Deviate From the US Line and End Up Like a Kleenex
Linda S. Heard, Arab News
CAIRO, 10August 2004 — Alleged bank embezzler, US-Iranian double agent, intelligence fabricator and founder of the Iraqi National Congress, Ahmad Chalabi is being accused of money laundering and forgery.
An Iraqi judge, with the US guiding his pen, has signed a warrant for his arrest, no doubt proving a huge embarrassment to his former best buddy US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The Pentagon has long promoted Chalabi as an upstanding guy and ideal candidate to step into Saddam’s muddied shoes against the serious reservations of Colin Powell and the State Department.
At one time Chalabi must have thought his future premiership was a done deal as he did the rounds of the US talk shows before the invasion often with one of his many relatives in tow.
When he was flown in to the country along with his band of American-armed thugs to play conquering hero in the Shiite south, he must have thought he’d got it made. As a member of the initial interim Governing Council things were going swimmingly for Chalabi until he deviated from the script, suggesting the Americans and the British should hurry up and leave his country. That was the kiss of death for his life’s ambitions.
His nephew Salem Chalabi, who founded the Special Iraqi Tribunal, and who has repeatedly gloated over Saddam’s incarceration, has been named as a suspect in the murder of the former director general of Iraq’s Finance Ministry. Lawyers both, the Chalabi relatives could end up tending the lone palm sapling of another member of their legal fraternity — Saddam Hussein, the man they fought so long and hard to topple.
In the unlikely event the former foes find themselves in the same exercise yard, they could while away the time swapping yarns about America’s treachery. Saddam was once the Pentagon’s man, too, and the recipient of a “made in the USA”’ state-of-the-art arsenal, including chemical weapons, with which to fight a proxy war against Iran.
Saddam’s mistake was the1990 invasion of Kuwait, which he might say went ahead after US Ambassador April Glaspie gave him the wink and the nod — provided he ever gets the chance.
We’re unlikely ever to know the truth about this, as subsequent to the former dictator’s eloquent oratorical show at his hearing, his trial (if he ever gets one) is unlikely to be transparent. But we do know Saddam fell irreparably from American grace when he allegedly attempted to assassinate the current US president’s father.
Interestingly it was the CIA, along with Pakistan’s ISI, which once supported the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan — a movement in which Osama Bin Laden played a key role. From 1982 to1989 , the CIA encouraged an Islamic jihad against the apostate Soviet occupiers and eventually some35 ,000 militants from 40 Islamic countries joined the fight without realizing they, too, were fighting a proxy war on behalf of Uncle Sam.
President Ronald Reagan signed Directive 166 in 1986 authorizing increased clandestine aid to the militants who by 1987 were receiving65 , 000tons of US weapons annually, while the CIA helped train the guerrillas. Once the Soviets literally ran for the hills, Afghanistan’s new tribal rulers turned the country into an internecine battleground.
The advent of the hard-line Taleban brought repression but also security to the country and although their rule was not officially recognized by the US they did receive millions of American government dollars to curtail poppy growing.
At the same time their leadership were courted by the US — and given a red carpet tour of the country — over a proposed UNICOL natural gas pipeline. Negotiations between the US and the Taleban concerning the pipeline’s route continued right up until September 2001 but the Taleban refused to play ball. The rest is history. A former UNICOL executive Hamid Karzai ended up as Afghanistan’s president and the poppies have never bloomed as brightly.
Like Chalabi, Karzai initially believed he had real authority and days after his appointment wanted to give amnesty to Taleban spiritual head Mulla Omar.
This didn’t play well in Washington and he was severely rapped on the knuckles by Rumsfeld, who threatened to chop down the money tree. Karzai now knows where his bread is buttered. And so it seems does the US-appointed interim Prime Minister of Iraq Iyad Allawi who has offered amnesty to rank and file insurgents, provided they are not directly responsible for the deaths of Iraqis and foreign invaders. Both sensibly welcome American and British troops with open arms.
At the same time, foreign forces along with civilian contractors and mercenaries enjoy immunity from international or Iraqi justice when it comes to the20 , 000or so Iraqi civilians who have lost their lives, brushed aside as collateral damage.
Burly US bodyguards perpetually surround both Karzai and Allawi even as their vaunt their respective nations’ sovereignty and independence and the rest of us try and pretend the Americans are around from purely altruistic motives.
If Mohammed Reza Pahlevi the former Shah of Iran was still alive he might have a few things to say about his American fair-weather friends. It was a CIA-sponsored coup, which overthrew Mossadeg who dared to nationalize Iranian oilfields and install the Shah in his place.
Throughout his iron-fisted rule when his opponents were ruthlessly killed and tortured, Reza Shah acted as a regional bullyboy on America’s behalf. When he was forced into exile in 1979 by followers of the Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran soon demanded his extradition from the US where he was undergoing medical treatment. During the Iranian hostage crisis, America’s long-time friend the Shah morphed into a liability, a hot potato and his requests for US sanctuary were turned down. It was left to Anwar Sadat to offer him shelter in Egypt where he died of cancer in 1980.
The region’s leaders and prospective leaders would do well to take note. Beware of US officials bearing gifts! America’s friendship is self-interested and strictly utilitarian. And nobody is immune to its sudden reversal to which Ahmad and Salem Chalabi, still reeling from their own reversal of fortunes, will no doubt attest.
— Linda S Heard is a British specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She welcomes feedback at solitairemedia@yahoo.co.uk
Linda S. Heard, Arab News
CAIRO, 10August 2004 — Alleged bank embezzler, US-Iranian double agent, intelligence fabricator and founder of the Iraqi National Congress, Ahmad Chalabi is being accused of money laundering and forgery.
An Iraqi judge, with the US guiding his pen, has signed a warrant for his arrest, no doubt proving a huge embarrassment to his former best buddy US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The Pentagon has long promoted Chalabi as an upstanding guy and ideal candidate to step into Saddam’s muddied shoes against the serious reservations of Colin Powell and the State Department.
At one time Chalabi must have thought his future premiership was a done deal as he did the rounds of the US talk shows before the invasion often with one of his many relatives in tow.
When he was flown in to the country along with his band of American-armed thugs to play conquering hero in the Shiite south, he must have thought he’d got it made. As a member of the initial interim Governing Council things were going swimmingly for Chalabi until he deviated from the script, suggesting the Americans and the British should hurry up and leave his country. That was the kiss of death for his life’s ambitions.
His nephew Salem Chalabi, who founded the Special Iraqi Tribunal, and who has repeatedly gloated over Saddam’s incarceration, has been named as a suspect in the murder of the former director general of Iraq’s Finance Ministry. Lawyers both, the Chalabi relatives could end up tending the lone palm sapling of another member of their legal fraternity — Saddam Hussein, the man they fought so long and hard to topple.
In the unlikely event the former foes find themselves in the same exercise yard, they could while away the time swapping yarns about America’s treachery. Saddam was once the Pentagon’s man, too, and the recipient of a “made in the USA”’ state-of-the-art arsenal, including chemical weapons, with which to fight a proxy war against Iran.
Saddam’s mistake was the1990 invasion of Kuwait, which he might say went ahead after US Ambassador April Glaspie gave him the wink and the nod — provided he ever gets the chance.
We’re unlikely ever to know the truth about this, as subsequent to the former dictator’s eloquent oratorical show at his hearing, his trial (if he ever gets one) is unlikely to be transparent. But we do know Saddam fell irreparably from American grace when he allegedly attempted to assassinate the current US president’s father.
Interestingly it was the CIA, along with Pakistan’s ISI, which once supported the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan — a movement in which Osama Bin Laden played a key role. From 1982 to1989 , the CIA encouraged an Islamic jihad against the apostate Soviet occupiers and eventually some35 ,000 militants from 40 Islamic countries joined the fight without realizing they, too, were fighting a proxy war on behalf of Uncle Sam.
President Ronald Reagan signed Directive 166 in 1986 authorizing increased clandestine aid to the militants who by 1987 were receiving65 , 000tons of US weapons annually, while the CIA helped train the guerrillas. Once the Soviets literally ran for the hills, Afghanistan’s new tribal rulers turned the country into an internecine battleground.
The advent of the hard-line Taleban brought repression but also security to the country and although their rule was not officially recognized by the US they did receive millions of American government dollars to curtail poppy growing.
At the same time their leadership were courted by the US — and given a red carpet tour of the country — over a proposed UNICOL natural gas pipeline. Negotiations between the US and the Taleban concerning the pipeline’s route continued right up until September 2001 but the Taleban refused to play ball. The rest is history. A former UNICOL executive Hamid Karzai ended up as Afghanistan’s president and the poppies have never bloomed as brightly.
Like Chalabi, Karzai initially believed he had real authority and days after his appointment wanted to give amnesty to Taleban spiritual head Mulla Omar.
This didn’t play well in Washington and he was severely rapped on the knuckles by Rumsfeld, who threatened to chop down the money tree. Karzai now knows where his bread is buttered. And so it seems does the US-appointed interim Prime Minister of Iraq Iyad Allawi who has offered amnesty to rank and file insurgents, provided they are not directly responsible for the deaths of Iraqis and foreign invaders. Both sensibly welcome American and British troops with open arms.
At the same time, foreign forces along with civilian contractors and mercenaries enjoy immunity from international or Iraqi justice when it comes to the20 , 000or so Iraqi civilians who have lost their lives, brushed aside as collateral damage.
Burly US bodyguards perpetually surround both Karzai and Allawi even as their vaunt their respective nations’ sovereignty and independence and the rest of us try and pretend the Americans are around from purely altruistic motives.
If Mohammed Reza Pahlevi the former Shah of Iran was still alive he might have a few things to say about his American fair-weather friends. It was a CIA-sponsored coup, which overthrew Mossadeg who dared to nationalize Iranian oilfields and install the Shah in his place.
Throughout his iron-fisted rule when his opponents were ruthlessly killed and tortured, Reza Shah acted as a regional bullyboy on America’s behalf. When he was forced into exile in 1979 by followers of the Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran soon demanded his extradition from the US where he was undergoing medical treatment. During the Iranian hostage crisis, America’s long-time friend the Shah morphed into a liability, a hot potato and his requests for US sanctuary were turned down. It was left to Anwar Sadat to offer him shelter in Egypt where he died of cancer in 1980.
The region’s leaders and prospective leaders would do well to take note. Beware of US officials bearing gifts! America’s friendship is self-interested and strictly utilitarian. And nobody is immune to its sudden reversal to which Ahmad and Salem Chalabi, still reeling from their own reversal of fortunes, will no doubt attest.
— Linda S Heard is a British specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She welcomes feedback at solitairemedia@yahoo.co.uk