COMMENTARY US backs its
tarnished golden boys in
Iraq By Ehsan Ahrari
It
seems to indicate that the United States is stuck
in a rut in its search for future leaders of Iraq:
Washington is once again favoring Ahmad Chalabi,
who is currently visiting Washington, and Iyad
Allawi, who was prime minister during the period
of the previous administration, the Iraqi Interim
Government.
It appears that Chalabi, the
former golden boy of the Pentagon, a convicted
embezzler in Jordan and the current deputy prime
minister, is driven by the aspiration of becoming
the next prime minister of Iraq.
In that
quest for power, he is playing a dangerous game of
acquiring Iran's support and maintaining the
backing of the
Grand Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani, the influential senior Shi'ite cleric
in Iraq. Chalabi's visit to Washington is the
political ritual of getting the blessing of Vice
President Dick Cheney, the epitome of
neo-conservativism and chief foreign policy
adviser of President George W Bush.
Chalabi is a known friend of Iran, and he
visited that country just before his trip to
Washington. And the US and Iran are a world apart
on the issue of the very nature of the future
government of Iraq, ie, whether it should be
Islamist or secular.
Chalabi has been
accused by the US in the past of passing secret
information to Iran, a charge that he vehemently
denies. Equally important, he is also accused of
providing fictitious intelligence to the Bush
administration in his zeal to bring about the
ouster of Saddam Hussein. In attaining that
objective, his critics - especially from the State
Department - accuse him of being driven largely by
personal ambition. Needless to say, the neo-cons
in the Pentagon would have had no problem with
Chalabi taking over the reins of the Iraqi
government immediately after the ouster of Saddam.
It follows that Chalabi seems to have only
one agenda: his emergence as the next prime
minister. However, given his highly tainted
credentials and equally shattered reputation, why
is the Bush administration currently warming to
him? The answer is not that the US is in a rut but
that, considering the very nature of the current
corps of leaders in that country, its choices are
severely limited.
Let there be no doubt
that the US would like to see the creation of a
secular democracy in Iraq. To achieve that
objective, the Bush administration is again
courting Chalabi. It knows that he, along with
Allawi, are its best hopes.
The interim
government headed by Prime Minister Ibrahim
Jaafari has turned out to be a big disappointment,
not only for the US but also for the Kurds and the
Sunnis. The US had grave reservations about the
Islamist makeup of the government, but the
cumulative power of the Iraqi Shi'ites and the
powerful backing of Sistani left the US with
little choice but to accept it.
No one
should think that the Bush administration did not
experience some glee when Jaafari emerged as a
mediocre and failed premier. He proved that he was
no dealmaker, at least not the kind that the
American interlocutors wanted to see in Iraq
anyway. He is reportedly aloof, at times petty,
and quite reluctant to forge political
compromises.
The process of political
sausage making has started anew ahead of elections
in December. For now, the Bush administration is
following a strategy completely different from the
one it followed before the emergence of the Iraqi
Interim Government.
It is quietly
surveying the potential political strength and
popularity of Chalabi and Allawi, two expatriates
with shady credentials of being the tools of US
and British intelligence. Once again, the litmus
test for the US is not whether either of them will
prove to be an effective leader, but, long before
they get to that point, whether they will prove
their mettle by pushing democratic secularism into
the faces of the Iraqi Shi'ites and Sunnis.
Equally important, they must also demonstrate
their ability to be coalition-builders for the
creation of a secular democratic government.
In this regard, there is likely to be
intense competition between Allawi and Chalabi.
Allawi's strength is that he is viewed, especially
among the Sunnis, as being above the petty,
sectarian-oriented chauvinism that they frequently
accuse Jaafari of practicing. In addition, Allawi
has established an image as a quintessential
dealmaker, a trait that is highly valued in the
non-Islamist circles of Iraqi politics. His
weakness is that, when he was prime minister, he
was viewed as too accepting of what Sunni Iraqis
depict as the American obsession with the use of
excessive force in dealing with the insurgency.
As much as the Bush administration
appreciated Allawi's unquestioned loyalty to the
American methodology related to the use of force,
it is a bit leery about how benignly the Sunnis
would view a potential Allawi premiership.
Washington is in no mood to unnecessarily alienate
the Sunnis, having learned a tough lesson in their
uphill battle with the predominantly Sunni
insurgency.
Thus, the Americans want to
"keep their powder dry" by also flirting with
Chalabi, who has proved himself to be a survivor
in the highly explosive political climate of
post-Saddam Iraq. Besides, Chalabi still has the
backing of Sistani, or at least the grand
ayatollah has not yet changed his mind about
backing him. Just that fact weighs heavily among
the mandarins of American foreign policy. His ties
with Iran are not envisaged as a major liability,
but it may become a problem.
In America's
current preoccupation with deciding to pick its
own golden boy in arguably the most crucial
elections in Iraq, one must not lose track of a
very important question: will Iraq really become a
secular democratic country after the elections,
regardless of whether it is headed by Chalabi or
Allawi?
Unfortunately - from the US
perspective - the chances of a secular democracy
even in the not-too-distant future are dim at
best. Just look at the numbers. Only the Iraqi
Kurds are in favor of secularism. A predominant
number of Shi'ites support neither an Iran-style
government nor a secular government. Even under
the best possible scenario, from the point of view
of the Bush administration, the next government is
still likely to be Islamist, or at least clearly
leaning toward giving a central role to Islam in
the Iraqi political arena. The Sunnis, though they
don't prefer a Shi'ite version of Islamist
government, might not object to such a government
if it were to take care of their chief economic
grievances in the immediate future.
If
such a proposition appears tenable, then both
Chalabi and Allawi stand a chance to head the
government, largely because of their most
significant ability to forge a coalition of
parties and personalities that may not like each
other very much, but don't hate each other either.
In the very early phase of learning the art of
democratic rule, the mere capability of creating
such a coalition on the part of any politicians
would be nothing short of a breakthrough.
So, keeping both Chalabi and Allawi as
potential golden boys is not a bad tactic for the
Bush administration. The clincher in this episode
will be which way Iraq's voters go in the
elections. Let us not forget the role of the
all-important Sistani. The wily cleric is keeping
his cards close to his chest, and rightly so, for
now, but is likely to play them well in the long
term for the sustenance of a Shi'ite-dominated
democratic Iraq.
Ehsan Ahrari is
a CEO of Strategic Paradigms, an Alexandria,
VA-based defense consultancy. He can be reached at
eahrari@cox.net or stratparadigms@yahoo.com. His
columns appear regularly in Asia Times Online His
website: www.ehsanahrari.com.
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