An Allawi resurgence in Iraq?

NY Times:

The serpentine career of Ayad Allawi, who served briefly as Iraq’s interim prime minister five years ago, has taken another unlikely turn: a secular Shiite with little taste for campaigning, he stands a strong chance of winning the most votes in Sunday’s parliamentary elections as the leader of a coalition that is attracting deep support from Sunni Muslims.

He has a history of blurring expected lines: Once a staunch Baathist, he survived an assassination attempt by ax ordered by Saddam Hussein and later developed deep ties to the Central Intelligence Agency. Now he is staging a surprising political comeback by pushing a secular and nationalist agenda that has made him the most formidable alternative to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

“Now is the time, my brothers, to achieve wide and genuine partnership in Iraq,” Mr. Allawi, 64, told a crowd of supporters at a rally this week in Baghdad.

His candidacy also pricks the nerve centers of some Iraqis nostalgic for the return of strong, even dictatorial, leaders. The myth around Mr. Allawi blossomed with a story that circulated in 2004 that he shot several detainees in a jail in suburban Baghdad while he was prime minister. Mr. Allawi has called the story “fiction,” but it has remained in the minds of some Iraqis — and not necessarily as a bad thing.

“To us, Allawi is a second Saddam Hussein,” said Abu Sara Ahmed, 35, speaking on a street corner in Karada, an upper-middle-class Baghdad neighborhood. “The Iraqi people are always in need of someone who can bring fear and respect for authority.

“We don’t want someone who is afraid to kill, someone who is a coward. You have to kill a criminal; you can’t just put him in prison.”

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The guy never struck me as another Saddam. He seemed both smart and secular. He has been the most effective of the post Saddam leaders. I think he would be an upgrade who would stand up the the Iranians trying to influence Iraq, and that may be why he is doing so well.