WASHINGTON - "I am
America's best friend in Iraq." Certainly what Ahmad
Chalabi said after last week's raid on his Baghdad
office and house was true at one time. But if the words
of US Secretary of State Colin Powell mean anything,
Chalabi may very well be a pariah in Washington.
Powell, speaking to an American news program
about his presentation at the United Nations in February
2003 that failed to convince the Security Council that
Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, said: "At the time
that I made the presentation, it reflected the
collective judgment, the sound judgment of the
intelligence community. But it turned out that the
sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and, in some cases,
deliberately misleading. And for that I am disappointed
and I regret it."
The "sourcing" that Powell
refered to was provided, at least in part, by Chalabi's
Iraqi National Congress (INC). The group is made up of
Iraqi exiles who had for years pressed the United States
to depose Saddam Hussein as president of Iraq. And it
argued that once Saddam fell, the Iraqi people would
warmly welcome American soldiers.
Some in the
administration of President George W Bush - reportedly
including Powell - were skeptical of Chalabi. But others
- including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his
deputy Paul Wolfowitz - embraced him. Through them,
Chalabi remained influential in Washington's Iraq
policy, and now is a member of the US-appointed Iraqi
Governing Council (IGC).
Chalabi says the recent
US hostility was prompted by power politics in Iraq and
by what he called three competing investigations into
the UN oil-for-food program.
Under the program,
revenues from oil exported by Saddam's Iraq were to have
gone exclusively to pay for food and medicine for Iraqi
people. But Washington says Saddam's regime benefited by
more than US$10 billion through smuggling and kickbacks
under the program.
Chalabi has opened an
investigation into suspected abuses, and the US has
opened a second probe. Now the UN has opened a third
inquiry. Chalabi says the raid was an attempt by the US
and the UN to hamper his investigation: "I have opened
up the investigation of the oil-for-food program which
has cast doubt about the integrity of the UN here. They
don't like this," Chalabi said.
Analysts
interviewed by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL)
say that they believe Chalabi's questionable performance
in providing intelligence, and his equally questionable
political behavior, may be the real reasons that he is
being so unceremoniously dumped by the Bush
administration.
James Phillips is a foreign
policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a private
policy research center in Washington. He dismisses US
claims that the raid on Chalabi's home was conducted
without at least the acquiescence of the American
government, if not under orders from the Americans.
As a result, Phillips tells RFE/RL, the US is
clearly sending Chalabi the message that it no longer
wants anything to do with him. The reason, he says, is
the embarrassment - mentioned by Powell - over poor
intelligence provided by Chalabi's INC.
"Members
of his [Chalabi's] organization brought Iraqi defectors
to the attention of American intelligence organizations,
and some are believed to have passed on information
about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, which later
turned out to be false or distorted. And that is also
one reason he fell out of favor with many groups in
Washington," Phillips said.
But Phillips says
being dumped by the Americans may not be the worst thing
that has happened to Chalabi. To the contrary, it may
prove to be the best news of his political career in
Iraq. "In some ways it may actually strengthen him
politically, because he was perceived to be a puppet of
the US before, and this may actually help him," Phillips
said.
One country that will be quietly pleased
with Chalabi's fall from grace is Jordan. Chalabi fled
Jordan after his bank there went belly up in 1989. He
was later tried in his absence, found guilty on 31
charges of embezzlement, theft, misuse of depositor
funds and currency speculation, and sentenced to 22
years in jail if he ever set foot in the country again.
Kamal Abu Jabar, a former Jordanian foreign
minister, told Asia Times Online: "I know Ahmed Chalabi
personally from when he was in Jordan. He visited me
several times. He is a terribly intelligent man, he has
I think a PhD in computer science. He is a very smart
guy. There are varying opinions about him. Some people
say that this man was innocent and that he was framed by
other bankers. There are others who swear that the man
is what he is. That he has been tried by a proper court
of law with lawyers and he had the best lawyers in
Jordan. He was convicted and then absconded outside of
the country.
"Until now if he stepped into
Jordan, he would be grabbed by the police and put in
jail. Of course, this is an important matter for Jordan,
the problem was the Americans got serious about this man
and were thinking about making him [Iraqi] president. I
mean, how on earth would we have dealt with him then? I
mean, it would be a real problem because the Jordanian
regime maintains rightly that there is a court decision
against him and that we respect our courts. Because we
do have justice in Jordan, believe it or not."
Marina Ottaway is a senior associate of the
Democracy and Rule of Law Program at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, another Washington
think-tank. Ottaway tells RFE/RL that she believes
Chalabi became aware several weeks ago that he was
losing favor in Washington and began courting alternate
sources of political power in Iraq - including the
country's leading Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani.
And, Ottaway says, there are reports
that Chalabi did not restrict his political maneuvers to
Iraq. "Chalabi was determined to come out on top. And he
started having doubts a few months ago that the US was
going to put him in control. And at that point he
started trying to find other cards he could play. He
tried to move very close to Sistani at one point, and
there were indications that he made several trips to
Iran," Ottaway said.
Ottaway says she is not
certain Chalabi will benefit politically from the new US
hostility. She notes that so far he has been able to
generate little support among the Iraqi people.
As for the US itself, Ottaway says severing ties
with Chalabi is probably a wise move at a time when it
is struggling politically and militarily to establish
the legitimacy of its presence in Iraq. But she adds
that the split also represents a lonely truth for
Washington. "Above all, it seems to me that it makes the
United States look more and more [as if it is] without
allies inside the country [Iraq]."
Iran
connection? Chalabi and Iran have both denied
claims that he passed on secrets to Iran, although
Tehran admits it has had an ongoing dialogue with
Chalabi and other members of the Iraqi Governing
Council.
"The charges about giving classified
information to Iran by me or by any INC officer are
false, nonexistent," Chalabi has said. "These are
charges put out by George Tenet and his CIA [Central
Intelligence Agency] to discredit us, and I want to go
to [the US] Congress, I'm prepared to go to Congress and
testify under oath and expose all the information and
documents in our position." Chalabi also said the INC
had never received any classified information from the
US.
Chalabi's comments came following
accusations made by unnamed US intelligence officials
that he and other INC members passed secret information
to Iran, including sensitive data about US troop
movements in Iraq.
The US has announced it was
suspending a program under which it was providing
$335,000 a month to the INC.
Following the May
21 raids, Chalabi said that he had broken ties with the
US-led coalition. In its May 10 issue, Newsweek magazine
quoted US officials as saying that electronic intercepts
of discussions between Iranian authorities indicated
Chalabi and his entourage were providing Iran with
information about US plans in Iraq.
Iran has
called the US accusations "baseless and unfounded". A
spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Hamid Reza
Assefi, said that the US was fabricating the espionage
claims in order to "cover up their massive problems in
Iraq". At the same time, Assefi says the Islamic
Republic has had what he called a "continuous and
permanent dialogue" with Chalabi and other members of
the IGC.
Iran was one of the first countries to
approve the creation of the US-appointed governing
council, and has welcomed frequent visits from IGC
members.
Chalabi says that he met with Iranian
officials a month and a half ago. He said all members of
the IGC meet on a regular basis with officials from
Iran's embassy in Baghdad.
Iran's official IRNA
news agency reported that in March, the IGC's
then-president, Muhammad Bahr al-Ulum, visited Tehran
for talks with Iranian officials. Chalabi, who was
present at the meeting, reportedly called for the
expansion of ties between the two countries.
Chalabi has visited Iran several times since the
fall of Saddam, and has met with a number of top
officials, including President Mohammad Khatami and
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Even before the US-led war, Chalabi was no
stranger to Iran. Alireza Nourizadeh is a journalist
based in London and the director of the Center for
Arab-Iranian Studies. "His brother is a very well known
businessman in Iran; they have a lot of interests, part
of his family is living in Iran. During the 20 years
prior to Saddam's fall they were living in Iran, and
therefore his traveling to Iran seemed natural prior to
his arrival in Baghdad [after the fall of the Ba'ath
regime] because he had business, he had relatives and
also he was a prominent Iraqi opposition leader and he
was going to Iran whenever there was a meeting or
conference," Nourizadeh said.
Nourizadeh adds
that following the fall of Saddam's regime, Chalabi
intensified his contacts with the Iranians in order to
gain their support and solidify his own position in
Baghdad. "He thought in order to have some chance of
being the leader of Iraq, he has to have a force like
Iran behind him since he's a Shi'ite, he has sort of
good relations with the [religious authorities in Iraq.]
[And then he also wanted to convince] Iranians that he's
approved by the Americans but he's not an American
puppet, so that if he becomes president of Iraq or head
of state then he would pursue a friendly policy towards
Iran. He, I think, thought by having Iranians he would
not need anybody else and then he will play with the
Iranian card in front of the Americans and with the
American card in front of the Iranians," Nourizadeh
said.
(Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Asia
Times Online)
