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US takes up the mayor's
gauntlet
By Ian Urbina
The
problem with unilateralism is that others can turn it
against you. When a majority of the United Nations and
the international community opposed the invasion of
Iraq, the United States, in the name of democracy,
decided to proceed anyway. The administration of
President George W Bush felt that it had the moral and
political right to go it alone. So it did. And toward
that end, Washington mustered any and every piece of
political rhetoric and security intelligence available
to justify its plans.
Then this tactic came back
to haunt US planners in postwar Iraq. In the name of
democracy, one Iraqi leader began mustering whatever
rhetoric and intelligence necessary to justify his own
unilateral power grab in Baghdad. As Mohammed Mohsen
al-Zubaidi, the self-declared mayor of the Iraqi
capital, began running his own civil administration, the
United States was not sure how to respond. In the vacuum
left by Saddam Hussein, al-Zubaidi felt that he had the
moral and political right to help restore order, and
decided to go it alone, as much in defiance of the US
troops as in defiance of the Iraqi National Congress
(INC) of Ahmed Chalabi, Washington's preferred new ruler
of Iraq.
But on Sunday, Washington decided to up
the ante. Pretending to invite al-Zubaidi to a meeting
with General Jay Garner of the Office of Reconstruction
and Humanitarian Assistance, the US administration in
Baghdad enticed al-Zubaidi away from his fortified
holdout in the Palestine Hotel. And when he arrived, US
troops quickly surrounded him and his entourage of aides
and guards, and arrested him.
After stepping out
of the shadows on April 8, al-Zubaidi immediately stole
the limelight. But the personal history of the
24-year-old Iraqi exile remains very much in the dark.
The one thing that is certain is that he is a master of
disinformation and mixed messages.
During the
first days of operation, al-Zubaidi claimed to be
speaking with INC authorization. But soon he denied
having ties to the group, particularly as INC
representatives began publicly lambasting him. Zaab
Sethna, an INC spokesman, said al-Zubaidi was not
speaking or acting on behalf of the organization. "He
was a former intelligence operative with the INC and his
work was very successful," Sethna said. Nicknamed "the
wolf", al-Zubaidi says he fled into exile in 1979 under
threat of execution by Saddam Hussein's regime. "He
operated out of Lebanon and Syria and ran networks in
Iraq. He penetrated the Iraqi government at many
levels," Sethna said. "He recently came to see us and he
was told to stop saying he was INC. He does not
represent the INC."
In Baghdad, the INC outlook
on al-Zubaidi was less definitive. Local representatives
claimed that they had never heard of al-Zubaidi until
recently. But a US marine officer interviewed about the
mayor said he was sure al-Zubaidi belonged to the
congress, and always had.
One of al-Zubaidi's
main credentials is that he is Shi'ite. Close to
two-thirds of the country is composed of an increasingly
restive Shi'ite population. In interviews, al-Zubaidi
has insisted that he is a religious moderate, but he has
also expressed an openness to the idea of Iraq being
governed under an Islamic constitution, if that is what
the majority decide.
Al-Zubaidi's relationship
with the US administration is equally opaque. Barbara
Bodine, the US co-coordinator for central Iraq, said
last week, "We don't really know much about him except
that he's declared himself mayor. We don't recognize
him." Garner also cast doubt on al-Zubaidi's claims.
"There are a lot of de facto leaders," he said. "I don't
know who they are, but our goal is to start a process
whereby the Iraqi people elect their own leaders. We
haven't appointed anyone or recognized anyone."
Al-Zubaidi has publicly welcomed the US troops
as liberators and on a number of occasions claimed to be
in dialogue with the US forces. But al-Zubaidi's
unilateralism and disinformation tactics didn't stop
there. He told al-Jazeera last weekend that although the
US administration had been "surprised" by his control in
Baghdad, they nonetheless decided to ask him to provide
a representative to attend the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries (OPEC) meeting in Vienna. He said he
would send Jawdat al-Obeidi, a former Iraqi general, and
al-Zubaidi's closest associate. However, officials at
OPEC and within the US administration said al-Zubaidi's
story was pure fabrication.
Al-Zubaidi was not
just a threat because he was using unilateralist tactics
for his own ends. He was also unpalatable because he had
no democratic standing among the local population. Most
Baghdadis said they had never heard of the guy before
recently, but they also admitted he was certainly
carrying himself as though he were in control. Many
local residents had seen his white four-wheel-drive
truck - a sign taped to the back reading "Baghdad
Executive Council" - followed by a regal entourage of
minions and bodyguards darting throughout the city at
all hours.
That al-Zubaidi did seem to be taking
the lead in the hearts-and-minds campaign was certainly
an additional reason he needed to be reined in.
Al-Zubaidi was extremely adept at making political
inroads into the city population that US administrators
would then be hard-pressed to remove after the fact. He
had launched his own radio station, Information Radio,
the first Iraqi station to go on the air since the
collapse of Saddam's propaganda apparatus. He announced
that he would use government funds to pay all state
employees their salaries this month - with a 1,000
percent raise - and had set up an application process by
which residents could begin getting jobs within the
urban administrative structure. He publicly took credit
for advances in getting power, water and hospitals back
up and running.
US military spokesmen in Baghdad
have been emphatic in their claim that "the only person
who perhaps could be considered the mayor of Baghdad is
the US commander general of the 3rd Infantry Division".
With al-Zubaidi locked up, this statement may be a
littler closer to being true. More than anything,
al-Zubaidi was a man with unchecked ambition and the
will and savvy to act unilaterally. The question now is
whether the political apparatus he established on the
outside will react to his detention. A spokesman at his
office would only say that "large protests are being
planned. Presumably, they will be protesting the
unilateral way in which their leader has been detained."
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
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