to man a new apparatus of oppression."
Still, President Bush called Allawi "a strong leader" and "an Iraqi patriot" in June, and endorsed him as Iraq's prime minister. There wasn't a gallery of eminent statesmen to choose from; Saddam's 30-some years of repression made sure of that. Nevertheless, Allawi's past — and his recent displays of power on the governing council — ensured he would inspire more fear than trust. Perhaps that's his intention. Iraqis, he says, want a "secure life," free of the prospect of roadside bombs and insurgencies. The implication is that freedom and civil rights are a luxury at the moment. But that's usually the rhetorical justification of every young, repressive regime. Allawi's methods, which have met with little resistance from the American-led coalition, point in that direction.
During Saddam's reign, the death penalty was used liberally as a political tool to eliminate dissent and intimidate potential challengers to the regime. Executions were frequent and arbitrary and so scarred the nation's psyche that one of the earliest decrees by the American occupation authority was to suspend the death penalty. By restoring it, Allawi is recalling a recent past the "liberation" of Iraq was to have left in the past. And he's doing so radically. When a capital offense is defined as any act "endangering national security," attacks on the country's infrastructure or "crimes affecting transportation," the door is again open for politically motivated death sentences.
Freedom of the press has been a spotty affair in Iraq. Al-Jazeera's news reports may not be to the liking of a few governments. But its satellite service is hugely popular throughout the Middle East. Punitively shutting down Al-Jazeera's offices in Iraq for at least one month reinforces the image of Allawi as a bullying tactician rather than as the face of a new and open government. So does restoring an expansive list of death-penalty crimes and ordering the arrest of a political rival.
A free and democratic Iraq didn't looked viable when President Bush was making the case for an invasion in 2003. It looks less viable now.