On the walls of Baghdad’s Shia slums posters show the face of deposed president Saddam Hussein slowly morphing into that of Iyad Allawi, the former Iraqi prime minister and the most prominent critic of the current Shia-led government. “Ba’athists”, the posters declare.
As December 15’s parliamentary elections draw close, a bitter war of words is being waged between Mr Allawi, a secular Shia who was once a member of Saddam Hussein’s ruling Ba’ath party, and the Shia Islamist United Iraqi Alliance which currently controls over half the seats in parliament.
