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Pentagon's favorites get a foot in the
door
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON -
When US President Franklin Roosevelt asked Joseph Stalin
to consider seeking the advice of Pope Pius XII about
the shape of post-World War II Europe, the Soviet
dictator famously replied, "How many divisions does the
pope have?"
The same question can now be asked
about the US State Department, or even the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) or the British government,
which have all argued for months that any postwar Iraq
leadership should emerge only as a result of
consultation, optimally under United Nations auspices,
among mainly internal forces, as well as exile groups.
The Pentagon, on the other hand, has long
favored the installation as soon as possible of an
Interim Iraqi Authority (IIA) led by the exiled Iraqi
National Congress (INC) of Ahmed Chalabi, to give an
Iraqi face to the occupation authorities.
The
White House has been coy. But on Sunday, President
George W Bush's National Security Advisor Condoleezza
Rice appeared to side with the State Department,
declaring that both internal figures and exile parties
should play a role in any IIA.
So it came as
some surprise when, as Rice was speaking, the Pentagon
flew some 500 INC activists - plus Chalabi himself -
from the northern Iraqi safe haven where they had been
cooling their heels into the southern US-occupied city
of Nasiriyah, where Chalabi quickly met with local
dignitaries, apparently to gain their backing.
That this took place on the eve of Bush's
Belfast meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair
was regarded as particularly significant, since Blair
had lined up solidly behind the State Department. "Bush
agreed that we would not dream of parachuting people
from outside Iraq to run Iraq," a senior Blair aide had
told Newsweek two days before.
While senior
Pentagon officials insisted that the move was not
intended to give a leg up to Chalabi in the competition
to succeed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, General Peter
Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
described the contingent as "basically the core of the
new Iraqi army once Iraq is free".
An INC press
release touted the force more precisely as the "First
Battalion, Free Iraqi Forces (FIF)", although most of
the activists were, according to the Washington Post,
"so lightly armed they lacked even pistols, let alone
assault rifles".
Their arrival, however, marked
the successful culmination of a two-week-old campaign by
neo-conservatives in and outside the administration to
get the INC and Chalabi into Iraq before any other
group, presumably to preempt any moves by the State
Department or other opposition groups to claim the media
spotlight.
It also marked the fact that, with
250,000 men on the ground, the Pentagon will be calling
the shots in Iraq, even in defiance of other
bureaucracies that, in contrast to the Defense
Department, have real experts on Iraqi politics, history
and culture who could prove helpful in carrying out an
occupation.
"You can call this another aspect of
[Deputy Defense Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz's preemption
strategy," said one administration official. "You can
call this a coup d'etat."
Chalabi has long been
a favorite of the neo-conservatives, particularly
Wolfowitz and the powerful former chairman of the
Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle, who have led the
drive to war with Iraq since September 11, 2001.
An extremely controversial figure, Chalabi, a
London-based banker, first came to prominence in the
West shortly after the first Gulf War in 1991 when he
co-founded the INC, the first effort at building an
umbrella for various opposition groups to rally against
Saddam.
His opponents, particularly in the State
Department and the CIA, which worked closely with him in
the early 1990s to help instigate a coup against Saddam,
consider him unreliable. They note that the INC itself
has suffered many defections of promising Iraqis over
the past decade due in major part to their complaints
about Chalabi's imperious style and authoritarianism.
The former head of the US Central Command,
retired General Anthony Zinni, who also has advised
Secretary of State Colin Powell on the Middle East, has
been particularly outspoken, referring to Chalabi and
his INC colleagues as "silk-suited, Rolex-wearing guys
in London".
Chalabi's critics also point to his
1989 conviction for bank fraud in Jordan, from which he
hurriedly fled after being tipped off about his
indictment, as well as his and the INC's failure to
predict the extent and ferocity of resistance to the US
invasion of Iraq despite their long-standing claims of
having thousands of sympathizers in key posts in Iraq
ready to rise up once US troops appeared on the horizon.
Indeed, Chalabi and his major supporters in
Washington were those who most confidently predicted
that US soldiers would be greeted with "flowers and
sweets" by the Iraqi population as they made their way
from Kuwait to Baghdad.
Nonetheless, his backers
have stuck ferociously behind him. They accuse the State
Department and his other foes of representing the
interests of the Sunni-dominated governments in the
region, especially Saudi Arabia, which, say analysts at
Perle's neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute
(AEI), fears that an Iraqi government headed by Chalabi,
a Shi'ite like the majority of Iraqis, may provoke
instability among its own Shi'ite population.
They also insist that Chalabi is devoted to
human rights, democratization and a federal structure
for a future Iraq that would provide greater autonomy
for the country's disparate regions and groups, a model
that also explains, they say, why he is opposed by many
of Iraq's neighbors.
On foreign policy, the
neo-conservatives in the Pentagon see in Chalabi a
reliably ally, particularly in dealing with Syria and
Iran, and who has also pledged to recognize Israel, thus
moving the balance of power in the region solidly toward
those wishing to make peace with Israel.
While
Chalabi's networks inside Iraq may be less than what he
has claimed - a recent CIA study reportedly found that
"overwhelming numbers" of Iraqis were suspicious of
Chalabi and the INC - his network of support in
Washington and especially the Pentagon is considerable.
Half a dozen Republican senators called this
week for the administration immediately to provide
millions of dollars to the INC, while on Monday the Wall
Street Journal, a longtime Chalabi champion, called on
Bush to reject the State Department's and Blair's
advice. The editorial page also doubled the INC force
sent to southern Iraq from 500 to 1,000.
In
addition, the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a
"citizens' group" chaired by former secretary of state
George Shultz whose membership consists of a who's who
of neo-conservatives outside the administration, has
turned over its website to the INC.
Meanwhile,
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Monday suggested
that he might even defy Congress, which is leaning
toward earmarking US$2.5 billion in relief and
reconstruction aid for Iraq to the State Department
instead of the Pentagon. "In the last analysis," he told
reporters, "it's the president's policy, and whatever is
put forward by the Congress by way of money will be
expended in a way that the president decides should be
expended."
(Inter Press Service)
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