[JNV Announce] Allawi visits UK - letter writings suggestions

[Milan Rai]

1) Some sample letters of protest
2) Hersh Allawi profile
3) Links for Allawi execution allegations


Dear friends

Iyad Allawi, unelected interim prime minister of Iraq, former Ba'athist thug, former terrorist, and now a quisling for the US/UK occupation, visited Britain and met Tony Blair yesterday, on his way to Washington. The 'serious' British newspapers today did nothing to challenge his 'democratic credentials', or to inquire into his rather unsavoury past. He was simply referred to as the 'interim prime minister' or even 'the prime minister' (Guardian, p. 4).

If you would like to challenge this legitimation of Allawi, please write to the newspapers.

letters@guardian.co.uk
dtletters@telegraph.co.uk
letters@ft.com
letters@thetimes.co.uk
letters@independent.co.uk

1) Some sample (overlong) letters

Letter to the Guardian

I find it extraordinary that you chose to pass over the first visit of Iyad Allawi to these shores without remarking on the brutal background and character of this unelected, US-selected, leader of Iraq.

Instead of the candidate chosen by the UN, after long and wide-ranging consultations, the US selected as interim prime minister a British citizen, ‘a long-term protégé of the CIA and MI6 who has spent much of his life in exile’, as the Observer pointed out (Peter Beaumont, Luke Harding, Paul Harris, Gaby Hinsliff, ‘UN sidelined in choice of Iraqi leader’, Observer, 30 May 2004, p. 22), and a man who ‘according to the opinion polls, has almost no backing in Iraq’ (Jonathan Steele, in these pages). (‘How honest broker was defeated - and with him hopes of credibility’, Guardian, 3 June 2004, p. 4) Allawi was chosen as a safe pair of hands, who would applaud every missile strike and every bloody siege.

Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker was told by Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA case officer who served in the Middle East, that, ‘Allawi helped Saddam get to power. He was a very effective operator and a true believer.’ Moving to London in the 1970s, Allawi continued his services to Saddam. ‘If you’re asking me if Allawi has blood on his hands from his days in London, the answer is yes, he does,’ Vincent Cannistraro, another former CIA officer told Hersh. Hersh was told by a ‘cabinet-level Middle East diplomat’ that Allawi was involved with a Mukhabarat ‘hit team’ that sought out and killed Ba’ath Party dissenters throughout Europe.

During the 1990s, Allawi was head of the Iraqi National Accord, which carried out a string of terrorist attacks in Baghdad, killing an estimated 100 civilians with no-warning car bombs. Most recently, one of Australia’s most eminent journalists found two eye-witnesses who claim to have seen Allawi shoot dead six bound and unarmed prisoners in a police station in Baghdad just weeks before taking power as interim prime minister.

Allawi has enthusiastically been re-appointing former Ba’athists to power, including senior members of the Mukhabarat intelligence agency, the torture centre of the old regime.

All these are matters of enormous significance to future of Iraq. It beggars belief that none of them were raised in this newspaper.

Yours sincerely

Milan Rai


Letter to The Times:

You offer staunch support for interim Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi, and echo his call for the United Nations to 'do everything in its power to assist the democratic process' in Iraq. ('The crucible', September 20) This is rather like supporting the hammer in its call for the nut to pull itself together.

The United Nations was requested by Washington and London to create a consensual process for appointing a new Iraqi interim government, based on wide-ranging consultations. When the date approached for the appointments to be made, however, Iyad Allawi led the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council in capsizing the UN process, and declaring him interim prime minister after the US had blocked the other two Shia candidates put forward by the Governing Council.

Mr Allawi was chosen by the US to lead Iraq, despite being the most unpopular political leader in Iraq, despite his history of enthusiastic service to Saddam's Ba'athist regime until the mid-1970s, despite his close connections with MI6 and the CIA, despite his leadership of a terrorist no-warning car bomb campaign in Baghdad in the 1990s, and despite the credible reports that he had shot dead six bound prisoners in a Baghdad police station just weeks before taking office as prime minister.

How can the UN, whose role in assisting the democratic process in Iraq was summarily terminated by Mr Allawi (working with Washington) in May, help move the process forward now?

Yours sincerely

Milan Rai


Letter to FT:

May I point out a few pertinent facts? Selected largely by the US (which blocked the other candidates put forward by the former Iraqi Governing Council), Mr Allawi is a British citizen, a long-term protégé of the CIA and MI6, and a man whose early enthusiastic support for Saddam Hussein was, according to investigative US reporter Seymour Hersh, channelled into a Ba'athist 'hit team' which travelled Europe policing (and, if necessary, killing) dissident Iraqis living abroad.

During the 1990s, Mr Allawi's party, the Iraqi National Accord, carried out no-warning car bombs in Baghdad which may have killed 100 civilians. Most recently, Mr Allawi has been accused, by credible reports in the Australian press, of executing six prisoners in a Baghdad police station. Mr Allawi has enthusiastically been re-appointing former Ba'athists to power, including senior members of the Mukhabarat intelligence agency, men who also have blood on their hands.

Mr Allawi was selected by the US not because of these kinds of democratic credentials, or because he speaks for the Iraqi people (the polls say he is the most unpopular political leader in Iraq), but because he is a safe pair of hands, who will applaud every missile strike and every bloody siege.

Yours sincerely

Milan Rai



2) Allawi profile


'PLAN B', Seymour Hersh, New Yorker, 28 June 2004
<http://newyorker.com/fact/content/?040628fa_fact>


The White House has yet to deal with Allawi's past. His credentials as a neurologist, and his involvement during the past two decades in anti-Saddam activities, as the founder of the British-based Iraqi National Accord, have been widely reported. But his role as a Baath Party operative while Saddam struggled for control in the nineteen-sixties and seventies - Saddam became President in 1979 - is much less well known.


"Allawi helped Saddam get to power," an American intelligence officer told me. "He was a very effective operator and a true believer." Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former C.I.A. case officer who served in the Middle East, added, "Two facts stand out about Allawi. One, he likes to think of himself as a man of ideas; and, two, his strongest virtue is that he's a thug."


Early this year, one of Allawi's former medical-school classmates, Dr. Haifa al-Azawi, published an essay in an Arabic newspaper in London raising questions about his character and his medical bona fides. She depicted Allawi as a "big husky man . . . who carried a gun on his belt and frequently brandished it, terrorizing the medical students."


Allawi's medical degree, she wrote, "was conferred upon him by the Baath party." Allawi moved to London in 1971, ostensibly to continue his medical education; there he was in charge of the European operations of the Baath Party organization and the local activities of the Mukhabarat, its intelligence agency, until 1975.


"If you're asking me if Allawi has blood on his hands from his days in London, the answer is yes, he does," Vincent Cannistraro, the former C.I.A. officer, said. "He was a paid Mukhabarat agent for the Iraqis, and he was involved in dirty stuff."


A cabinet-level Middle East diplomat, who was rankled by the U.S. indifference to Allawi's personal history, told me early this month that Allawi was involved with a Mukhabarat "hit team" that sought out and killed Baath Party dissenters throughout Europe. (Allawi's office did not respond to a request for comment.)


At some point, for reasons that are not clear, Allawi fell from favor, and the Baathists organized a series of attempts on his life. The third attempt, by an axe-wielding assassin who broke into his home near London in 1978, resulted in a year-long hospital stay.



3) LINKS FOR

A) Allawi executes six prisoners: <http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/16/1089694568757.html?oneclick=true>
or <http://tinyurl.com/3lhnx>

B) Allawi profile by Sydney Morning Herald: <http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/16/1089694565543.html?from=moreStories&oneclick=true>
or <http://tinyurl.com/5xnjp>