Last fall, after losing the premiership to Maliki in a post-election contest of back-room coalition building, Allawi stood aloof from the gritty politics of government formation, preferring to spend time in London and other foreign capitals in a sort of self-imposed exile reminiscent of Al Gore's bearded soul-searching following the 2000 elections. Allawi felt he had been robbed. A power-sharing agreement was supposed to give him a high-level post in Maliki's administration. Instead, Maliki had cherry-picked allies from Allawi's coalition, sidelined Allawi himself, and consolidated power.

Allawi finally returned to Baghdad shortly after I had left. I had written him several weeks earlier requesting an interview, and he agreed to a phone call. Our conversation, part of Allawi's entrance back onto the political stage, consisted mostly of accusations against the prime minister. But when I asked Allawi about his exclusion from the government, he brushed the topic aside. Instead, the former prime minister accused Maliki of using his control of the armed forces to intimidate, arrest, and even torture his political opponents.

"The Parliament is being terrorized," Allawi told me.

I had heard such charges before. For the past four years, Maliki's opponents have decried his growing control of Iraq's security forces. In the capital, both the army and the police now answer to the Baghdad Operations Command, which is led by a general who receives his orders not through the Ministry of Defense or Interior but from the office of the Prime Minister. Maliki's office also directly funds and commands U.S.-trained counter-terrorism forces, which many Iraqis have nicknamed the "dirty brigades." With so much power in Maliki's hands, critics often accuse him of using it to intimidate and coerce his political rivals. But in the past, when I asked Members of Parliament for evidence, they retreated into generalities. Not so with Allawi.

He had just received a letter, he said, from Najim al-Harbi, an alleged victim of Maliki's abuse. Harbi had run for Parliament in Allawi's coalition, campaigning as a vocal critic of Maliki. Then, on February 7, 2010, he was arrested. Harbi won the March election anyway, despite being imprisoned for the last month of the campaign. But instead of taking a seat in Iraq's Parliament, he has been detained in a secret location, with no public charges listed against him. Nobody has heard from him for over a year. Harbi was allegedly able to get his message out to Allawi while being transfered from one prison to another. Allawi had his staff fax me a copy of the handwritten letter, which he insists is authentic. Dated March 24, 2011, it tells a horrific tale.

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The story of Harbi's arrest was widely reported when it happened. He had seemed like a paragon of hope for Iraqi democracy. A member of Iraq's Sunni minority living in the insurgent hotbed of Diyala province, he had given up a life on the farm to join the political process at a time when Sunnis were boycotting elections. Harbi became the mayor of his town, Muqtadiya, and then a leader in the provincial government. He gained popularity among his constituents for fighting terrorism, working with both Iraqi and U.S. forces to coordinate counter-insurgency operations.