The Great Sunni Hope

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Unlike Allawi, al-Yawer has at times been critical of the U.S., questioning, for example, the strategy of using massive force to bring the insurgency to heel in cities like Samarra and Fallujah. "Since the attack on Fallujah," he told TIME, "violence has escalated everywhere, even in Mosul, where things were quite calm before." His criticisms have won him admirers in the Sunni triangle, where government figures are regarded with scorn. Even the radical Association of Muslim Scholars, which is calling for a boycott of the election, offers guarded praise. Al-Yawer, says association spokesman Abdul- Salam al-Qubaisi, "is saying the right things, but we have to see if he takes the right actions."

Al-Yawer isn't sitting still. In the fall, he married his second wife, Nasrin Barwari, a Kurdish minister of public works in the interim government. Cole says Barwari gives al-Yawer nationwide appeal unmatched by any other politician. Al-Yawer, who has four children from another marriage, maintains that the union had nothing to do with politics and everything to do with romance. Asked how he managed to find time for that in his busy schedule, he says, "If you're not capable of love, how can you love your country?" Sounds like a pretty good campaign slogan.