Iraqs Comeback
Kid
Chalabi keeps his
eyes on the prize
MICHAEL
RUBIN
On
November 8, Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi arrived in Washington
for an eight-day visit. His agenda included meetings with Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and national security
adviser Stephen Hadley. To many pundits, Chalabis visit marks a change in
fortune for an Iraqi politician not long ago dismissed as irrelevant by
diplomats and intelligence officials alike.
Disdain for Chalabi runs
deep in the State Department, Central Intelligence Agency, and U.S. Central
Command. As an advocate of both regime change and democratization, he became a
lightning rod for criticism among proponents of the status quo.
Both
before and after Iraqs liberation, State Department officials criticized
Chalabi as an exile with little connection to his own country. CIA analysts
seconded such pronouncements. On September 6, 2004, for example, Judith Yaphe, a
former CIA Iraq analyst now at the National Defense University, told the
Associated Press that over the years, [CIA favorite Ayad] Allawis contacts
were proven to be real while Chalabis were never what Chalabi told us. Former
Defense Intelligence Agency official W. Patrick Lang described Chalabi as
basically an émigré politician and told an Australian radio station that the
CIA and State Department didnt trust what he said [and] didnt think he
understood Iraq, really. General Anthony Zinni, head of U.S. Central Command,
belittled Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress as some silk-suited,
Rolex-wearing guys in London.
But, in the months before Operation Iraqi
Freedom began, Chalabi returned to Iraq. And after liberation, he became an
irritant to Washington policymakers. While Coalition Provisional Authority
administrator L. Paul Bremer sought to run Iraq by diktat, Chalabi agitated for
direct elections and restoration of Iraqi sovereignty. He clashed with Meghan
OSullivan, now deputy national security adviser for Iraq, when she worked to
undermine and eventually reverse de-Baathification. He undercut White House
attempts to internationalize responsibility for Iraq in the months prior to the
2004 U.S. elections when his Governing Council auditing commission began to
investigate the U.N. Oil-for-Food scandal.
In a West Wing meeting,
thennational security adviser Condoleezza Rice called Chalabis opposition to
the ill-fated Fallujah Brigade unhelpful. Soon afterward, she directed her
staff to outline ways to marginalize Chalabi. There followed espionage and
counterfeiting charges the former never seriously pursued by the FBI and the
latter thrown out of an Iraqi court. Following the June 28, 2004, transfer of
sovereignty in Iraq, John Negroponte then U.S. ambassador to Iraq and now the
director of national intelligence refused to meet Chalabi. Cut off from U.S.
patronage and without any serious Iraqi base, the analysts said, Chalabi would
fade away.
He did not. Nor has he simply reinvented himself, as a State
Department official suggested following Chalabis November 9 address at the
American Enterprise Institute. Rather, his relevance has remained constant.
Unlike those of other Iraqi figures embraced by various bureaucracies in
Washington, Chalabis fortunes have not depended on U.S. patronage. His survival
and, indeed, his recent ascent against the obstacles thrown in his path by
Washington underlines the failures of diplomats and intelligence analysts to
put aside departmental agendas to provide the White House with an objective and
accurate analysis of the sources of legitimacy inside Iraq.
While the
CIA has politicized its intelligence products to support its own proxies, its
analytical failures go beyond institutional axe-grinding. Most analysts are in
their 20s and 30s; recruited fresh out of college or graduate school, few have
significant experience in the countries to which they are assigned. Security
officers look with suspicion on anyone with too many foreign contacts and too
much time spent in adversarial countries. While many CIA analysts gain book
knowledge of their subjects, they lack cultural understanding. They study
politicians, but have no sense of personalities. Too often, their products
reflect mirror-imaging of the analysts own thought-processes into their
subjects. Cultural equivalence, too, pollutes analysis: Family may be important
to Americans and Iraqis alike, but it means much more for Iraqis. To Americans,
genealogy is a hobby. To Iraqis, it is honor.
And here Chalabi has an
advantage. Chalabis grandfather built modern Kadhimiya, a sprawling Shiite town
that has since been absorbed into modern Baghdad; his father was president of
the Iraqi senate during the monarchy. Genealogy gives gravitas. In contrast,
even as Iraqis suffered under Saddam Husseins rule, they expressed disdain for
Saddam with reference to his uncertain paternity. (In post-liberation Iraq, the
CIAs blind eye toward genealogy has been evident in its embrace of powerful
Baathist families the Bunias and al-Janabis, for example even as many Iraqis
dismiss such figures as déclassé and embarrassing beneficiaries of Saddams
largesse.)
The charge that Chalabi was an out-of-touch exile also turned
out to be off the mark. One out of six Iraqis fled the country during Saddams
rule. But unlike the case of Chinese mainland exiles in Taiwan, for example
there were no genetic differences between Iraqis living in their homeland and
those abroad. The diaspora remained integrated with the Iraqi nation. Far more
important to Iraqis than their politicians continued residency in the country
is that the politicians remain independent and untainted by Baathism. The true
Iraqi power brokers Patriotic Union of Kurdistan leader and Iraqi president
Jalal Talabani; Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq leader Abdul Aziz
al-Hakim; firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr; and Chalabi himself all live
outside the heavily protected Green Zone and operate without U.S. security.
While all the other Governing Council members appropriated large houses
abandoned by officials of the previous regime, Chalabi returned to his familys
home and the symbolism was clear to Iraqis. Ayad Allawi, in contrast,
hemorrhaged support after accepting a house in the Green Zone and employing
American security contractors.
Still, diplomats continued to brand
Chalabi irrelevant, citing polls showing him to be among the least popular Iraqi
politicians. Polling, though, does not translate well across cultures. Americans
and Iraqis approach polling questions differently. Americans view popularity in
terms of like and dislike. Iraqis are more likely to complain about effective
politicians. Irrelevant figures are not worth condemning. Under Saddam Hussein,
Iraqi television poured vitriol upon Chalabi, not upon Allawi or al-Hakim.
Chalabi was the threat; the others a mere nuisance. The same polls that found
Chalabi unpopular suggested that elder statesman and State Department favorite
Adnan Pachachi was popular. But in the January 30, 2005, elections, it was
Chalabi who was victorious; Pachachis forces won not a single seat.
The
roots of Chalabis legitimacy have also been obscured by American analysts
failure to understand the religion factor: Most of American officialdom remains
blind to Iraqs network of religious patronage, which has no parallel in Western
society. A great deal of Chalabis political base rests in his connection to the
Kadhimayn Shrine. The resting place of both the seventh and ninth Shiite Imams,
Kadhimayn is, after Najaf and Karbala, the holiest pilgrimage site in Iraq. Its
proximity to Baghdad has made it a focal point of Shiite-Sunni sociopolitical
and religious interaction. Chalabis father financed the shrines renovation.
While many other Iraqi politicians were trying to ingratiate themselves
to Bremer, Chalabi spent his time outside the Green Zone fishbowl, revitalizing
his familys Kadhimayn network of both Shiites and Sunnis. While Allawi
trumpeted his Washington ties in quest of legitimacy, and al-Hakim turned toward
Tehran for both guns and butter, Iraqis have seen Chalabi hold fast to Iraqi
nationalism.
Chalabis American detractors may wring their hands about
his U.S. visit. Pundits may speculate about the White Houses pragmatism.
Conspiracy theorists may suggest that Chalabis rise is part of a preconceived
plan. But in reality, Chalabi has made no comeback: The sources of Chalabis
legitimacy have remained constant. What has changed is the growing realization
that neither Langley nor Foggy Bottom has accurately assessed the Iraqi
political scene. Part of the problem may be that reality did not mesh with their
political agendas, but a far more serious American handicap has been an
inability, more than two and a half years after the fall of Saddam, to
understand the sources of legitimacy in Iraq. Washington may run the Green Zone
but, for Chalabi, it is the rest of the country that matters.
Mr. Rubin, a
resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is editor of the Middle East Quarterly.