Buyer Beware
Ahmad Chalabi is treated like a scapegoat by the Bush administration. But as Washington pushes him away, Tehran appears happy to receive him
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Christopher Dickey
Paris Bureau Chief, Middle East Regional Editor
Newsweek
Updated: 1:10 p.m. ET Aug. 11, 2004
Aug. 10 - Way back in January 2002, I went to see Ahmad Chalabi in London. I’d known him, then, for about 17 years, and followed his career from banker to fugitive in Jordan, businessman in Britain, opposition leader in northern Iraq, toast of the neocons in Washington. At that moment he was the bete noire of the State Department (among other government agencies), which figured he and those around him wanted to drag the U.S.A. into a war with Saddam Hussein no matter what the cause or the cost. And how did Chalabi respond to that last charge? “We do! Yes!”
Ahmad Chalabi’s agenda was not exactly a secret. NEWSWEEK published those remarks prominently. (“Should we buy a war from this man?” we asked in our 2002 report.) And he wasn’t telling us anything he wasn’t telling others. So you’d have thought that any sensible administration would factor that in, along with a ton of salt, whenever Chalabi provided intelligence, analysis or opinions.
Except, of course, that many in this administration shared his agenda. So those who wanted war did their level best to keep the American public on a salt-free diet of Chalabi’s dubious information. “The people we worked with [at the Department of Defense] wanted this,” one Chalabi aide recalled this afternoon. “They said ‘anything you come across on terrorism and WMD, please let us know'.” Chalabi’s man added, a little disingenuously, “We had no idea they had no other sources or means to test this stuff.”
The rest is history, and tragedy. And now, after all the lies, the blood and the billions, there’s really only one thing George W. Bush can point to that is good about the war in Iraq: the Americans got rid of Saddam Hussein’s savage regime. That is indeed a major accomplishment—and as you’ll recall it was Chalabi’s aim all along.
So, let’s just be clear. Whatever Ahmad Chalabi’s crimes and misdemeanors, if it hadn’t been for his stubborn willingness to say anything and do anything to get rid of the Butcher of Baghdad, Saddam might still be clinging to power. If you believe it’s enough that the dictator’s gone, you ought to thank Chalabi. On the other hand, if you think you really can’t justify the disasters that have followed—if you can’t admit the willfulness of your own ignorance about the costs of occupation (because there were a whole lot of policy professionals telling you how difficult this would be)—then you’ll heap all your sins on Chalabi like some biblical scapegoat and send him into the wilderness.
We know which course the administration has taken. But, unlike the goat in the Bible, this one knows the torturous paths of the region very well, so that just when you think he’s gone for good, he keeps wandering back into view to remind you of all you’ve done wrong.
In the latest effort to end the Chalabi curse, a U.S.-appointed Iraqi judge issued warrants last weekend for the arrest of Ahmad and his nephew Salem Chalabi. And earlier today, Reuters reported that the Iraqi government ordered Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress (INC) to evacuate its headquarters in Baghdad. The accusation against Ahmad is counterfeiting. That against Salem—who helped write the country’s much-heralded transitional administrative law, and heads the tribunal putting Saddam on trial—is murder. The defendants are related. The alleged crimes are not. Yet the warrants were issued the same day, while both men were out of the country, and effectively threaten them with imprisonment or worse if they come back.
Investigating magistrate Zuhair al-Maliky released no details of the evidence. But Salem Chalabi talked to me on the phone from London this evening. He wearily denied any connection with the killing of Haitham Fadhil, an official at the finance ministry. “The allegation is that this man was investigating properties that belonged to myself or the Chalabi family or the INC,” he said. “There is an allegation that I went to his office and told him if he kept this up he wouldn’t keep his job for long. He told his wife he got many threats, including one from Salem Chalabi. But I have no recollection that I ever met him. I never went to his apartment or office. I don’t own any property in Baghdad, and don’t have any interest in family properties or know what the INC may own. When I’m in Baghdad, I stay with a friend.”
I couldn’t reach Ahmad Chalabi on the phone, but his aide insists the counterfeiting charge is absurd. The amount of money allegedly involved, he said, was 3,000 Iraqi dinars, or the equivalent of $2, with the word COUNTERFEIT stamped on it in red. “Ahmad, as chairman of the finance committee, was looking into whether the terrorists and Baathists were using counterfeit money to fund the insurgency,” said his aide.
More evidence will be presented or leaked by the prosecution, and maybe the cases will hold up. But even as the new Iraqi interim government under Prime Minister Ayad Allawi talks about the rule of law, it’s clear that very complicated politics surround every major decision. "The principal motive is to keep me out of the political process or hamper my participation in it,” Chalabi told Reuters. And the most complicated politics of all at this moment concern this U.S.-backed regime’s dealings with Iran, where Chalabi is still a welcome guest.
The warrants were issued as the Allawi government is trying to gain the upper hand against radical Shiite forces that have gotten support from Tehran in the past, and Washington is looking for ways to pressure the mullahs to stop developing nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, U.S. Marines are waging a pitched battle against forces loyal to the young cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the holy city of Najaf. The new Iranian consul to Karbala, another holy city, was kidnapped on his way there by a mysterious group accusing him of sowing sectarian strife. And Iraqi Defense Minister Hazim Shalan told The Washington Post that Iran is “the first enemy of Iraq.” (Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, considered the key religious leader of Iraq’s Shiites, has left Najaf for London, where he is undergoing medical treatment and is safely out of harm’s way.)
The Iranians make no secret of their many interests in Iraq. One is to get reparations for the devastating eight-year war Saddam waged against them in the 1980s. After the dictator’s first appearance before the tribunal that Salem Chalabi organized, the Iranians approached Salem and asked him to come to Tehran to help organize the evidence they wanted to present against the old regime. According to a source close to the tribunal, Allawi first approved, then rejected this idea, which could have been used to improve relations. Instead, Allawi and the Americans decided to go on the offensive.
Meanwhile Ahmad Chalabi has grown ever closer to Iran. One of the Bush administration’s unofficial accusations against him is that he leaked critical intelligence to the Iranians informing them that an important code had been broken, after learning this tidbit from a drunken U.S. intelligence officer. Chalabi denies the story, and calls it wildly implausible. “The Iranians,” says his aide, “have been doing subterfuge and espionage since before the United States existed. They’re not such nincompoops.”
What Chalabi has been doing is hanging out in Najaf. Chalabi played a key role negotiating the defunct truce that ended the fighting with Moqtada al-Sadr during June and July. At the same time, he’s been trying to win the support of Al-Sadr’s followers for himself. “He’s reaching out to the young, poor, disaffected and dispossessed,” claims his aide. “If you can mobilize them and bring them into the system, this is the majority of the Shia, and the Shia are the majority of the country.”
Both Ahmad and Salem Chalabi say they will go back to Baghdad to clear their names. But the politics of liberated Iraq are only likely to get murkier. And more deadly.
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
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