Back to the era of coups in Iraq?

Time was, back in the 1960s, that Baghdad was plagued by successive coups d’etat. Was that another one we saw there today, with Baghdad fashion maven Paul Bremer and his pals on the IGC launching a “pre-emptive strike” on Lakhdar Brahimi’s ability to do the job that he thought had been entrusted to him, namely, taking a lead role in assembling Iraq’s new “transitional” leadership?
Sure looked like a bit of a coup to me.
Bremer and the pals may think they’ve “pulled a fast one” on Brahimi by “naming” Iyad Allawi as the interim PM. But I’m sure that by doing that they will also have conisderably complicated the present Iraq-related diplomacy at the Security Council.
Brahimi, certainly, came across fairly miffed in his reaction to the IGC’s “news”. And I’m sure that Kofi Annan and several weighty members of the security Council will be miffed, as well.
And that matters. After all, what use would it be to Allawi to be the “Prime Minister” of a government that is still considered–like the existing IGC–to be totally a creation of the US occupation forces? If he can’t be “Prime Minister” under an arrangement that includes a strong new U.N. resolution that significantly dilutes US control in Iraq, then I wonder why on earth he would consider the job to be worth having at all?
Ah well, people can be funny, I guess… Especially when there’s the scent of all those billions of dollars of US “reconstruction aid” that might be attached to the job… Certainly, in the photo accompanying the Al-Jazeera story on the topic, Allawi already looks as if he’s laughing all the way to the bank…

6 thoughts on “Back to the era of coups in Iraq?”

  1. “Ah well, people can be funny, I guess… Especially when there’s the scent of all those billions of dollars of US “reconstruction aid” that might be attached to the job…”
    Do you mean U.S. taxpayer funded reconstruction aid or Iraq oil funded reconstruction aid? I would imagine he would be interested in both.

  2. This is probably abuse of your comments, but here are my thoughts on the appointment of Allawi and related stuff. It was written for the CASI list, which explains why there are footnotes rather than links. Apologies for incoherence:
    The best reporting I’ve found on the appointment of Iyad Allawi as PM is
    by Steven Weisman and Warren Hoge in the NYT [18].
    Weisman and other journalists are doing a pretty good job of explaining
    how this was a shock move by the IGC (which, on past form, I suppose
    everyone expected to be divided and indecisive), and how Brahimi, and even
    Washington, are a bit unnerved by it. Several other aspects strike me as
    fascinating. I

  4. Helena, I have to admit to feeling some nostalgia for the “era of coups”. For starters, at least Iraqis knew something the Americans clearly do not – how to bring regime change in Iraq with minimum disturbance of daily life. There would be a few days of curfew, and then life went on as usual for the overwhelming majority. Kids were happy because there would be no school for two or three days. If you were running a household, as soon as you realized what was happening you had to check your food supplies to see if you needed to make a quick shopping trip, and you had to decide whether it was best to send the servants home or keep them with you for the duration. After a few days everything was back to mormal for the majority, and you just went on with your life, with a different government.

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