Baghdad, Iraq – In late September, 10 days after U.S. and Iraqi troops swept into Tall Afar to clear it of insurgent fighters, six trucks drove into the city. The drivers distributed food, water and emergency medical supplies.
They also told the grateful refugees whom to thank: the former prime minister, Ayad Allawi, and his party, the Iraqi National Accord.
Iraq’s next election season has begun and Allawi, a former exile and American protégé, is barnstorming the region and seeking support for a broad new secular alliance that could sweep him back to power when votes are cast Dec. 15.
His goal is to create a political center that would displace the sectarian agendas of the competing religious parties.
“We are getting all the liberal democratic forces together as a secular movement because we feel that these forces are the only ones who will be able to unite the country,” Allawi said in a recent interview in his London offices.
It is a message certain to appeal to the Bush administration, which has seen its vision for a unified Iraq fracture along sectarian lines over the past few months, and which still has a powerful influence.
The message may also appeal to middle-class Iraqis. Many of them lament the loss of the secularism of the era of Saddam Hussein and accuse the governing Shiite religious parties of deepening Iraq’s divisions.
Allawi’s nascent campaign is the latest chapter in an effort that spans decades. He returned to Iraq in 2003, along with other U.S.-backed exiles.
After his rival, Ahmad Chalabi, fell out of favor last year, Allawi was chosen as transitional prime minister by the Americans.
Months later, Allawi watched as a Shiite political alliance – including Chalabi – swept Iraq’s first free elections, leaving the Iraqi National Accord with only 40 of the National Assembly’s 275 seats.
The coming election could be different. The Shiite alliance that won a majority of seats in January appears to be falling apart, torn by internal rivalries. The Shiite cleric whose blessing helped win votes for the alliance last time, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has said he will not favor any particular group.
But the obstacles are daunting and include Allawi’s history as a CIA favorite and the difficulties of secular campaigns in Iraq.
Allawi had planned a “national unity” conference in Baghdad to unite moderate parties, with simultaneous satellite meetings in two other Iraqi cities. But all three events were postponed because of security concerns.
Some of Allawi’s rivals, meanwhile, reach thousands every week at Friday prayer in a grassroots network that secular candidates cannot match. Religious zealots such as the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr have a vast following among the young and poor and a corresponding influence among more moderate figures.
Some Shiite politicians have begun portraying Allawi as an American puppet with no popular base in Iraq.
“Can Allawi grab the imagination of moderate Iraqis?” asked Ghassan al-Atiyya, a secular Shiite and the director of the Iraqi Foundation for Development and Democracy, a Baghdad research institute. “I am a secular liberal, but I fear that the high moral ground for many people will be that of anti-American figures such as Sadr and the Sunni parties.”
The secular parties hope to draw in the largely secular Kurds, who make up a fifth of Iraq’s population, and to present themselves as a mainstream alternative to voters within the fragmented Shiite and Sunni camps.
