And while trying to welcome back officers from the Iraqi army that was disbanded by Bremer, he must decide whether he is willing to establish more brigades like the one controlling Fallouja. U.S. Marines withdrew from that turbulent city this spring, leaving it in the hands of former Iraqi army officers with close ties to the insurgents.
Resolving any of these policy issues will be far harder than the steps he has taken so far, which have cost him little but reaped large benefits.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Thursday July 08, 2004 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 62 words Type of Material: Correction
Iraqi handover -- A news analysis about the new Iraqi government in Sunday's Section A stated that outgoing administrator L. Paul Bremer III did not give a farewell speech to the country. His spokesman has since said that Bremer taped an address that was given to Iraqi broadcast media. The spokesman said the address was not publicized to the Western news media.
Knowing that his honeymoon with the Iraqi public may end abruptly when the next major bombing brings destruction and death to Baghdad or Basra, Allawi is trying to forestall that day. He has created a security committee made up of the ministers of defense, the interior, foreign affairs and finance that coordinates with the U.S. military. The police are cracking down on conventional criminal activity: carjacking, kidnapping and robbery. He is reconstituting some of the instruments of the old security state, such as its Mukhabarat secret police and its intelligence service, former agents say.
One problem for Allawi, says Juan Cole, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at the University of Michigan, is that no matter how he tries to reach out to Iraq's many groups, he risks alienating one he needs.
For instance, he is trying to craft an amnesty that could include not only firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr but also Sunni insurgents, among them many of the ex-Baathists.
"I'm not sure that this way of dealing with the past that can survive for very long," Cole said, adding that what was really needed was a catharsis: "The Sunni Arabs have to find a way to take responsibility and repent for what they've done, and Kurds and Shias have to be willing to forgive."
Nonetheless, Allawi has gotten considerable political mileage out of talking about policies that appeal to swaths of the population without nailing down the particulars. The new government's approval rating is above 80%, according to polls done for the former U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority.
Even before authority was officially transferred to Iraqis, Allawi showed an instinct for how to use the public stage, especially on security issues.
When a car bomb tore through a crowd waiting outside an army recruitment center in Baghdad on June 17, Allawi rushed to the scene. Against a backdrop of blackened, twisted metal, shattered glass and blood-streaked victims, he pledged to "face these escalations." And he assured Iraqis that his government would be "determined to go ahead in confronting the enemies, whether they are here in Iraq or whether they are anywhere else in the world."
