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Ahmed Chalabi, prominent Shiite politician, dies at 71
2015-11-04
[Rudaw] Prominent Shiite politician Ahmed Abdul Hadi Chalabi, a controversial politician who crusaded in Washington for the ouster of Saddam Hussein but later demanded that US troops withdraw, died of a heart attack Tuesday. He was 71.

Haitham al-Jabouri, secretary of parliament's financial panel, which Chalabi had chaired, told news agencies that he was found dead in his bed in his Baghdad home after suffering a heart attack.

Chalabi held many posts in the Iraqi government, including deputy prime minister and oil minister, and was a leading force against the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein. He survived at least one liquidation attempt in 2008 that killed six of his bodyguards.

Educated in mathematics at two of America's most prestigious schools, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of reliably Democrat Chicago, aka The Windy City or Mobtown
... home of Al Capone, a succession of Daleys, Barak Obama, and Rahm Emmanuel,...
, Chalabi taught as a professor in Beirut before making an unsuccessful foray into banking.

Chalabi spent the years 1992-1996 in the Kurdistan Region trying to topple Saddam with the Iraqi National Council, a group he founded that reportedly received as much as $100 million in funding from Washington.

When the US overthrew the Saddam regime, Chalabi was named one of the 25 members of the Iraqi Governing Council. Under his presidency, the council passes a law that outlawed the Baath party and ostracized its former members in a process that became famous as "de-Baathification."

Chalabi's ties with the US were complicated. He attended US president George W Bush's State of the Union address in 2004 and sat with First Lady Laura Bush. Five months later, however, US forces raided his homes and offices and accused him of passing secret information to Iran, according to the BBC. Chalabi denied the charges.

In 2007, the BBC reports that he was given a post as a mediator between US troops and Baghdad residents in disputes about compensation for damages to homes during security checks.

Bu two years later, according to the BBC, the US links Chalabi to a deadly attack on US marines in 2007 and with ties to Shiite snuffies and Iran.

Chalabi is believed to be survived by his wife Leila, and four children.
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Iraq
Iraq: Al-Malikis Party calls for his removal
2011-04-11
[Asharq al-Aswat] Salim al-Husni, a key figure in the Iraqi Islamic Dawa Party under the leadership of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, has revealed that the party is preparing for a general conference for the leaders of the Islamic Dawa Party. He said that the conference will announce Al-Maliki's removal from the party, because of his "abuse of the principles and ideas adopted by the Islamic Dawa Party."

Al-Husni, who is the former editor of the Islamic Dawa Party's newspaper (Al-Jihad) during the 1980s, said that: "Al-Maliki has used the Islamic Dawa Party and transformed it into a bridge to power." He noted that: "the ideas and principles of our party are far from power-mongering. Instead, it is a cultural and mass party that is founded on the principle of serving people, rather than serving officials and covering up for them."

The Islamic Dawa Party leader has told Asharq Al-Awsat in London that: "the complaints of the leaders and bases of the Islamic Dawa Party have made us prepare for the convening of a general conference inside Iraq, because the party is an Iraqi party." He noted that: "we will not describe this conference as a secession conference, because this has become a very shameful situation as a result of the large number of splits that have occurred within the Islamic Dawa Party." He added: "Instead, we refer to our conference as a correctional movement and a reversion to the principles and ideas adopted by the party." He said: "We will call for Al-Maliki's removal, because he has done great wrong and extensive harm to the party's history and to the political process. This is now that he has used the party as a bridge to power and held on to it."

Al-Husni, who joined the Islamic Dawa Party in 1973 and was the person in charge of the party's media affairs, noted that: "for the most part, the reason for the convening of the conference lies in Al-Maliki's way of working and behavior, which have detached the party from its principles." He added that: "the leadership of the Islamic Dawa Party has become preoccupied with power and ignored the party's mission." He pointed out that: "it is not a personal issue between me and Al-Maliki. He has been my friend since 1980, when he was not known even at the level of the Islamic Dawa Party leaders." He added: "In 1986, we, the leaders of the party, decided to wage a media campaign to promote some of our party members. Among them was Abu-Isra (Nuri) al-Maliki. This was his name." He said: "At that time, I was the chief editor of the party's newspaper (Al-Jihad), which was published in Tehran." He added: "I did not know how to present Al-Maliki, because there was nothing to write about him or introduce him, especially since he was not known as a leader until a later stage." He noted: "Al-Maliki was hesitant and fearful. Now, I find this transformation in his personality strange. I attribute this to him getting a taste of power."

The Islamic Dawa Party leader said that: "Al-Maliki has deliberately driven away historic and strong Islamic Dawa Party leaders. He also took weak people as close companions in order for him to easily control them and order them around." He added: "The cultural level of those who work at his office today is below average. We find it strange how these people are running the affairs of the state and the Islamic Dawa Party." He stated: "Accordingly, Al-Maliki has followed in the footsteps of Saddam Hussein, who drove away key Baath Party leaders and took the weak as close companions." He noted that: "today, the best name that can be given to the Islamic Dawa Party is Al-Maliki's party. We have actually started using this name, because the party's practices have nothing to do with the ideas and principles of the Islamic Dawa Party." He said: "This reminds us of the practices of the leader of the former regime, who transformed the Baath Party into Saddam's party."

Al-Husni said: "During the general conference that we will hold, we will employ the principles and ideas adopted by the Islamic Dawa Party. Al-Maliki's practices have harmed the party and everyone will know who represents the party." He added: "For quite some time now, we have moved toward change, and we do not say secession. This is because, as I said earlier, this was a shameful state of affairs." He explained that: "foremost among the splits that have occurred in the history of the party, and I mean major splits, was one that occurred in 1965, when Sami al-Badri seceded from the party and formed Jund al-Imam [Soldiers of the Imam] group. This was followed by the 1981 split by Izalddin Salim (Abdul-Zahrah Othman), a member of the former Iraqi Governing Council, who was assassinated in Storied Baghdad in 2004. This is in addition to the split that occurred in 1999 and the formation of the Islamic Dawa Party-Iraq Organization wing."

Al-Husni said that: "what has caused us to delay the convening of the conference is that we do not want some parties to develop the impression that we are secessionists. Rather, we want to say that this is the genuine Islamic Dawa Party." He added: "Secession means the adoption of new ideas and goals. Nevertheless, we insist on achieving the goals of our party, which rejects authority while its leader is holding on to power today." He stated: "Some people favored power over the party and got involved in acts of corruption. This is a very shameful state of affairs. Therefore, we will call for Al-Maliki's removal from the party and his deposition." He noted: "As a matter of fact, to begin with he became the leader of the party by mistake. This was a result of the vote counting method that was used at that time and led to some leaders rising to power." He stated: "Al-Maliki was also mistakenly chosen as the party's secretary general during the 2007 conference." He noted that: "Al-Maliki admitted that a mistake was made and proposed a re-election after three months in order to protect the party from harm. However,
The all-purpose However...
 he deceived everyone and did not hold a re-election."

The Islamic Dawa Party leader pointed out that: "the influence that the Islamic Dawa Party enjoys today is attributed to the fact that it is in power. Once Al-Maliki leaves the government, the party will lose its influence, because it is not based on true mass influence." He added: "Moreover, the party won the provincial election because Al-Maliki is in power. Once he is removed from the party, he will lose a great deal of his popularity."
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Iraq
Blasts in Baghdad kill 15, wound 29
2008-11-05
Bombs exploded at a bus station and a small market in Baghdad, killing 15 people and wounding 29 others Tuesday, police and hospital officials said. A string of other attacks also took place in Mosul, which has experienced a spike in violence in recent months.

A bomb hidden under a car blew up at a bus depot in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Mashtal on the Baghdad's east side, killing 11 people, including two women. Twenty-one others were wounded in the attack, authorities said.

In the northern Shiite-dominated district of Qahira, four people were killed and eight others injured when a roadside bomb exploded near a market place, police said.

Also Tuesday, one person died when a roadside bomb in central Baghdad targeted the convoy of a Shiite government official and former member of the Iraqi Governing Council. Ahmed Shiyaa al-Barak, who currently serves as the head of a government real estate commission, escaped the attack without injury. Five of his guards and four bystanders were injured in the bombing, police said.

Unknown assailants also gunned down a policeman in east Baghdad.

U.S. officials say attacks in the Iraqi capital are averaging about four a day--down nearly 90 percent from levels of late 2006, when Shiite-Sunni fighting was at its high point and just before the U.S. troop surge that helped bring down violence in the capital.

But Tuesday's blasts--coming a day after a series of bombings killed 10 people and wounded 40 more--mark an increase in bloodshed in Baghdad and underscore that extremists still pose a threat.

Meanwhile, in the northern city of Mosul, a suicide bomber rammed his car into a passing police patrol, injuring four officers, police said. A roadside bomb killed one person and wounded another, while gunmen shot dead a civilian and a policeman in separate drive-by-shootings, officials said.

Also, an Iraqi soldier was injured when his patrol struck a roadside bomb, and a gunman wounded a policeman in a separate incident.

Elsewhere, a mortar shell struck a house in Madain, south of Baghdad, killing a woman and her two young children, police said.

Near the city of Tikrit, some 80 miles (130 kilometers) north of the capital, one civilian died on the scene of a road accident with coalition troops, the U.S. military said.

A second Iraqi died after being rushed to an aid station.

Iraqi police said an American Humvee ran over four Iraqis while they were trying to hang a banner in the middle of a road, killing two and wounding two others.

Violence has dropped in Iraq since the U.S. military and Iraqi security forces have gained the upper hand against insurgents, but scattered attacks still occur daily.
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Fifth Column
Shadow Warriors
2007-12-12
By Jamie Glazov

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Kenneth R. Timmerman, the New York Times bestselling author of Countdown to Crisis, The French Betrayal of America, Preachers of Hate: Islam and the War on America, and Death Lobby: How the West Armed Iraq. In 2006 he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his groundbreaking reporting on Iran ’s nuclear weapons program. He is the author of the new book, Shadow Warriors: The Untold Story of Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of Surrender.

FP: Kenneth Timmerman, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Timmerman: Thanks, Jamie. It’s always a pleasure to appear alongside other founding members of the Vast Right-wing Conspiracy.

FP: My pleasure as well.

What inspired you to write this book?

Timmerman: In the beginning were the leaks. I was curious how highly-classified intelligence information was winding up on the front pages of the NY Times and in other leftist media. Two stories, in particular, caught my attention initially: the leak of the CIA “secret prisons,” and the smearing of Ahmad Chalabi, to which I will return below.

I knew quite a bit about both stories, and knew that the way they were being reported was incredibly selective and politically motivated. I wanted to track them back to the source.

What I discovered was a vast, underground network of government officials, former intelligence officers, members of Congress and their staffs, who were in bed with a complacent, anti-Bush media. They were eager to publish anything that did damage to this president, even if it put the lives of our intelligence officers or of our front-line troops in jeopardy.

FP: So tell us about the underground resistance movement against President Bush.

Timmerman: It certainly comes as no surprise to readers of this page to discover that a segment of the Democrat party never accepted the legitimacy of the 2000 presidential election, and sought in every possible way to delegitimize George W. Bush.

What I discovered, however, was that this political “pay-back” went far beyond the realm of domestic politics, and that legions of “shadow warriors” purposefully burrowed into the bureaucracy with the sole purpose of undermining the president and his policies.

The sabotage was so intense, for example, that CIA officers actually stood by and watched as a key moderate Iraqi cleric was hacked to death in front of their eyes on the steps of a Shiite shrine in Najaf by the pro-Iranian radical, Muqtada al-Sadr, in April 2003. The death of Majid al-Khoie, who was brought back to Iraq by the Bush administration just after the overthrow of Saddam, was a tremendous setback to our efforts to help the Iraqi Shiite community to distance itself from Iran and organize itself around moderate, pro-Western leaders.

For the shadow warriors, the failure of the liberation of Iraq was not “collateral damage.” It was the actual goal of their efforts. Within just weeks of the liberation, as I reveal in the book, a retired State Department officer who briefly served in Iraq devised the mantra “Bush lied, people died.” The Left has never tired of repeating it.

FP: Your thoughts on the politicization of intelligence by Senate Democrats?

Timmerman: The end result of the extraordinary cherry-picking of intelligence by Senate Democrats that I describe in detail in the book is to devalue intelligence and to make it suspect.

As you know, I follow events in Iran quite closely. You will not be surprised to learn that I am skeptical of the latest National Intelligence Estimate that concluded with “high confidence” that Iran stopped nuclear weapons work in late 2003.

What I find truly disturbing, however, is the widespread skepticism that has greeted this NIE by ordinary Americans and by intelligence specialists alike. No one trusts the intelligence community to come to an unbiased conclusion any longer. This NIE is far worse than the much disputed October 2002 estimate of Iraqi WMD programs, which failed to properly weigh conflicting information but never recommended a policy to the President or to Congress. (No, Rosie, there was no ‘rush to war.’) This NIE explicitly advocates policy – something the intelligence community is not supposed to do – and gives the impression that the intelligence information it chose to credit was pre-cooked in support of a political conclusion.

FP: Shed some light for us on the shadow warriors at the State Department. How much have they hurt Bush administration policies?

Timmerman: Let me answer with an anecdote I describe in the book. After President Bush was elected to a second term in November 2004, Secretary of State Colin Powell called a town meeting at the State Department in Washington . Faced with a sea of Kerry-Edwards stickers in the parking lot, Powell decided to confront the problem head on. “We live in a democracy,” he said. “As Americans, we have to respect the results of elections.” He went on to tell his employees that President Bush had received the most votes of any president in U.S. history, and that they were constitutionally obligated to serve him.

One of Powell’s subordinates, an assistant secretary of state, became increasingly agitated. Once Powell had dismissed everyone, she returned to her office suite, shut the door, and held a mini town meeting of her own. After indignantly recounting Powell’s remarks, she commented: “Well, Senator Kerry receive the second highest number of votes of any presidential candidate in history. If just one state had gone differently, Sen. Kerry would be President Kerry today.” Her staff owed no allegiance to the president of the United States , especially not to policies they knew were wrong, she said. If it was legal, and it would slow down the Bush juggernaut, they should do it, she told them.

Here was an open call to insubordination, and, I might add, it was not an isolated incident. We have heard recently from John Bolton confirmation of another story I tell in the book about Vann Van Diepen, one of the authors of the recent Iran NIE. Van Diepen systematically refused to carry out direct orders from Bolton to enforce non-proliferation sanctions against Iran and North Korea , because he disagreed with the policy.

Scott Carpenter, who had been in charge of the Iran pro-democracy programs at State, recently told the New York Sun that those programs were “dead” because they had been sabotaged by career State Department officials and Democrat political appointees, such as Suzanne Maloney, who now works at Brookings.

Thanks to those efforts, we now have only two policy options when it comes to Iran : acquiesce to an Iranian bomb, or bomb Iran (as French president Sarkozy has said so eloquently). The much better option, which I have advocated in these pages for some time, is to help the people of Iran to overthrow the regime. Thanks to the shadow warriors at State, we no longer have that option.

FP: The war in Iraq is going very successfully now, but for a while there it did go wrong. Where, when and why did it go wrong?

Timmerman: I believe the single most catastrophic decision in the war was made by L. Paul (“Jerry”) Bremer just two days after he arrived in Baghdad in May 2003.

I comment everyone to read this particular chapter of Shadow Warriors. It is entitled, “The Viceroy Cometh,” and it describes how Bremer single-handedly overturned the long-standing strategic plan of the Bush administration to liberate Iraq and hand over power to the Iraqis, without even consulting with the White House. Bremer, who knew nothing about Iraq , decided upon arriving in Baghdad that the Iraqi Governing Council was “unrepresentative” and that he should replace them and rule Iraq directly. His decision single-handedly transformed the liberation of Iraq into an occupation and spawned the insurgency that ultimately cost the lives of more than 3000 U.S. soldiers.

FP: The CIA’s war against Chalabi?

Timmerman: Google the name Ahmed Chalabi and “fraud,” and you get more than 55,000 hits. Google his name plus the word “crook” and you will get more than 12,000 hits. This gives a measure of how successful the effort to smear Ahmad Chalabi’s reputation has been. As I reveal in Shadow Warriors, that effort was spear-headed by the CIA,

Why did the CIA hate Chalabi? It wasn’t because he was an Iranian “agent” (just one of many false accusations made against him). The hatred began in 1996, when Chalabi came to Washington to warn then CIA director John Deutch that a CIA-sponsored coup plot had been penetrated by Saddam Hussein. In short, he had intelligence the CIA did not, and they never forgave him for it. It’s the old story of exposing the Emperor with No Clothes.

The Senate Select committee on intelligence vindicated Chalabi, and the information the Iraqi National Congress supplied to the US intelligence community on Saddam’s WMD programs, in a scathing report released last year. Never heard about that report? Little wonder. The “mainstream” press almost totally ignored it. That is why I reproduce parts of it in Shadow Warriors.

FP: What was the insurrection at the CIA against Porter Goss all about?

Timmerman: Porter Goss was the president’s pick to replace George Tenet, who most famously predicted that building a case against Saddam’s WMD programs was a “slam dunk” and failed to inform the FBI of information the CIA had gathered about the future 9/11 hijackers that could have allowed them to foil the terrorist attacks.

As he was leaving CIA, Tenet and his deputy, John McLaughlin, stacked the decks against Goss, naming Steve Kappes to head the Operations Directorate, making him America’s top spy. Normally, an outgoing director would leave that type of major personnel decision to his successor. This was a key move, because Kappes had been under investigation by Goss’s staff at the House intelligence committee for serious security breaches while at a previous job.

Once Goss came in, as I reveal in Shadow Warriors, Kappes and an Old Boys’ network at CIA fought tooth and nail against Goss, even providing him with false intelligence to take to the White House that subsequently had to be called back. (That particular black op was symptomatic of the type of thing Kappes and his rogue weasels did to undermine Goss, hoping to discredit him with the president and force his removal).

Ultimately, Goss called Kappes’ bluff, and Kappes resigned in November 2004 –but never gave up. In the end, Kappes won, and his allies, who included Judge Lawrence Silberman and the incoming director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, urged the president to get rid of Goss and bring Kappes back.

It was a tremendous victory for the shadow warriors, and a story that has never been told until now.

While the CIA will deny this, Kappes has always been big on “liason” rather than developing unilateral American sources. This willingness to rely on agents controlled by foreign intelligence services can get you in a lot of trouble, especially when “friends” do not always behave as “allies.”

FP: You have a unique angle on the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson saga. Share it with us please.

Timmerman: Valerie Plame has got some explaining to do. In March, she testified under oath before Congress and swore she had “nothing” to do with sending her husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, to Niger to investigate claims that Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy uranium there.

In fact, Val sent an email to her bosses recommending that they send him on this mission because he “has good relationships with both the [Prime Minster] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.”

I guess she never realized anyone would check her emails, or ask the CIA to declassify them. Oops! Val, you may want to read page 354 of Shadow Warriors before you are next asked to testify…

But rest assured. I have high confidence that Valerie Plame will NOT be hauled before a federal grand jury on perjury charges, as was done to vice president aid Scooter Libby. The Dems do a much better job than this president has done at protecting their own.

FP: Kenneth Timmerman, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.

Timmerman: My pleasure Jamie.
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Iraq
Shi'ite militias now seen as major threat
2006-04-08
Shiite Muslim militias pose the greatest threat to security in many parts of Iraq, having killed more people in recent months than the Sunni Arab-led insurgency, and will likely present the most daunting and critical challenge for Iraq's new government, U.S. military and diplomatic officials say.

Assassinations, many carried out by Shiite gunmen against Sunni Arabs in Baghdad and elsewhere, accounted for more than four times as many deaths in March as bombings and other mass-casualty attacks, according to military data. And most officials agree that only a small percentage of shooting deaths are ever reported.

The surge in sectarian killings, triggered by the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in late February, had slowed in recent weeks. It was uncertain if attacks on prominent Shiite mosques Thursday and Friday would signal an onset of renewed bloodletting.

While acknowledging the instability caused by Shiite armed groups, the largest of which are linked to the country's dominant political parties and operate among Iraq's police and army, U.S. and Iraqi officials here have yet to implement, or even publicly articulate, a strategy for addressing the problem.

"We know militias are an issue. We've asked both the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Defense to work there," said Maj. Gen. Joseph Peterson, the top American officer working with Iraq's police force, in which many Shiite militiamen serve. "They recognize the problem. But there's been no decision as to what to do about it."

"There are laws and constitutional articles dealing with militias that explain how to dissolve them and integrate their members into the security forces on an individual basis," said Adnan Ali Kadhimi, a senior adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari. "But this is on the basis of theory. On the basis of practicality, the situation is still very fragile. The implementation has to be cautious and careful."

Militias last emerged as a top U.S. concern in 2004, when the American and Iraqi armies spent months putting down violent uprisings by the Mahdi Army, a militia loyal to the firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, in Baghdad, Najaf and other cities. But the problem is far thornier now, U.S. officials say, because the militias have added thousands of foot soldiers and gained new political stature.

Two years ago, the Iraqi government was largely under American control and led by interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite. Iraq's next parliament will be dominated by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a religious party that oversees a militia called the Badr Organization, and by followers of Sadr. Together the two groups claim nearly a quarter of the legislature's 275 seats and will likely hold several cabinet ministries.

"It's a far more serious problem now than it was then because of who is in power," said a U.S. official who worked on the militia issue with the now-disbanded Iraqi Governing Council two years ago and spoke on the condition that he not be named. "Until there's a commitment on the part of the government, there will be no solution."

Practically every Shiite political party in Iraq maintains a force of men with guns -- some virtual armies of several thousand or more, others what Peterson described as little more than a "neighborhood watch on steroids."

Iraq's other major factions maintain armed forces as well. Insurgent groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq and Ansar al-Sunna are composed predominantly of Sunni Arabs and conduct frequent attacks on U.S. and Iraqi soldiers and Shiite civilians. The pesh merga , a large militia maintained by ethnic Kurds, is formally under the command of the Iraqi army, operates mainly in the Kurdish north and poses no major security threat, U.S. officials say.

All of the militias justify their existence, to some extent, by claiming a need to protect their communities from the violence that pervades the country.

Shiite militiamen are believed to number in the tens of thousands. Maj. Gen Rick Lynch, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said in a recent interview that the Mahdi Army -- formed by Sadr from the long-oppressed Shiite underclass in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion -- was believed to have about 10,000 members. The Badr Organization, created in Iran in the 1980s to fight Saddam Hussein's rule, has roughly 5,000, he said.

Other estimates for the groups, both accused by the United States of receiving backing from Iran, range far higher.

The aftermath of the Feb. 22 bombing of the Askariya shrine in Samarra refocused attention on the Mahdi Army. Hours after the bombing, dozens of pickup trucks packed with rifle-toting young men -- most clad in the militia's telltale black shirts and pants -- streamed out of Sadr City, a sprawling Shiite slum in northeastern Baghdad. Many said they had left work immediately in response to commanders' and clerics' calls to protect their mosques and neighbors.

In the days that followed, despite a government-imposed curfew on vehicle traffic and Sadr's public pleas for calm, residents of several Sunni neighborhoods of Baghdad said roving bands of gunmen dragged people from homes and Sunni mosques, some of which were then occupied by Shiites.

A Mahdi Army member, who did not want to be identified by his real name, denied charges that the militia had killed Sunnis after the Samarra bombing, calling the claims "a rumor by the occupation forces to get the Iraqi people into an internal war."

Dressed in a suit and seated at a large wooden desk, the commander of a company of some 200 men looked little like a fighter during an interview one recent morning at an office in the southern city of Najaf. He said he expected another confrontation between U.S. forces and the Mahdi Army, which has won a fierce following not only by battling foreign troops but by providing such social services as cleaning streets and feeding the poor.

"It is like fire and ice. We will never get together and we consider the occupation our worst enemies," he said. "We are expecting martyrdom at any moment. When the order comes to defend ourselves, God willing, we will fight bravely."

Approaches to the problem of militias have often conflicted.

Order 91, issued by the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-led organization that administered Iraq following the invasion, outlawed militias. Members of nine recognized armed groups, including Badr but not the Mahdi Army, were supposed to turn in their weapons and were offered places in Iraq's security forces. The weapons were never handed over.

Last month, the Iraqi government renewed calls for the fighters to be further folded into Iraq's police force and army. But U.S. and British advisers to the police and army units have pressed Iraqi commanders to weed out members with militia ties.

The State Department's annual report on human rights practices, released in March, said that "militia members integrated into the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) typically remained within preexisting organizational structures and retained their original loyalties or affiliations."

In December, about 160 members of the 2nd Public Order Brigade, an Interior Ministry force with a little more than 2,000 officers, were discharged for alleged involvement with the Mahdi Army. And the police internal affairs division in the southern city of Basra was closed late last year amid accusations it was operating death squads.

Rival Shiite militias -- including the Mahdi Army and an armed group tied to the Fadhila political party -- fight openly in Basra's streets, doubling the city's homicide rate in recent months. This week, about 42 people were killed over a four-day period, local officials reported.

Some U.S. officials and military commanders argue that the groups must be confronted. "There's a law on the books that these things are illegal, and it has to be enforced," said the U.S. official who worked on the militia issue.

Col. Jeffrey Snow, commander of the 1st Brigade of the Army's 10th Mountain Division in restive western Baghdad, said he had taken an aggressive stance toward militias, particularly the Mahdi Army, which he blames for a February roadside bomb attack that killed two U.S. soldiers.

"Second to the formation of the government, the key thing here now is dealing with these militias," said Snow, 44, of Nashua, N.H. "My personal opinion is, they form the greatest risk to the development of a professional army and police force."

Snow pointed to a series of heated meetings he has held with Mahdi Army representatives in recent months. "We told them, 'We will not tolerate you bearing arms.' We said, 'You can protect property but cannot leave property carrying a weapon.' And we gave them clear examples of people we detained while implanting bombs who were carrying Mahdi Army badges."

Though the militia question is unlikely to be dealt with until Iraqi leaders finish forming a government, U.S. officials are turning up the pressure but offering few specifics about how the problem should be addressed.

"You can't have in a democracy various groups with arms. You have to have the state with a monopoly on power," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on a recent visit to Baghdad. "We have sent very, very strong messages repeatedly, and not just on this visit, that one of the first things . . . is that there is going to be a reining-in of the militias."

For now, Iraqi leaders are circumspect about what exactly they will do. "The government has a detailed plan on this. I know -- I'm the coordinator," said the national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie. "But I am sorry, I cannot comment on what it is."
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International-UN-NGOs
The Latest Annan Scam
2006-03-14
And yep - Claudia Rosett, along with George Russell, has the goods on this corrupt skunk.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has just tabled ostensibly radical proposals for reform, at a proposed cost of more than $510 million, saying he aims to bring efficiency, high ethical standards and above all, transparency to his scandal-tarnished organization.

One part of the plan calls for clearing out deadwood in the U.N. Secretariat with buyouts costing about $100,000 per person — part of a process that Annan calls "investing in change."

Whether Annan's proposals will be adopted by the U.N. General Assembly is far from certain. But the secretary general might be able to make a more inspiring case for change if he started by casting more daylight on the workings and personnel of one of his own pet projects: the Alliance for Civilizations — a new U.N. initiative with a nebulous mandate that is now providing berths for an assortment of Annan's old U.N. associates, including his disgraced former chief of staff, Iqbal Riza.

What is the Alliance?

On the surface, it is simply a rarefied U.N. talking shop, which pays an elite panel of globe-trotting members to meet in comfortable locations around the world and deliver opinions on world peace, especially on frictions between the Islamic world and the West. Launched with relatively little fanfare last fall, the Alliance held its first meeting in November, in the Mediterranean resort of Majorca, Spain, with Riza present to deliver an opening message on Annan's behalf. Its first widely publicized session, however, took place in February when Annan himself — citing a need to "create dialogue" — sped to a meeting of the Alliance in Doha, Qatar, to talk about the Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that have been answered by riots among militant Muslims around the world. (Annan had previously issued his views on the cartoon furor during a Middle-East stopover to collect a $500,000 personal prize from the ruler of Dubai.) The resulting statement made no distinction between embassy-burning militants and media cartoonists — calling for restraint from all alike, and promising "concrete suggestions" to come.

Tasked by Annan to convene a series of meetings worldwide, the Alliance fields a staff of about 10, with its own director, working out of a U.N. office in New York. This office supports the part-time intellectual labors of a panel of 20 un-elected "eminent persons," all appointed by the secretary general. Annan has asked the group to come up by late 2006 — just before he is due to retire — with a "plan of practical action" to "bridge divides," again, apparently, as they exist between Islamic countries and the West.

As it happens, however, the U.N.-appointed Alliance is much less grand than its rhetoric would lead outsiders to believe — and much less representative of any international consensus. It is a venture initially generated not by the 191 member states of the U.N. General Assembly, but by just two states, Spain and Turkey, with a handful of other nations — Belgium, Luxembourg, Qatar and Syria — contributing to its $3.7 million in special funding.

The high-profile personnel involved are equally unrepresentative. In choosing the 20 eminences of the Alliance, Annan leaned heavily toward Islamic dignitaries and U.N. has-beens. On the Islamic side, these include a former president of Iran, Mohamed Khatami, and the president of the Alexandria Library, Ismail Serageldin (whose library in 2003 as part of its rotating collection displayed the slanderous anti-Semitic "Protocols of the Elders of Zion"). Among the U.N. types are a former president of the Inter-American Development Bank, a former head of UNESCO, and a former head of the United Nations Population Fund, or UNFPA, now an adviser to Annan.

Most interesting, perhaps, is the man Annan has chosen as his personal conduit to the Alliance. This person designated as a "special adviser" to Annan — with the U.N.'s third-highest rank of undersecretary general — is his own former chief of staff, erstwhile retiree Riza.

This is not auspicious. Riza, a Pakistani who served as Annan's chief-of-staff from 1997-2004 and also worked closely with Annan when he served as head of U.N. peacekeeping during the disaster of Rwanda, has been complicit with the secretary general in some of the U.N.'s worst debacles. In the multibillion-dollar Oil-for-Food scandal, Riza was featured as the shredder-in-chief whose office destroyed three year's worth of Annan's executive-suite documents, which Paul Volcker's inquiry had ordered preserved because they were of "potential relevance" to the investigation.

But that may be the least of it.

During the Oil-for-Food program itself, as Volcker reported in September, 2005, "Mr. Riza played a greater role than he was willing to state." According to Volcker, Riza dealt heavily with the graft-riddled program, meeting with Iraqi officials, and routinely handling important Oil-for-Food documents, some pertaining to corruption in the program. During at least the last two years of Oil-for-Food's seven years in operation, Volcker concluded, Riza — along with Annan and the now departing deputy secretary-general, Louise Frechette — was aware of both the smuggling and kickback schemes of Saddam, but withheld information from the U.N. Security Council.

And in 2003, both Annan and Riza were present at a meeting in which the head of Oil-for-Food, Benon Sevan, suggested — falsely — to the post-Saddam Iraqi Governing Council that the U.N. had only recently learned of Saddam's 10 percent Oil-for-Food kickback scheme. This falsehood, reports Volcker, "went uncorrected" by Annan and Riza, both of whom had known about the graft for at least two years, or so Volcker concluded from "clear reports" conveyed to their offices on the U.N.'s executive 38th floor.

Riza, along with Annan, was also at the epicenter of the U.N.'s failure in 1994 to stop the Rwandan genocide in which more than 800,000 people were murdered. Annan was then the head of U.N. peacekeeping, and Riza was his deputy. Warned of the impending slaughter by the U.N. peacekeepers on the ground, they told the same U.N. peacekeepers in Rwanda not to raid the weapons caches of the Hutu killers who were preparing for slaughter. When the killings then took place, Annan and Riza failed to raise the alarm. Asked in a 1999 PBS interview about these horrors, Riza took the heat, saying he had sent the initial non-intervention order under his own signature before briefing his boss, Annan. Asked whether the U.N. Secretariat had withheld important information about this from the Security Council, Riza replied: "Possibly we did not give all the details."

That same pattern of omitted details has been a hallmark of the current Alliance of Civilizations, which was shaped quietly last spring by Riza and another of Annan's special advisers, Giandomenico Picco, who has also been embroiled recently in controversy. A star U.N. diplomat of the 1980s and one of the U.N. negotiators during the early attempts to set up the scandal-riven Oil-for-Food program, Picco left the U.N. in 1992 and went into private business, setting up his own consulting firm, New York-based GDP Associates. Picco was brought back to the U.N. by Annan in 1999 as an undersecretary general to set up and lead the precursor of the Alliance of Civilizations, a U.N. venture called the Dialogue of Civilizations, which had been proposed in 1998 by Iran.

When he began work for Annan on the Dialogue in 1999, Picco apparently neglected to disclose a potentially large conflict of interest: He was also serving as chairman of the board of a private company called IHC Services, which at the time was doing millions in business with the U.N. Procurement Division — the purchasing department that spends about 85 percent of the U.N.'s core budget, plus billions more on peacekeeping. Picco appears to have resigned his IHC post in early 2000. But his role at IHC, with its potential conflict of interest, was never disclosed by the U.N. It came to light only last year, by way of a FOX News investigation that exposed IHC's close ties to a U.N. procurement officer, Alexander Yakovlev, who has since pleaded guilty in federal court to taking hundreds of thousands worth of bribes on at least scores of millions worth of U.N. contracts.

As for the Dialogue project, it served in 2001 as a vehicle for Picco's high-level U.N.-credentialed meetings around the globe, and about the time of the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S., clocked in with a banal report — which now resides, largely forgotten, in the U.N. library.

Annan continued to retain Picco as a part-time special adviser until early this year, and last spring Picco helped Riza convert the remnants of the Dialogue into the current Alliance. Around the time FOX News broke the U.N. procurement scandal in a story last June mentioning IHC, Picco's direct involvement with the Alliance quietly faded away.

But some interesting ties remain. Among the 20 eminent persons named by Annan to the Alliance is one with close business ties to Picco: former Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas. As recently as last fall, when the Alliance was being launched, Picco's consulting firm, GDP Associates, listed Alatas as one of the associates (although Alatas' biography, as provided by the U.N. Alliance, does not mention this connection). Since then, the GDP Web site has vanished from public view. GDP did not return a call from FOX News asking whether Alatas is still one of Picco's consulting associates.

Meanwhile, Riza, according to Annan's office, is working not for a U.N. salary, but at the special rate of $1-per-year. (He already has his full U.N. pension.) If that sounds like a good deal for a U.N. where the secretary general is now trying to invest in change, possibly we have not yet heard all the details. For while Riza is virtually unpaid in his latest responsibilities, what he is actually doing on Annan's behalf remains deeply in the shadows.
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Home Front: WoT
The Enemy on Our Airwaves
2005-11-04
EFL WSJ article

(Editor's note: Sen. Carl Levin is opposing Mr. Smith's confirmation as assistant secretary of defense for public affairs because of the senator's objections to this article, which appeared in The Wall Street Journal, April 25. A related editorial appears here.)

The collaboration between the terrorists and al-Jazeera is stronger than ever. While the precise terms of that relationship are virtually unknown, we do know this: al-Jazeera and the terrorists have a working arrangement that extends beyond a modus vivendi. When the terrorists want to broadcast something that helps their cause, they have immediate and reliable access to al-Jazeera. This relationship--in a time of war--raises some important questions:

• What does Al-Jazeera promise the terrorist organizations in order to get consistent access to their video?

• Does it pay for material?

• Is it promised safety and protection if it continues to air unedited tapes? (No Al-Jazeera employee has been killed or taken hostage by the terrorists. When I ran the Iraqi Television Network, seven employees were killed by terrorists.)

• Does Al-Jazeera promise the terrorists that it won't reveal their whereabouts and techniques as a quid pro quo for doing business? Is this bargain in the guise of journalism a defensible practice?

While I was in Iraq in 2004, Al-Jazeera was expelled from the country by the Iraqi Governing Council for violating international law. Numerous times they had advance knowledge of military actions against coalition forces. Instead of reporting to the authorities that it had been tipped off, Al-Jazeera would pre-position a crew at the event site and wait for the attack, record it and rush it on air. This happened time after time, to the point where Al-Jazeera was expelled from Iraq. The airing of the Ake video, however, demonstrates that it can still operate on behalf of the terrorists even from outside the country.

Is it fanciful to think that network news executives would have the fortitude not to air any video shot by terrorists? They already stop short of airing everything, so why not refuse to touch the stuff altogether? At the very least, is it not reasonable to raise questions about the sources and methods used to obtain this material? The war in Iraq will likely drag on for some time. More lives will be lost and more hostages will be taken and more videos will be made. Now we should engage the terrorists on the airwaves as we do on the ground.

Mr. Smith spent nine months in Iraq as a senior media adviser to Ambassador Paul Bremer

The MSM is clearly involved in WOT operations as it acts as an agent for al-Jizz and through them, al-Q. Smith properly identifies them as a fifth column. Is it shocking a Quisling like Levin would stand up for them?
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Iraq-Jordan
Car explosion targets Iraqi officials' convoy in Baghdad
2005-09-15
A booby-trapped vehicle exploded Wednesday targeting a convoy for officials at the ministry of interior in Al-Waziriyah area in Baghdad. Iraqi police source said that an officer was killed and four others were injured, including two policemen in the car explosion that occurred near the Administration and Economy College. The source did not reveal the identity of the officials.

Meanwhile, a mortar shell fell on the house of former member of the Iraqi Governing Council Naseer Al-Jaderji in Al-Ahdamiyah area but no casualties have been reported. Another two mortar shells also targeted today Al-Rasheed Hotel in the Green Zone but no casualties or damages have been reported yet. A fourth mortar shell fell today in Al-Rabeiee Street injuring two civilians.
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Iraq-Jordan
Iraqi Islamic Party Leader Arrested
2005-05-30
U.S. troops detained the head of Iraq's largest Sunni Muslim political party during a house raid early Monday in western Baghdad, a top party official and police said. Mohsen Abdul Hamid, head of the Iraqi Islamic Party, was detained by American soldiers along with his three sons and four guards, said party-secretary-general Ayad al-Samarei. U.S. military officials could not immediately confirm the detentions.

Al-Samarei said American soldiers raided Hamid's home at around 6 a.m. and confiscated various items, including a computer. "This is a provocative and foolish act and this is part of the pressure exerted on the party," he said. "At the time when the Americans say they are keen on real Sunni participation, they are now arresting the head of the only Sunni party that calls for a peaceful solution and have participated in the political process," he added. In a statement, the party demanded Hamid's immediate release, saying he "represents a large sector of the Iraqi people."

"This irresponsible behavior will only complicate the situation," the party statement said. Hamid, aged in his late 60s, is regarded as a moderate Islamic leader. He was a member of the now dissolved U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and and has been involved with the party since the 1970s and headed it since 2003.
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Home Front: Culture Wars
The Enemy on Our Airwaves
2005-04-25
This feels to me like a shot across the bow of the mainstream media -- television brigade -- (do not tell me I am mixing my branches of the armed forces, I'm a civilian and don't have to know such things!) a long overdue front in the War on Terror. Commentary from page A14 of the dead tree version of the Wall Street Journal. Registration req'd, so given here uncut.
On April 11, Jeffrey Ake, an American, was taken hostage in Iraq. Video of him in captivity was shown on Al-Jazeera on April 13. A short time later six American networks -- ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CNN and MSNBC -- aired the same video, a vivid example of the ongoing relationship between terrorists, Al-Jazeera and the networks. Last week, Al-Jazeera showed video of a helicopter being shot, bursting into flames and trailing smoke as it fell to the ground. It also aired video of the lone survivor being forced to walk on a broken leg and then being shot by the terrorists, one of whom said, "We are applying God's law."

As the war continues, more hostages will be taken and acts of murderous violence committed -- leading to more videos for Al-Jazeera and the networks. Isn't it time to scrutinize the relationship among Al-Jazeera, American networks and the terrorists?
I think so.
What role should the U.S. government be playing?
Arresting policeman? Putting them up against the wall and shooting them? Just some thoughts... I may be a bit overenthusiastic here.
Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and al Qaeda have a partner in Al-Jazeera and, by extension, most networks in the U.S. This partnership is a powerful tool for the terrorists in the war in Iraq. Figures show that 77% of Iraqis cite TV as their main source of information; 15% cite newspapers. Current estimates are that close to 100% of Iraqis have access to satellite TV, 18% to cell phones, and 8% to the Internet. Compared to nearly 0% when Saddam was in power, right? The battle for Iraqi hearts and minds is being fought over satellite TV. It is a battle today that we are losing badly.

The collaboration between the terrorists and Al-Jazeera is stronger than ever. While the precise terms of that relationship are virtually unknown, we do know this: Al-Jazeera and the terrorists have a working arrangement that extends beyond a modus vivendi. When the terrorists want to broadcast something that helps their cause, they have immediate and reliable access to Al-Jazeera. This relationship -- in a time of war -- raises some important questions:
• What does Al-Jazeera promise the terrorist organizations in order to get consistent access to their video?

• Does it pay for material?

• Is it promised safety and protection if it continues to air unedited tapes? (No Al-Jazeera employee has been killed or taken hostage by the terrorists. When I ran the Iraqi Television Network, seven employees were killed by terrorists.)

• Does Al-Jazeera promise the terrorists that it won't reveal their whereabouts and techniques as a quid pro quo for doing business? Is this bargain in the guise of journalism a defensible practice?

While I was in Iraq in 2004, Al-Jazeera was expelled from the country by the Iraqi Governing Council for violating international law. Numerous times they had advance knowledge of military actions against coalition forces. Instead of reporting to the authorities that it had been tipped off, Al-Jazeera would pre-position a crew at the event site and wait for the attack, record it and rush it on air. This happened time after time, to the point where Al-Jazeera was expelled from Iraq. The airing of the Ake video, however, demonstrates that it can still operate on behalf of the terrorists even from outside the country.

Al-Jazeera continues to broadcast because it reportedly receives $100 million a year from the government of Qatar. Without this subsidy it would be off the air, off the Internet and out of business. So, does Qatar's funding of Al-Jazeera constitute state sponsorship of terrorism?
Yes, I do believe so.
As long as Al-Jazeera continues to practice in cahoots with terrorists while we are at war, should the U.S. government maintain normal relations with Qatar? As long as Al-Jazeera continues to aid and abet the enemy, as long as we are fighting a war on the ground and in the airwaves, why are we not fighting back against Al-Jazeera and Qatar, the nation that makes possible the network's existence? Should the U.S. not adopt a hard-line position about doing business with Qatar as long as Al-Jazeera is doing business with terrorists?

In addition to being subsidized by Qatar, Al-Jazeera has very strong partners in the U.S. -- ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CNN and MSNBC. Video aired by Al-Jazeera ends up on these networks, sometimes within minutes. The terrorists are aware of this access and use it -- as in the Ake case -- to further their aims. They want to reach the American audience and influence public opinion.

The arrangement between the U.S. networks and Al-Jazeera raises questions of journalistic ethics.
Indeed. Answers them, too.
Do the U.S. networks know the terms of the relationship that Al-Jazeera has with the terrorists? Do they want to know? There has been no in-depth reporting about Al-Jazeera in the U.S. and virtually no scrutiny of Qatar and its relationship with the network. Why not? Is it that the American networks don't want to give up their tainted video? And since they all get the same material and all air it at the same time, do they feel a certain safety being in bed together? The cable networks have become addicted to the latest B-roll video. If that video was obtained by means that violated their own standards and practices, would they air it? Would they even know?

What if one of the networks had taken a stand and refused to air the Ake video on the grounds that it was aiding and abetting the enemy, and that from this point forward it would not be a tool of terrorist propaganda? The terrorists know that the airing of such video creates pressure on the government to negotiate a release. It also sends a signal to Americans about the perils of being an American working in Iraq. If the Ake video had never aired in the U.S., the position of the hostage-takers would have been severely impaired. Had it never aired, terrorists would have had no incentive to continue making the tapes.

Is it fanciful to think that network news executives would have the fortitude not to air any video shot by terrorists? They already stop short of airing everything, so why not refuse to touch the stuff altogether? At the very least, is it not reasonable to raise questions about the sources and methods used to obtain this material? The war in Iraq will likely drag on for some time. More lives will be lost and more hostages will be taken and more videos will be made. Now we should engage the terrorists on the airwaves as we do on the ground.
Mr. DORRANCE SMITH, currently a media consultant in Washington, spent nine months in Iraq as a senior media adviser to Ambassador Paul Bremer.
Link


Iraq-Jordan
Profile of Abdel Abdul Mahdi
2005-02-10
Adel Abdul Mahdi, one of the leading candidates to become the new Iraqi prime minister, recalled the day last year when he and other Iraqi leaders were summoned to the holy city of Najaf by the country's senior Shiite clerics.

The topic was the role of Islam in the new Iraqi state. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country's most powerful Shiite leader, questioned whether Mr. Mahdi and the others, members of the American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, had the legitimacy to draft an interim constitution.

"You were not elected," Ayatollah Sistani told the group.

Mr. Mahdi says he did not hesitate to answer.

"You were not elected," he told the ayatollah.

With that, Mr. Mahdi and the others returned to the capital and drafted an interim constitution intended to govern Iraqi for the next year, naming Islam as a source, but not the only source, of legislation. The language bridged one of the most divisive issues in forming the new government, whether it should be secular or religious.

Mr. Mahdi, one of the leaders of the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shiite coalition on the verge of capturing a majority of seats in the national assembly, recalled the moment to illustrate the limitations of the Shiite clerics in political affairs here.

"Victory is the most dangerous moment," Mr. Mahdi, 63, said in an interview at his home in Baghdad this week. "There will be some people trying to push for extreme measures. If we start with such behavior, we will lose the country."

Mr. Mahdi, a witty, affable, French-trained economist who serves as the finance minister in the current government, personifies a strong secular current that runs through the alliance. That strand is likely to resist demands for an Iranian-style Islamic state, where ultimate power resides with clerics, political rights are limited and women face harsh restrictions.

The question for Iraqis, as well as the Bush administration, is whether Mr. Mahdi's secular vision extends to the rest of the Shiite alliance, or whether it is being used as cover for a more ambitious religious agenda.

The leaders of the Shiite alliance have said the new Iraqi government, if they end up with enough votes to form it, will be headed by a secular figure. Fewer than a half dozen of the alliance's 228 candidates are clerics. And a likely alliance with the Kurdish parties, which are secular, could blunt the Islamists.

Still, many Iraqis say Mr. Mahdi, secular-minded though he is, would be under fierce pressure from Iraq's clerical establishment to accord Islam an expansive role in the permanent Iraqi constitution the national assembly is to write this year.

He is thought to be an attractive candidate to the Americans. He has worked closely with the Bush administration, and helped renegotiate Iraq's foreign debt. Like many Iraqi leaders, including even many of the clerics themselves, he takes a cold-eyed view of the need for American troops to stay in the country until Iraqi security forces are strong enough to defeat the guerrilla insurgency on their own.

Mr. Mahdi's conversion from young Baath Party member to Maoist cadre to pro-American Islamic moderate is emblematic of the journey taken by many intellectuals who came of age in the 1960's, swept up in the left-wing currents of the time, only turn back to the faith into which they were born.

Yet in all of his transformations, there is, to his rivals, the whiff of the opportunist. Far from being devoutly religious himself, they say, Mr. Mahdi is a secular man who attached himself to a largely Islamist group to get closer to power, and by so doing made that group more acceptable to the outside word.

Within the wider world of Iraqi Shiites, a struggle for influence in the new government has already begun. Earlier this week, Ayatollah Muhammad Eshaq al-Faeath, one of five ayatollahs who make up the senior Shiite religious leadership here, publicly demanded that Islam be named as the "only" source of legislation, a feature that would probably render Iraq an Islamic state. Others are demanding that family and personal relations be regulated by Koranic law.

"He will be under pressure on the power of religion in the state," said Adnan Pachachi, a secular Sunni leader, referring to Mr. Mahdi. "But if he gets the job, it will actually help him resist the pressure."

Even those Iraqis, like Mr. Pachachi, who are convinced of Mr. Mahdi's relatively secular mind-set say they are concerned that he could end up becoming a pawn of Abdul Aziz Hakim, the leader of his party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, known as Sciri.

The steely-eyed Mr. Hakim, the former leader of the party's military wing who is believed to have close connections to Iranian intelligence agencies, is the scion of one of the most prominent Shiite religious families in Iraq. He is said to favor a broader role for Islam in the new constitution.

"Hakim has decided that he can realize his ambitions through Adel Abdul Mahdi," said Adnan Ali, a senior leader in the Dawa Party, a member of the Shiite alliance, which supports a different candidate for prime minister.

Who will become prime minister is expected to be one of the most hard-fought battles after election results are in, and with the vote-counting nearing completion, the political deal making has already begun.

For Mr. Mahdi to arrive at the spot where he is now is perhaps not as surprising as the path that he took to get there. He comes from a family active in politics; his father, Abdul Mahdi Shobar, was a guerrilla leader against the British in 1920 and later became a minister of education during the monarchy of King Faisal. He is a boyhood playmate of Ahmad Chalabi, a rival for the job of prime minister, and Ayad Allawi, who now holds the post.

Mr. Mahdi said he joined the Baath Party when it was largely a youth movement, and was even an acquaintance of the future leader, Saddam Hussein, who at the time, he said, worked in the party's Peasant Division.

Mr. Mahdi said he had joined out of a romantic attraction to the ideals of Arab nationalism and socialist economics, but quit the party in the 1960's, after it came to power and when, he said, its leaders began killing and imprisoning political opponents.

"When we saw the experience of blood, torture, executions, killings, we were shocked," he said, then turning to an Arab proverb to describe the party: "The fish was rotten from the head."

After the ouster of the Baath Party from its first stint in power in 1963, Mr. Mahdi was arrested, jailed and tortured; his jailers, he said, used pliers to pull chunks of flesh from his thighs. Five years later, as the Baath Party prepared to return to power and begin its 34-year reign of terror, he fled the country, tipped off that he was a target for execution.

Ending up in France, where he earned master's degrees in political science and economics, he said he embraced Marxism, and especially the brand espoused by Mao, which Mr. Mahdi said he found appealing for its emphasis on popular participation.

Yet even in his years as a follower of Mao, he said he never abandoned his Islamic faith.

"We weren't of those people who were trying to defy religion, trying to defy their family," he said of his youthful philosophical detours.

Like many Iraqis, Mr. Mahdi was inspired by the Iranian revolution of 1979, which appeared as a model for Iraq's long-suppressed Shiite majority and a real-life example of an Islamic-guided government. He and many other Iraqi Shiites in exile, including Mr. Hakim, began using Iran as a base to organize against Mr. Hussein's government. The two men were both founders of Sciri in the 1980's.

American officials say Sciri continues to receive support from the Iranian government, and the party's relationship to Iran has given rise to concerns, in the United States and in Iraq, about the movement's independence.

As the Iranian revolution transformed into a theocracy, it alienated many Iraqi Shiites, some of whom rejected it as a model for Iraq. Mr. Mahdi is tempered in his criticism of the Iranian government

"They have to be more open," he said. But he professes a vision of political Islam that is substantially more mild than the Iranian variety.

To Mr. Mahdi, the Shiite religious hierarchy has an important role in leading the country, but he says the religious leadership has to make way for democratic politics, in contrast to the Iranian model.

"We accept the role of the religious leadership," he said. "They are part of society. People respect them. They have a natural part. But this natural part should not stop the nation from practicing its rights. The nation should elect its representatives. Because the nation is not just the religious people but all the citizens."

Mr. Mahdi said he believed that the dangers of a full-blown Islamic theocracy coming to Iraq were minimal. Ayatollah Sistani, he said, has ruled out the use of Koranic law in governing family law.

But in saying so, Mr. Mahdi makes it clear that moderates like himself need all the help they can get.

"They have the right to be worried," he said of the Iraqi people. "I hope they would stay worried. All the people should be cautious. They should keep criticizing. I am not asking people to stop criticizing, to trust blindly."

As to the charge that he is a political opportunist, Mr. Mahdi confesses that he is a practical politician, but one who has stayed true to his principles.

"Why are you married?" he asked. "If they need me and I need them, then this is a very solid relationship."

Likewise, he makes no apologies for his intellectual evolution.

"It took 50 years to have such development," he said of his political journey. "With major events in the region going on, countries changed, their ideologies changed. It didn't take two days."
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Iraq-Jordan
Yes, Chalabi may be PM
2005-02-09
Another Eli Lake special; EFL.
Among Mr. Chalabi's supporters is the leader of a resistance against Saddam Hussein in southern Iraq in 1991, Abdul Karim Al Muhammadawi, known as the "prince of the marshes." Mr. Chalabi has also garnered support from a former member of the Iraqi Governing Council, Salama al-Khufaji, who is one of the highest-ranking women on the UIA list. Mr. Chalabi also draws support from the Shiite Political Council, the organization he helped build this summer after he was excluded from the interim government headed by Prime Minister Allawi.
Whether he wins or loses, he's definitely a player. It's clear the CIA's "no political base" claim was baloney.
Yesterday, Mr. Chalabi said he harbored no ill will towards his old nemeses in Washington and went out of his way to thank the American people, the American military, and President Bush for liberating Iraq. He even found kind words for Jordan, which has an outstanding warrant from a military court for his arrest. Mr. Chalabi is suing the Jordanian government in federal district court in Washington for racketeering.
Well, he can afford to be magnanimous now.
In the race for prime minister, Mr. Chalabi's chief rivals are other Shiite politicians, such as the current finance minister, Adel Abdel-Mehdi, who this week rejected a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. Another aspirant is the current leader of the Dawa party, Ibrahim Jafari. Mr. Jafari was a vice president in the Allawi government, but has been a vocal critic of Mr. Allawi in the run-up to the election.
Snip of "too early to tell" stuff, which happens to be true.
In the interview yesterday, Mr. Chalabi said one of his main goals would be to open up the heavily guarded "green zone" in the middle of Baghdad to regular Iraqi citizens. He added that President al-Yawar has said that President Bush was unaware that the republican palace of Saddam has been virtually off-limits to Iraqis and agreed that the situation should be changed. "We are acutely aware of the security concerns of the United States, and there are sites on the periphery of Baghdad which we will provide to them willingly," Mr. Chalabi said.
What do our readers on the ground think of this?
Mr. Chalabi also said that he expected the new government to focus on rooting out Baathist elements in the security services that are sympathetic to terrorists. "The number of attacks has more than doubled on a daily average," he said. "That means we believe a major problem has been the introduction of former regime elements at a high level in the intelligence service and the National Guard."
Yup. More stuff snipped, before...
Mr. Chalabi said that in the coming months, he did not expect the UIA slate or Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani to support a constitution that made Islam the sole source of Iraqi law. Stressing that he was not speaking in any way for Mr. Sistani, Mr. Chalabi said, "Ayatollah Sistani is a man who, if anything, is very keen to be consistent. The platform of the UIA, which he basically blessed, contains a reference to the role of Islam in Iraq which is not far from the transitional administrative law, which only said it was one source."
Finally, would any Chalabi article be complete without the "Iranian spy" business?
On three different occasions, he waxed effusively about the historic significance of the elections in which he just ran. He even said, "These elections will have an influence on the democratic movement in Iran." For Mr. Chalabi, who has been accused anonymously of passing American signal intelligence to the Iranians by the CIA and maintained State Department-funded offices in Iran for years before Iraq's liberation, the statement was significant. Mr. Chalabi has denied passing intelligence to the Iranians and has challenged Congress to hold an open hearing at which he could face his accusers on the issue.
Make of it all what you will.
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