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A MAN OF THE SHADOWS
Can Iyad Allawi hold Iraq together?

...Allawi was anointed Iraq’s leader in June, in a formal ceremony with Paul Bremer III, the outgoing administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority. Since Allawi took office, Iraq has become unmoored by violence, and his efforts to restore security have been the central obsession of his leadership. “I want to see consolidated the rule of law,” he said after we went back outside. “I want to see Iraq unified and strong.” One of his first decisions was to announce a state of emergency, and, in the early weeks of his tenure, Allawi took pains to show that he was a man of decision and courage, habitually rushing—some would say recklessly—to the scenes of car-bomb explosions around Baghdad just after they had occurred. He used these occasions to denounce terrorism and defend the rule of law. (His security advisers eventually dissuaded him from this activity.)

More unnervingly, there have been persistent rumors that, a week or so before he took office, Allawi shot and killed several terrorist suspects being held prisoner at a Baghdad police station. When reporters asked him about the rumors, Allawi denied that he had shot anyone, but added that he would do “everything necessary” to protect Iraqis. I was in Baghdad at the time; although most Iraqis I spoke to believed the rumors, journalists and diplomats speculated that Allawi had spread them himself, in order to bolster his stern reputation.

In late June, however, I sat in on an interview, conducted by Paul McGeough, a reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald, of a man who claimed to have witnessed the executions. He described how Allawi had been taken to seven suspects, who were made to stand against a wall in a courtyard of the police station, their faces covered. After being told of their alleged crimes by a police official, Allawi had asked for a pistol, and then shot each prisoner in the head. Afterward, the witness said, Allawi had declared to those present, “This is how we must deal with the terrorists.” The witness said that he approved of Allawi’s act, adding that, in any case, the terrorists were better off dead, for they had been tortured for days.

In the ensuing months, the story has lingered, never having been either fully confirmed or convincingly denied. (Allawi did not address the incident with me.) During my visit to Jordan, a well-known former government minister told me that an American official had confirmed that the killings took place, saying to him, “What a mess we’re in—we got rid of one son of a bitch only to get another.”...