- In early 2003 Ahmed Chalabi would have had every reason
to feel pleased with himself. A long-nurtured plan to topple Saddam Hussein
was coming to fruition and there was a chance the Iraqi exile would be
the one to take his place. Eighteen months later and the Iraq he helped
to create has turned against him: he is charged with money laundering and
his nephew and associate, Salem Chalabi, the man organising Saddam's trial,
is charged with murder. Both deny what they claim are politically motivated
prosecutions.
-
- Outside Iraq he is not faring much better. In the United
States, where he was once considered as the Iraqi opposition leader, he
is no longer the Pentagon's darling. His Iraqi National Congress has been
named as the source for the much of the discredited WMD intelligence and
Mr Chalabi himself was accused by US intelligence officers of spying for
Iran.
-
- It was alleged that he tipped off Tehran that the US
had broken its codes and was eavesdropping on communications. Mr Chalabi
claims that the CIA - his former paymaster - was hitting him with a smear
campaign.
-
- Charges of political motivation and smears directed against
his enemies and opponents are one way in which Mr Chalabi responds to setbacks.
A 22-year jail sentence received in absentia from a Jordanian court for
his role in the Petra bank collapse was blamed on an Iraqi plot to frame
him.
-
- After his failure in 1996 to overthrow Saddam with CIA-bankrolled
resistance fighters from the Kurdish north, his achievement in getting
the INC named as the recipient of taxpayer's money in the US's 1998 Iraq
Liberation Act was considerable. He had not lived in Iraq since he left
as a child in 1956 and had no power base in the country.
-
- What he had done, however, was to sell himself to the
neo-conservatives who took charge of the Pentagon with the inauguration
of George Bush in 2001. The September 11 attacks gave them an influence
over US foreign policy that chimed with his wishes.
-
- But whether Mr Chalabi was leading the US's Iraqi policy
where he wanted it go, or was an opportunist telling the White House and
Pentagon what they wanted to hear remains the major question about his
conduct.
-
- An original invasion plan, presented in early 2002, was
for INC fighters to invade from Kuwait with US air and special forces support
and watch the people come over to their side. That the actual invasion
used US infantry and marines rather than Mr Chalabi's fighters suggests
that the US was taking what it wanted from him (mainly intelligence, which
was mostly wrong) and then conducting the war as it thought best.
-
- After the invasion he never achieved the level of political
influence or power that many expected - he was the Pentagon's favourite
Iraqi but as it was forced to compromise and take on board changes and
challenges to its plan for the country, Mr Chalabi similarly found his
opportunities curtailed.
-
- Even so: he did not have the capabilities to take up
the opportunities that were presented to him. The Pentagon dispatched him
to Nassiriya in April 2003 to form a political grouping in Iraq but there
was not a great deal of popular support for a man who had spent most of
his life in the US and Britain.
-
- Mr Chalabi made it to the US-appointed governing council
but, unlike many of his colleagues, failed to transfer to the UN-assembled
interim government. By the time it took over from Paul Bremer and the US's
Coalition Provisional Authority he was out of favour with Iraqis and the
US.
-
- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1279506,00.html
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