Iraq approaching its first elections is a study in politics that accords with the Book of Ecclesiastes. The first has become last and the last is becoming first.
Iraq's interim President Ghazi Al Yawar was expected to be only an invisible rubberstamp for Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. But in recent days he has been emerging as a surprisingly outspoken and forceful figure. As Iraq continues to be rocked by an out-of-control insurgency, his popularity among ordinary Iraqis has soared.
This week Al Yawar hit the headlines again when he blasted the Bush administration in comments to the British Broadcasting Corp., saying that Washington should never have disbanded the Iraqi army and the old security forces of ousted president Saddam Hussein. "Definitely dissolving the ministry of defense and the ministry of the interior was a big mistake at that time," Yawar said.
And in a separate interview with the London-based Arabic newspaper Asharq Al Awsat published on Monday, Yawar warned that if the United States failed to end the war and establish a peaceful, stable basis for life, a ferocious anti-Western backlash could sweep his country.
"If the situation in Iraq will continue like this, it will create within the Iraqi people feelings of bitterness, rage and humiliation that will provide, in the long run, an appropriate environment for an Iraqi Hitler to appear similar to the German Hitler who emerged after Germany's defeat and the humiliation of the German people in World War I," he said.
Yawar's outspokenness does not sit easily with Bush administration policymakers. But with Iraq still in chaos as the election looms, they are desperate to have any national leader of stature they can deal with in Baghdad. That makes him right now an indispensable man.
By contrast, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is losing his attractiveness to US policymakers after only half-a-year in office.
Allawi has arguably done as well as anyone possibly could in an all-but-impossible situation and better than most would have. But through no fault of his own he is caught between several implacable forces.
Iraq's guerrilla insurrection - partly involving old Baath Party and Revolutionary Guard loyalists to ousted president Saddam Hussein but increasingly fueled by Islamic fundamentalist militants linked to or sympathetic to Al Qaeda - rages more widely and out of control than ever. The crushing of the Islamist stronghold in Fallujah did not break the back of the insurrection. US troops continue to die by the ones and twos in lethal, small-scale bomb blasts and ambushes.
Meanwhile, the guerrillas continue to decimate the vulnerable morale of shattered Iraqi forces being poorly trained by the United States and its allies.
As January's elections loom close Allawi appears increasingly overshadowed by the political leaders emerging from Iraq's 60 percent majority Shias. Among them, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Husseini Al Sistani remains the key figure able to make or break the credibility of aspiring political figures.
If the Shias retain their united front Allawi will have to step down in a few weeks anyway. If that happens he may soon find US leaders, policymakers and pundits making him the scapegoat for the failure to roll back or even make any significant dents in the insurrection over the past few months.
But an old Pentagon favorite apparently shot down in flames a few months back because of his close ties to Iran is making a spectacular comeback.
Ahmed Chalabi, long the darling of the neoconservatives who run policy at the Pentagon, reemerged last Thursday as one of the top 10 Shia leaders on a united list of 228 candidates approved by Sistani. That is certain to give him an influential seat in the new 275-member national assembly to be elected next month.
Indeed, Chalabi's political prospects may now be brighter than Allawi's, who was not on the list of candidates approved by Sistani.
This suggests Sistani has written off Allawi as being in the Americans' pocket, but he believes Chalabi, for all his well-documented intimate ties to the Washington neocons, is not.
Chalabi retains his intimate ties to Iran, but his stock in Washington is unexpectedly rising again following President George W. Bush's decisive reelection victory.
Porter Goss, Bush's new director of Central Intelligence is already purging the agency of the traditional, cautious veteran intelligence professionals who always warned against Chalabi and sought to discredit him.
And while Bush made a virtual clean sweep of all the domestic agency Cabinet appointments of his first administration and let internationally-respected Secretary of State Colin Powell go as well, he retained Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his team of neocons, despite all the flak they have taken for their highly-controversial record in Iraq. Chalabi's greatest champion in the administration, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, is also staying.
Speculation also continues to swirl that another enthusiastic Chalabi advocate, Danielle Pletka, the current vice-president of the American Enterprise Institute may replace William Burns as assistant secretary for Near East affairs. However, administration sources have told United Press International that National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice is resisting massive pressure from neoconservative advocates of Pletka to appoint her to that post. As a result, the sources said, the appointment of a deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Near East Affairs has been put on hold.
If Pletka or one of her allies gets NEA, Chalabi's clout in Washington may rise from the ashes. But even if they do not, he looks like being an influential player in the new political era that will start next month as long as he remains in Sistani's good books. By contrast, Allawi already appears to be falling from Washington's favor after only half-a-year.
It is still less than two years since the US armed forces swept into Baghdad, scattering resistance like chaff. Yet the game of political musical chairs in Iraq's capital remains in full swing. That is no way to win a guerrilla war against a well-entrenched, formidable foe.
Martin Sieff is senior news analyst at United Press International
Yazar up, Allawi down, Chalabi back
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