The strongman of Baghdad

The first recorded political act of Iyad Allawi — now the interim prime minister of Iraq, then the student organiser for Saddam Hussein’s Baath party — struck some as a little extreme, even by the standards of Sixties campus politics. ‘We were at medical school in [pre-Saddam] Baghdad together,’ said his contemporary and, more recently, colleague on the Iraqi governing council, Raja al-Khuzai. ‘When we turned up for our exams, we found Iyad at the door of the examination hall, wearing combat gear and holding a machine-gun. He said, “I’m not going to allow anyone to take the exam. We’re on strike.” We were scared.’

Following the unfortunate failure of this démarche — the exams eventually went ahead, after the authorities sent in tanks — Mr Allawi evidently decided that the time for liberal pussyfooting was over. With a friend, Adel Abdul Mahdi, he arranged to kidnap the dean of the university to publicise the Baath cause.