Doctor, Defector, Patriot, Spy

Many Iraqis denounce former exiles for leading gilded lifestyles abroad while their compatriots back home suffered in hellholes such as Abu Ghraib prison. But Ayad Allawi wasn't a stereotypical "Gucci guerilla." He had wealth, to be sure, but his three decades in exile had their horrors. While living in London, Allawi and his wife were sleeping in bed one night in 1978 when an ax-wielding assassin attacked them. He was struck in the head, chest and right leg, which was nearly severed at the knee. It took him a year to recover from the wounds.

Arriving back in Baghdad on the heels of U.S. forces last year, Allawi began searching for documents related to the assassination attempt. He quietly put the word out to former military and intelligence personnel. Some of them were the very Baathists that Allawi's opposition group, the Iraqi National Accord, had been trying to convert during Saddam Hussein's regime. About a month after American troops entered Baghdad, a former intelligence officer came to Allawi bringing documents and photos. "He confessed he knew about the attack against me," Allawi recalled to NEWSWEEK. The documents spelled out the identities of two hit men, one of them a notorious intelligence-agency assassin who'd murdered victims in Lebanon and Europe. Allawi hired a lawyer to pursue the case. In early December, a formal arrest warrant was signed, naming four suspects--including Saddam Hussein. Allawi recalled, "I felt like I was flying in the sky."

Now Allawi is Iraq's new prime minister. While critics have found much to denounce in the selection of Iraq's new interim government, including Allawi's longstanding links to U.S. and British intelligence, Allawi and President Ghazi al-Yawar now represent Iraq's best hope for stability and growth. This week, Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, weighed in, silencing many of the critics. Sistani urged the new government to lobby the United Nations Security Council for a transfer of "full sovereignty" to Iraqis on June 30, in order to "erase all traces" of the American-run occupation.

Still, nobody knows exactly how Allawi, Yawer and their deputies and ministers are going to perform in the difficult months ahead. Much will depend on whether Iraqis perceive themselves gaining genuine sovereignty after June 30--or simply entering another phase of the U.S. occupation with a new set of American puppets. The factors shaping Iraqi perceptions aren't all, or even mostly, in the hands of the new Iraqi government. In New York, diplomats continue to tussle over a new U.N. resolution that would offer Baghdad enhanced authority over security matters. The United States and Britain have offered a revised draft that would give the new government authority over Iraq's army and police--and would send all U.S. troops home by January 2006. Allawi hastily dispatched Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari to New York with instructions to elbow his way into the U.N. deliberations.

During the past year, Allawi has largely shunned the media spotlight that some of his fellow politicians have hogged, but he's hardly been passive. As head of the Iraqi Governing Council's Security Committee, he devoted long hours to issues regarding Iraq's new military and intelligence apparatus. His handling of the security portfolio, said former IGC member Mahmoud Othman, is precisely why the IGC unanimously backed Allawi. But the prime minister doesn't see the solution to Iraq's problems in solely military terms. In an interview with NEWSWEEK in late March, just before violence spiked in Fallujah and in southern Iraq, Allawi made the following comments about the challenges facing Iraq:

On the June 30 transfer of sovereignty: "Once sovereignty is assumed there will still be two areas ... that lag behind, where we'll need [international assistance.] Those are security and the economy. We'll witness an escalation of violence before things get better. But [eventually] the democratic process in Iraq will influence the region and be a setback for terrorism."