SPEAKING
FREELY Iraqi dissidents:
Down, but far from out By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
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Last year,
prior to the invasion of Iraq, he repeatedly went on
record accusing Saddam Hussein's regime of actively
pursuing weapons of mass destruction, claiming
forcefully, in both the US and European media, that
Saddam had constructed "hundreds of kilometers of
underground tunnels" to stockpile vast amounts of
chemical and biological weapons. He authoritatively
questioned the Iraqi government's voluminous report to
the United Nations on its weapons systems, citing the
paperwork found at the home of an Iraqi scientist in
Baghdad as evidence of that government's cover-up
and
clandestine nuclear program. Also, he repeatedly claimed
there was a connection between Saddam's regime and
al-Qaeda terrorists.
No, this is not about Ahmad
Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and
onetime darling of Pentagon officials who has fallen out
of favor in Washington and, worse, been accused of
spying for Iran's mullahs. Rather, the reference is to
Dr Hussain al-Shahristani, a close aide to the moderate
Shi'ite leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who has
been reportedly hand-picked by the United Nations'
special envoy on Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, as Iraq's next
prime minister - wisely so, given Shahristani's
impressive background and widespread respect accorded to
him by Iraqis as a voice of reason in a sea of trouble.
Still, irrespective of the aptness of
Shahristani's choice to run the Iraqi interim government
about to be installed in a few weeks after the handover
of "sovereignty" on June 30, it is important, partly out
of fairness to Chalabi and other similar dissidents
blamed for "misinforming" the US government and the
media, to bear in mind that Shahristani is equally, if
not more, responsible. This is because, given his
background as a onetime director of nuclear research in
Iraq who became a political prisoner, locked in Saddam's
Abu Ghraib for seven years, his words carried quite a
bit of weight, especially when he was billed as a "model
Iraqi dissident" on such high-profile news programs as
CBS's 60 Minutes, which interviewed him in
February.
This raises, in turn, a peculiar
question: Why such singular focus on Chalabi for
misleading the US public, even by the New York Times,
which in its latest self-criticism for "falling for
misinformation" by Iraqi dissidents, fails to mention
Shahristani? Indeed, the omission of Shahristani by the
New York Times smacks of double standards and even
hypocrisy on the part of its editorial leadership.
Simultaneously, all the current hoopla about the
supposed ability of exiled Iraqi dissidents somehow to
manipulate the US intelligence community and
Washington's policymakers not only needs to be viewed
with a grain of healthy skepticism - it all reeks of
election-induced "politics of scapegoatism" - more
important, it should be put in proper historical
perspective: Who can truly blame Iraq's prewar
dissidents for knowingly or unknowingly exaggerating the
weapons-of-mass-destruction threat of Saddam and his
ruthless gang, who had brought a major generational
catastrophe to the Iraqi people with wars of conquest in
Iran and Kuwait and who had plundered the national
wealth and brutalized millions? A related question:
given the Bush administration's refusal to purge any
high-ranking officials for faulty intelligence or, for
that matter, dereliction of duty with respect to the
systematic torture and sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners,
it is less than fair to single out the Iraqi dissidents
and pour blame on them. Sadly, the present debate and
"Chalabi-bashing" in the United States risk losing
perspective on several important issues.
First,
both Chalabi and Shahristani are Shi'ite politicians who
have sought to build timely bridges with the rulers of
neighboring Shi'ites, who have a vested interest in
peace and stability in the region, as well as the
well-being of the Iraqi Shi'ite majority. Critics of
Chalabi who cite his group's opening an office in Tehran
as evidence of his complicity with Iran have
consistently failed to draw attention to the fact that
Shahristani has comparatively deeper ties to Iran: his
prewar Iraqi Refugee Council had offices in Tehran and
London for a number of years, and Shahristani maintained
partial residence in Iran after escaping from Abu Ghraib
in 1991.
But does this mean Shahristani should
be lumped with Chalabi and other Shi'ite dissidents,
including current members of the Iraqi Governing Council
who represent the Supreme Council for the Islamic
Revolution in Iraq, as Iran's "spies"? After all, the
latter were exclusively based and their Badr Brigade
trained in Iran for roughly two decades. The answer is
most certainly negative, for to do so, to jump on the
simplistic bandwagon of labeling, is not only to
overlook the integrity of these dissidents, who were
forced by the exigencies of their struggle to establish
rapport with Iran, but also to deny them legitimacy in
Iraq's postwar political process and thus to exclude
them.
Second, to avoid the pitfalls of such a
simplistic "recipe for disaster", the US government and
media must pay closer attention to the real dynamic of
interaction between Iraq's Shi'ite politicians and
Iran's ruling clergy, for to do otherwise is to fuel a
new "anti-Iran witchhunt" culminating in an Iraqi
version of McCarthyism where no Iraqi, Shi'ite or
otherwise, would dare set foot in Iran or network with
their brethren in Iran's powerful seminaries.
Third, it is self-deluding of anyone to overlook
the importance of Iran's growing influence in Iraq,
partly accomplished through the mass pilgrimages to
Iraq's holy cities on a daily basis, and simply to
interpret this influence negatively, as
counter-productive, when in fact Iran has so far
displayed a mature diplomacy toward Iraq, offering
mediation in the conflict between the coalition forces
and the Shi'ite militias, and vocally supporting the
mainstream positions of (Iranian-born) Sistani. The
so-called "hard evidence" of Chalabi's spying for Iran,
until confirmed beyond the rumor mills of anti-Chalabi
sources in Baghdad and Washington, may turn out to be
"misinformation" cooked up to rationalize his exclusion
from the new Iraqi government on the horizon. In a word,
it is doubtful that the shrewd salesman Chalabi, who was
on the US government's monthly payroll, would risk his
position by funneling secret information to Tehran.
Whether or not any of his aides were seduced by Iranian
intelligence to cough up information is an entirely
separate story that, for the moment, cannot be ruled
out.
Fourth, a prudent US policy is to take
advantage of the leading Iraqi Shi'ites' rapport with
Iran in order to encourage Iran's cooperation with the
US design for the political process in Iraq, instead of
censuring and castigating those Shi'ites and targeting
them for blame about "faulty intelligence" that, in all
fairness, rests squarely at the door of the vast
conglomerate of the US and British intelligence
machinery. In historical retrospective, Iraqi prewar
politics of dissidence may well end up completely
exonerated for alleged excesses and exaggerations aimed
at toppling the "Pol Pot of the Middle East", and the
sooner the Washington pundits arrive at this conclusion
the better.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is
the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in
Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and "Iran's
Foreign Policy Since 9/11", Brown's Journal of World
Affairs, co-authored with former deputy foreign minister
Abbas Maleki, No 2, 2003.
Speaking Freely is
an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers
to have their say. Please click hereif you
are interested in contributing.
and
clandestine nuclear program. Also, he repeatedly claimed
there was a connection between Saddam's regime and
al-Qaeda terrorists. 
