Iraqi monarchy to be revived?

pv vivekanand

"What a preprosterous idea!" that is how a source
close to Prince Hassan of Jordan responded when asked
whether the prince was gearing up to be the king of
Iraq after Saddam Hussein is toppled.
"Do you think Prince Hassan is the type of person who
would ride on an American tank into baghdad to rule
Iraq?" asked the source.
the very idea of restoring the hashemite monarchy in
post-war iraq came up in july when prince hassan, the
brother of the king hussein of jordan, turned up at a
meeting of Iraqi dissidents in London.
Although he insisted that he was attending the meeting
in his personal capacity, his very presence sparked
suggestions that he had made a deal with the americans
under which he would be installed as king of iraq
after saddam is ousted.
The deal, it was alleged, involved jordan joining the
american war camp against Iraq and offering military
facilities to the US military to launch strikes
against the kingdom's eastern neighbour in a course of
events leading to prince hassan taking over Iraq with
american backing.
hassan was expected to become the king of jordan but
his brother king hussein turned around a few days
before his death in February 1999 and named his son
Abdullah as his heir.
Hassan was of course disappointed. Howevdr, the pragmatic
scholar and intellectual he is, he pubicly declared
that he backed abdullah as the new king of jordan.
since then, Hassan came to be known as a king without
a throne, and the purported idea of him being named
king of iraq suited the minds of many.
american sources have confirmed that restoration of
the monarchy in iraq was one of the "many" scenarios
being considered.
however, there are many questions that are not
answered.
these include:
-- will the iraqis themselves accept a monarchy?
the hashemite monarchy was in power in iraq from 1920
until 1958 when it was overthrown. today's iraqi
generation has been for long used to the baathist
leadership and presidency, which came to power in
1968, with saddam hussein assuming power in 1979.
as such, restoration of a ruling family that today's
generation is not familiar with faces major hurdles.
The direct descendant of the Iraqi branch of the
Hashmite family is Sharif Ali Bin Hussein, who
attended the London meeting with prince hassan in
july. sharif ali heads the Constitutional Monarchy
Movement, which, as the name implies, would give the
restored hashemite family a titular power, with the
actual executive powers lying with an elected
government.
The most favoured american plan for immediate post-war
iraq is a military administration headed by a
civilian.
However, that plan seems to have run into trouble
facing rejection by the iraqi dissident groups, which
are insisting that they should be given power in
post-war iraq.
Two Iraqi groups, the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP)
based in northern Iraq and the Shiite Supreme Council
for islamic revolution in Iraq (Scriri) said this week
that Washington had agreed to give the anti-Saddam
groups power in Iraq after the war.
The reported American change of mind to accepting to
allow the Iraqi opposition to rule a post-war Iraq
stems from a realization that Washington would never
be able to secure international legitimacy for a US
occupation of that country.
Earlier US plans called for a military administration
of post-war Iraq.
The country was to be administratively divided into
three sectors - the Kurdish north, the Shiite north
and the mixed central region, including Baghdad, the
capital.
The Bush administration had also firmed up the people
who were supposed to be in charge of the three
sectors: A woman ambassador and a serving general and
a former lieutenant-general, with each assigned to
three sectors of a post-war Iraq - the northern
Kurdish region, the central region including Baghdad
and the Shiite
The woman, career foreign service diplomat Barbara
Brodine, last served as the US ambassador to Yemen and
handled a difficult phase in Washington-Sanaa
relationship after the bombing of the USS Cole off
Aden in 2000 attributed to Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda
group.
The other two are: Lieutenant-General John Abizaid,
who is of Lebanese origin, and former
lieutenant-general Jay Garner, who served as the US
Army's specialist in missile defence and space-related
affairs.
The Iraqi opposition groups vehemently opposed the
plans, but Washington did not seem to be taking them
seriously. Obviously, the assumption was that these
groups would fall in line once the US military takes
firm control of Iraq.
On the international front, the US obviously hoped to
secure a UN Security Council resolution endorsing its
occupation of Iraq disguised as "administrative
control."
However, France and Russia have vowed that they would
deny
the US such legitimacy since it would also mean that
they were endorsing the legality of the US war against
Iraq that does not have Security Council
authorisation.
It was the French and Russian threats of veto that
dissuaded US President George W.Bush from seeking
approval of a new Security Council resolution and
insist that Resolution 1441 of November was enough to
launch military action against Iraq.
On Friday, one day after the war was launched, French
President Jacque Chirac threatened to veto any UN
resolution to let the US run Iraq after the war.
He said that allowing Washington and London to oversee
the creation of a new government in Iraq would reward
them for starting a war that flouted the supremacy of
the UN Security Council.
France would veto any attempt in the United Nations to
"legitimise the military intervention (and) ... give
the belligerents the powers to administer Iraq,"
Chirac said. "That would justify the war after the
event."
Chirac made his position known after British Prime
Minister Tony Blair called on the other European Union
countries to support future moves at the UN to forge a
post-Saddam "civil authority in Iraq."
On Saturday, Russian joined France in opposing the US
move.
Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said he expected
Washington to seek retroactive approval for their
action from the United Nations after Iraqi resistance
had been crushed but that Russia would oppose it.
"Attempts will undoubtedly be made in the UN Security
Council to find ways which would help legitimise the
military operations and the post-war (political)
set-up in Iraq," he said.
"We will follow this very carefully and we will not,
of course, give legitimacy to this action in the
Security Council," Ivanov said.
"I don't think Iraq needs a democracy brought on the
wings of Tomahawk (missiles)," he said.
In northern Iraq on Saturday, the KDP annoucned
Washington had a change of heart and had abandoned
plans to install a temporary US military
administration in post-war Iraq.
"There will be an interim Iraqi administration
immediately after the liberation," a senior KDP
official said, adding that the decision was taken
during tripartite talks in Ankara between American,
Turkish and Iraqi opposition representatives
Hoshyar Zebari of the KDP affirmed that initially, the
Americans had hoped to impose a military
administration which would not involve Iraqis.
But the US "abandoned that idea during the talks," he
said. "It will not exactly be a government, more an
authority which will be responsible for public
services," he explained.
"Power will gradually be transferred to this
authority, which will be able to negotiate with the
United Nations and with countries donating aid,"
Zebari said. "It will prepare the ground for a court
of justice and help establish a constitutional
assembly to draw up a constitution."
Abdul Aziz Hakim, deputy head of the Tehran-based
Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq
(SCIRI), said US representative Zalmay Khalilzad had
announced the change of plan.
Hakim said Khalilzad told them the opposition would
now take control "from the outset."
The reported American change of mind reflects
Washington's thinking that it might not be a good idea
to take its confrontation with other world powers any
further and further undermine the credibility of the
UN Security Council. "Defying the Security Council and
going ahead with its unilateral war against Iraq was
the biggest blow that the UN has ever received,"
commented a European diplomat.
"To continue along the same line and impose its own
rule in Iraq would only worsen the international
crisis, particularly at a time when the US is hoping
for world support in rebuilding Iraq and in mending
fences with European powers like France, Germany and
others."
"Unilateralism could be taken only to a point without
actually triggering a world crisis of massive
proportions worse than those prevailing today," added
the diplomat. At the same time, the "new" American
position to allow the Iraqi opposition to rule
post-war Iraq might be a smoke screen that would veil
the actual power that Washington would wield there in
post-Saddam era.
"What is stopping the US to pull its strings and have
some puppets who would obey orders?" said an Arab
diplomat.
That might not be that easy, given the
behind-the-scene struggle among Iraqi exiles to gain
power in a post-Saddam Iraq.
Leading the pack is Ahmed Chalabi, a former banker in
Jordan with a dubious reputation. Chalabi, a Shiite
who enjoys the backing of several leading figures in
the Bush administration, has made no secret of his
ambition to succeed Saddam. But he faces stiff
opposition from other exile groups such as the
Iran-backed Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic
Revolution in Iraq, the Iraqi National Accord backed
by the Central Intelligence Agency, and the two main
Kurdish groups, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and
the Kurdish Democratic Party as well as the
Constitutional Monarchy Movement.
Meanwhile, the US plan for post-war Iraq would involve
someone who would have mission similar to that of
General Douglas MacArthur, who oversaw the
rebuilding of Japan after World War II.
US officials have affirmed that American officials,
both civilian and military, would be in charge of
post-war Iraq's affairs "as long as it takes" to
create a situation where Washington could hand over
power to an Iraqi civilian government.
What stands out in the proposed nominations is the
reported inclusion of Brodine, a woman, as
administrator of Baghdad.
Washington is being totally insensitive to the
feelings of Iraqis and the Arabs at large and it is a
perfect recipe for continued instability in Iraq since
the Iraqis would not accept a woman at the helm of
their affairs.
The decision might indeed be rooted in considerations
of Bodine's efficiency and experience in the Middle
East, but it could not but be seen as a total
disregard of the sensitivities of the people of Iraq
as well as the male-dominated Arab World at large. If
anything, it would be seen as adding insult to injury
among the Arabs, who have vehemently rejected the US
war against Iraq.
Definitely, the purported plan does not seem to have
taken into consideration Iraqi cultural, historical,
and religious sensitivities.
Iraq is indeed a secular state and Iraqi women
afforded full rights of participation in all levels of
society. However, the installing of a government run
by a non-Arab, non-Muslim woman will definitely wound
the pride of the people of Iraq.
Although modernised, tribal customs still run deep in
Iraq and tribal leaders and sheikhs would not accept
to deal with a woman who would be telling Iraqis how
to run their lives .
Iraqis agree.
"Iraqis will react to it aggressively," said an Iraqi
trader in the UAE, noting that life in Iraq, as in
most other Arab countries, is dominated by males and
Iraqis have never dealt with a woman occupying any
high political office. "The Iraqis would be the last
among the Arabs to accept that a woman running their
country," said the trader.
Another Iraqi, a business executive, laughed at the
idea. "How do you think a woman would be able to deal
with the tribal leaders and sheikhs? They would never
take orders from a woman. They would simply boycott
her."
If anything, Iraqis have an added reason to be hostile
to American female diplomats. Many Iraqis have not
forgotten that it was another American woman
ambassador, April Glaspie, who, they believe, nudged
Saddam into believing that Washington would remain
neutral if he were to invade Kuwait and was thus
implicitly encouraged to order his military across the
border to the emirate in August 1990.
"We already had an American woman leading us into
disaster," said another IraqI, a banking executive.
"If it had not been for (Glaspie's) misleading
comments, Saddam would have thought twice or thrice
before invading Kuwait and brought the catastrophe
upon the entire country."
"Why should the Iraqi need another American ambassador
who could be doing the same things all over again
although in a different context, time and place?"
asked the executive.
That might indeed be true. But do the Iraqis have any
choice?

Chalabi and his ambitions

PV Vivekanand


For a while it seemed that Ahmed Chalabi, a
London-based Shiite and former banker who leads an
umbrella body of Iraqi exile groups, was most favoured
to take over power in a hypothetical post-Saddam Iraq.
However, American priorities and strategies have
shifted since then, and Chalabi might not find himself
in the presidential palace unless his powerful friends
in Washington turns things around. However, that might
not be easy either, writes PV Vivekanand, who also
traces Chalabi's background as a banker in Jordan and
his experience in dealing with the Iraqi exiles.


AHMED CHALABI, leader of the Iraqi National Congress
(INC) and self-styled candidate to succeed Saddam
Hussein, has been dealt a severe blow to his
aspirations to occupy the presidential palace in
Baghdad.
Obviously, Washington has its own plans and designs
for a post-Saddam Iraq and Chalabi, a Shiite with a
chequered past as a banker in Jordan, appeared to
have found little room to accommodate himself in the
American scheme of things that envisages a military
occupation of the country after toppling Saddam.
Chalabi, who maintains offices in London and
Washington as well as northern Iraq beyond Saddam'
reach, has been building a case for himself as a
potential successor to the Iraqi president since 1991.
He had been a frequent visitor to Washington in order
to promote himself and secure American political and
financial support against Saddam.
The administration seems to have played an off-again,
on-again game with him, with the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) raising questions about his use of
American funds given to him to build a viable Iraqi
opposition front to challenge Saddam. Others say
Chalabi had spent his own money on trying to build an
anti-Saddam coalition in northern Iraq. He had even
set up a radio station to beam anti-Saddam rhetoric to
the people of Iraq. His efforts came to nought in 1996
when two Kurdish groups fought each other for
prominence in the region, and Saddam's agents managed
to penetrate into the area. That posed a direct threat
of military action and Chalabi, like others who had
set up presence there, had no choice but to order his
set-up dismantled and his people evacuated. He has
re-established an INC presence there now.
However, the most prominent American reason to
sideline him now seems to be the realisation that
other Iraqi exile groups had never really accepted the
INC leader as a possible successor to Saddam and that
he might not be the right candidate capable of dealing
with the ground realities in Iraq; and that seems to
have shut out -- at this jucture -- Chalabi's dreams
of riding atop an American military tank into the
presidential palace of Baghdad.
He has publicly rejected US plans to install an
American military administration based on the
remnants of the current Iraqi regime once Saddam is
toppled.
Speaking from an undisclosed location in northern
Iraq, Chalabi told ABC Television on Tuesday: "Iraqis
must choose their own government."
Describing as "unacceptable" the reported US plan to
have a reformed ruling Baath Party "work de facto
under the protection of US military administration,"
Chalabi told ABC: "An extended US administration...in
Iraq is unworkable....a US administration will have
very little knowledge of Arab society."
Chalabi's misfortune of falling out with the American
plans is not unique. It is simply that a liberal like
him with modern views and more attuned to dealing with
Western democratic setups than the peculiarities of
the Iraqi society is no match for the heavy
undercurrents and tribalism that dominate the Iraqi
scene today. The exigencies posed by post-war chaos in
Iraq could be too strong for him to survive.
Over the decades, the Iraqi exile groups -- at one
point there were over 60 of them -- which espouse
differing ideologies, self-interests and political
priorities have never been able to come together on a
practical platform, Their only common interest was a
desire to see Saddam departing from power. They never
trusted each other and suspected that every
group/leader was playing puppet to strings pulled by
external forces with vested interests.
It is not even likely that more than a few hundred
people might even know Chalabi in Baghdad, a fact
admitted by his spin doctor in Washington, Entifadh
Qanbar, who says that people in Baghdad "may not know
the man, but he represents their views."
That is a tall claim indeed.

Banker in Jordan

I have met Chalabi several times at public meetings
while he was a banker in Jordan during the 80s, but
never had an opportunity to get wind of his political
plans. His prominence as a Jordanian banker did not
matter much to me as a journalist since I had access
to the Shomans, who owned the Arab Bank -- the largest
commercial bank in Jordan. But then, it had never
occurred to me that Chalabi, a seemingly streetwise
banker and financier, had political ambitions; and it
is more likely that he did not have any and that he
turned himself to an active anti-Saddam activist after
leaving Jordan in a cloud of controversy and settling
down in London along with some of his close aides from
the banking era.
He established the INC in 1992 and since then his
efforts have been focused on pushing the US to finish
the uncompleted task of the 1991 war -- ouster of
Saddam.
I have spoken to him several times in London in the
late 80s and early 90s, but those conversations had to
do with the banking scandal he left behind in Amman
when he fled in July 1989, purportedly hiding in the
trunk of a car.
Those conversations formed part of the basis for my
numerous reports on the banking scam to the extent
that I was once told that my telephone was tapped
since Jordanian intelligence wanted direct access to
the information that Chalabi was "feeding" me.
However, I was never questioned by Jordanian
intelligence over Chalabi (perhaps because there was
always a trace of animosity in our conversations and I
was not always buying his versions of the scandal and
often challenged him to substantiate his contentions).

I had the first confirmation of Chalabi's political
ambitions after the Gulf war of 1991.
I received a telephone call in Jordan from a close
Chalabi associate, Ali Sarraf, in March 1991. I had
just returned from post-war Baghdad and I told him how
bad the situation was for the people of Iraq after the
war over Kuwait.
Sarraf had earlier given me clues how to locate some
of his relatives in Baghdad (I had opted aginst the
idea since establishing connections with them would
be construed as me acting as a link between Iraqi
exiles and their supporters in Baghdad; this would
have seen me rotting in one of the notorious prisons
of Iraq with my jailers having thrown away the key).
During that March 1991 conversation, the shape of
post-war Iraq came up.
"Give us one year and imagine who you'd see in power
in Baghdad," Sarraf quipped. "The doctor (Chalabi)
will be the president of Iraq and guess who would be
his finance minister," he added with an unmistakeable
echo of glee over the electronic waves, obviously
imagining himself to be in control of the finances of
a country which holds 12 per cent of the world's oil
reserves.
"Best of luck Ali," I told him, "and please tell the
doctor to grant me the first interview from the
presidential palace in Baghdad. I am sure the
Jordanians and others would be anxious to hear what he
has to say."
"Well, you wait and see what we are going to do to
Jordan and the Mickey Mouses there," was Sarraf's
rejoinder in a reference to Jordanian ministers and
officials who were at that time building a case
against Chalabi and others, including Sarraf himself.
"We'd kick butts so bad that Jordan might not exist by
the time we are finished with it."
Here it needs a little background.
Chalabi belonged to an influential Shiite family in
Iraq. He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and earned a doctorate in mathematics from
the University of Chicago in 1969.
He left Iraq when the Hashemite monarchy was
overthrown in 1958. He was given refuge in Jordan,
where, using his connections with the Hashemite royal
family there, he set up Petra Bank in 1977.
By mid-80s, Petra Bank had grown to be the second
largest commercial bank in Jordan after the Arab Bank.
It even had a affiliate bank -- Petra International --
in New York. Petra also had a branch in Beirut called
MEBCO that was liquidated by the Central Bank of
Lebanon and Chalabi'ated MEBCO Geneva.
He was also generous to socio-economic projects and
educational development in Jordan. Petra Bank was
among the first to introduce computerised operations
in Jordan.
However, in the second half of the 80s, Jordan's
economy stumbled because of heavy foreign debts and
foreign exchange reserves dried up. The late King
Hussein appointed veteran Mohammed Saed Nabulsi as
governor of the Central Bank with the mandate of
shoring up the country's monetary situation.
Nabulsi took stock of the situation and asked all
commercial banks to deposit 30 per of their foreign
currency holdings in the Central Bank. All banks
obliged, but Petra Bank and another small bank did not
and this prompted a closer look at the banks'
activities. The books showed that Petra Bank held $200
million in foreign currency, but the money was
missing.
Soon, according to Nabulsi, it emerged that Petra Bank
-- and, by extension, the smaller bank -- were
involved in a complex network of illegal operations.
He ordered a Central Bank take-over of Petra Bank and
an investigation June 1989 and this opened a Pandora's
Box that led to the collapse of the bank and Chalabi's
flight from Jordan.
Nabulsi accused Chalabi of spiriting away depositors'
money and Central Bank funds. The collapse of Petra
Bank is said to have caused Jordan $500 million. The
actual amount the treasury lost was eventually put at
$300 million after the liquidation of the bank.
Investigations followed the collapse of the bank and a
government committee submitted its findings that led
to a trial in 1992.
Chalabi and 16 others -- most of them tried in
absentia -- were found guilty on several counts in a
trial after an investigating commitee reported its
findings to the government. He was sentenced in April
1992 to 22 years hard labour by the State Security
Court on 31 charges of embezzlement, theft, misuse of
depositor funds and speculation with the Jordanian
dinar. The court also handed down harsh sentences and
fines to the others, including several brothers and
close relatives who were members of the board of
Petra Bank, or owners of affiliated companies.
Jordan tried to secure Chalabi's deportation from the
UK to the kingdom, but it did not work out.
Ali Sarraf --the man who wanted to become Iraq's
finance minister under a Chalabi reign in Baghdad --
was Chalabi's chief foreign exchange dealer at Petra
Bank.
When the banking scam came to light, the Jordanian
authorities had seized the passports of Chalabi as
well as several others but almost all of them managed
to flee the country in mysterious circumstances.
Chalabi was believed to have been driven to the Syrian
border by "someone high up" who used his influence to
see the Iraqi across the frontier from where he took
off for London and applied for asylum in the UK.
Sarraf was caught at Amman international airport a few
days later as he was about to board a London-bound
flight with a suitcase full of documents and over
$25,000 in cash. His passport was also seized and he
was detained for a few days and then released.
My instincts told me there was much more than met the
eye in the Petra Bank scam. I got in touch with
Sarraf after his release and invited him to a Chinese
lunch along with one of the my colleagues at the
Jordan Times. I wanted to hear his story first hand.
However, while Sarraf talked at length about how the
Jordanian government had "mistreated" Chalabi and
himself at the behest of Saddam, he gave away little
in substance about how Petra Bank collapsed. He was
evasive to pointed questions and in fact I was more
perplexed about the affair that I started off before
the lunch.
Anyway, we parted with a promise that we'd remain in
touch. He gave me Chalabi's telephone number in
London, but before I could get around to calling the
"doctor," I started receiving calls from the banker
himself, telling me his version of the Petra Bank
episode. His stories made little sense to me, perhaps
because I did not understand high finance banking
practices and the extent of Chalabi's "connections" in
Jordan. However, he used to issue regular threats
against prominent Jordanians, saying "all I need is to
open my mouth and name some names...that would make
the Central Bank governor lose his pants....."
He insisted that he left Jordan because Saddam's
agents were after him and he feared for his life. He
also accused Saddam of pressuring Jordan into forcing
the collapse of Petra Bank.
Chalabi's persistent contention was that there was
nothing wrong with Petra Bank, he had not stolen any
money and that all Jordanian charges against him were
fabricated. However, the facts of the case, as it
unfolded in a Jordanian court much later, spoke
otherwise.
After his every call to me, I tried to match what he
told me with information gleaned from Jordanian
officials, including some from the Central Bank, and
write reports in the Jordan Times. One day a friend of
mine-- with connections in Jordanian intelligence --
advised me to stop covering the Petra Bank issue. "It
is not worth to get too deep into it because it could
harm you....and your reputation" for whatever that was
worth, I was told.
A few days later, Sarraf's Amman telephone stopped
answering, and I found out he had mysteriously fled
the country.
Shortly thereafter, I estabished an excellent rapport
with the head of the committee investigating the Petra
Bank scandal, and I became privvy to an unfolding
tale of Chalabi's banking tentacles spread not only
in Jordan but also in several Arab and African
countries as well as Switzerland and the US. Some of
the details revealed to me went into reports while I
maintained the confidentially of others.
I also developed a close relationship with the finance
minister as well as the governor of the Central Bank.
I could call them on their direct line or at home
whenever I had questions for them. Obvioiusly I was
"safe" because by then they had realised that I knew
what the sensitivities were. Earlier,
the officialdom was upset because they thought Chalabi
was using me to air his version of the bank collapse
(as I came to know much later, some had even suspected
that Chalabi was paying me).
In expert opinion, Petra Bank would not have collapsed
had it not been for Chalabi's one-track mind to build
a business empire with his finger of every pie in the
industrial and trade sectors. He financed businesses,
took them over when they hit troubles and sought to
revive them after appointing "experts" loyal to him --
including a veteran Indian economist then in his 70s
-- to run them. All the "experts" were supposed to
report directly to him, and none of them knew each
other.
His business "interests" included industrial units,
computer firms, travel agencies, export companies,
hotels, real estate, construction, insurance.. you
name it and he had interests in the sector. It took
the investigating committee years to unravel them.
Jordan's banking system tottered for some time after
the Petra Bank collapse because, as officials charged,
Chalabi had drained the last of the country's scarce
foreign exchange reserves, thus adding the kingdom's
burdens.
When the whole picture was unveiled to me, I wrote a
lengthy piece in the Jordan Times saying Chalabi was
either one of the best banking brains in the Arab
World or the worst crook depending on how one viewed
him and his activities.
The very day the report appeared, I got a call from
Chalabi, who was obviously getting Jordanian newspaper
clippings faxed to him in London every day.
"I have half a mind to sue the hell out of you and
your paper for calling me a crook," he told me in a
stern voice. Go ahead and do that, I told him
(knowing well that he stood no chance against me in a
Jordanian court at that point in time). "Don't worry,
I won't do that," he said. "But I am flattered by the
picture you painted of me... that of a banking
superman sitting behind a computer console in the
top-floor office my bank manipulating the economy,
banking and finances of Jordan..."
Well, that was exactly what he was doing and he had
left Jordan in a serious mess.
Jordanian sources who were close to Chalabi affirm
that anti-Saddam politics was never his priority while
in the kingdom. The picture that emerges is of a man
who portrayed himself to be Saddam's victim and
started believing in his own tales and transformed
himself to be a leading opponent of the Iraqi
strongman.
Chalabi now says he was targeted for assassination by
Iraqi agents in at least nine attempts since his
flight from Jordan. Probably it is true.
Senior Iraqi officials whom I met after the 1991 war
dismissed Chalabi as irrelevant and non-consequential.
That was indeed a short-sighted assumption since
Chalabi went on to make himself dear to the US
administration, secured the support of leading
congressmen and built a strong lobby for himself. He
managed to project himself as a possible successor to
Saddam, but fell afoul of US intelligence agencies
when they detected what they saw as discrepancies in
the way he used to spend American funds.
Ironically, a story that went around in Jordan in the
mid-90s was how a group of Iraqi army generals plotted
a coup against Saddam over several months and managed
to keep it top secret. The coup, according to the
sources who had the story, would have been
successfully staged had it not been for the "mistake"
that the generals made by informing Chalabi of their
plans. The next thing the plotters knew was their own
arrest by Saddam's secret police. Almost all of them
and their supporters were executed, went the story.
How did that happen? Well, the story says that when
Chalabi was informed of the plot, he tipped off the
CIA and Saddam got wind of the plans through a CIA
"leak."
Or did Chalabi himself use his channels to tip off
Saddam because he feared that a coup would only lead
to generals assuming power in Baghdad and that would
have dealt the death blow to his own ambitions?
Despite his split with the US over plans for post-war
Iraq, Chalabi might yet stage a comeback. He has
powerful friends in Washington. Apart from influential
members in the US Congress, those who favoured
Chalabi as a democratic alternative to Saddam include
Vice President Richard Cheney, Defence Secretary
Donald Rumsfled, Defence Policy Board head Richard
Perle, Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz and
the Pentagon's Middle-East policy executors such as
Peter Rodman, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser and Michael
Rubin, says American writer Robert Dreyfuss.
With such a heavyweight lobby behind him, Chalabi
seemed to have all but clinched his role as Saddam's
successor a few months ago. At that point, the shrewd
banker even promised that American oil companies would
have the run of Iraq's oil wealth as and when he
assumed power in Baghdad.
However, his detractors are in the CIA and the State
Department who describe him as better suited to the
cut and thrust of exile politics and diplomacy in the
West than the cut-throat politics of post-Saddam Iraq
where tribalism is expected to play the dominant role.
Chalabi's hope of salvation hinges on his success to
set up a "leadership" council made up of Iraqi exile
leaders and appoint himself as its head. That would
give him a position of prominence if and when he
enters a Saddamless Iraq or he would find himself as
one of the thousands of exiles returning to their
homeland. Obviously, the way to the top from the
"leadership" council would be easy if his friends in
Washington turns the thinking around in the CIA and
the military establishment.
But then, keeping him popped up in power could come at
the cost of American lives since it would pit the
Chalabi camp against what is emerging as a powerful
alliance grouping the two main Kurdish parties, the
Kurdistan Democratic Party and thePatriotic Union of
Kurdistan, the Iraqi National Accord, a CIA-backed
faction, and the Iranian-supported Supreme Council for
the Islamic Revolution in Iraq,

Questions that the US must answer

PV Vivekanand

AT THIS JUNCTURE where the United States is ardently pushing the international community to war against Iraq in the name of the United Nations and citing Baghdad's non-compliance with Security Council resolutions, Washington has to answer a few questions that it has been ducking,
Foremost of those questions are:
Why is it that Washington cites Iraq's violations of UN Security Council resolutions to justify an all-out war while overlooking that US allies like Turkey and Israel continue to violate dozens of Security Council resolutions?
Isn't it a blatant addition of insult to injury when the US not only endorses Israel's aggressive policies but also prevents the international community from pressuring Israel into seeing logic, justice, fairness and reason?
Why does Washington block other countries from taking military action to force truants to comply with Security Council resolutions? Or is it that it is a right it has reserved for itself as the sole superpower?
Isn't it true that the US warning that the Security Council could lose its "relevance" is based on how far the world body agrees to abide by American commands?
Why does Washington insist that Iraq poses a threat to American national security while there is no evidence whatsover of Baghdad had or has any link with any group that has carried out anti-American attacks or has issued any such threat?
Isn't it clear that a war against Iraq would play into the hands of militants and increase the same "security threats" that Washington cites as a reason for a war?
Why does Washington see an Iraqi threat to other Middle Eastern countries while none of them - except Israel - sees such threat?
Why does Washington refrain from acknowledging that it had given an implicit go ahead to Iraq to invade Kuwait in 1990 by saying it would have no role in an "Arab-Arab" dispute?
Why does Washington cite Iraq's use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war and conveniently sidestep the truth that it was the US which provided such weapons to Iraq and also offered satellite intelligence that helped the Iraqi military to pinpoint Iranian positions to be targeted?
Why does Washington speak in general terms and avoid being specific on its allegations that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction?
Why is that the superb satellite intelligence of the US unable to tell the UN inspectors where to look for such weapons in Iraq?
Why does the US waste no opportunity to hit at Iraqi targets in the "no-fly" zones at the slightest "provacation" while not employing the same warplanes to bomb out any Iraqi weapons site? Isn't it because it has failed to find any such site?
Why does the US cite human rights concerns and the "oppression" of the people of Iraq as a reason for war whereas its record speaks of decade-old alliances with much worse regimes than that of Saddam Hussein? Why is the US not applying the same standards and why the sudden concern for the people of Iraq?
Why does the US refrain from any concern for the oppressed people of Palestine who live under perpetual terror posed by the mighty military machinery of the occupying Israeli forces?
Why does the US allow Israel to use US-supplied weapons and military gear against the Palestinians while it insists on such bans attached to military sales to other countries?
How long would it take the US to recognise that the real threat to peace in the Middle East is posed by Israel's expansionist ambitions and oppressive policies against the Palestinians?
Why does the US fail to acknowledge that a war against Iraq would have serious repercussions on the Middle East?
Isn't the American plan for an open-ended military occupation of Iraq a reincarnation of colonialism?
Isn't it true that the planned war against is aimed at securing control of Iraq's oil to serve American economy and oil companies and shutting out Europeans and others in Washington's quest for absolute global dominance?
Isn't it true that the scenario of war was prepared years ago and the ongoing effort at the Security Council for a new resolution is simply a charade?
Isn't it true that the failure of the council to adopt the new resolution would have no impact on the American determination to go to war against Iraq?
Isn't it true that the administration is trying to muzzle the media citing national security in order to ensure that the American people hear only what Washington wants them to hear?
Isn't it true that the US is ignoring Arab concerns for regional security and stability because it has ceased to care for such issues and is arrogantly confident that it would be able to deal with any eventuality -- even it means total chaos in the region?
Finally, isn't true that the entire war scenario where the US would spend tens of billions of dollars and engage upto 250,000 American soldiers is scripted to suit the interests of Israel?