Next Year in Geneva, Ahmad!
One year from now, Ahmad Chalabi is gone from Iraq.
Unless some aggrieved Iraqi prematurely blasts Chalabi’s ass to the Quisling Valhalla, I believe that within 12 months of Jerry Bremer’s departure, Ahmad will decide his embezzled millions need his personal and solicitous attention in their cozy Swiss home.
The Pentagon has other plans, of course.
Chalabi is the linchpin of the neocon efforts to retain control of Iraq after the botched occupation and handover.
As the inimitable Arnaud de Bourchgrave reports, Chalabi is to be slotted into the Prime Minister slot, with extensive authority over key ministries and removable only by unanimous agreement of Iraq’s presidential troika.
He’s still on US retainer, of course, padding his Pentagon-fattened bankroll through assiduous grafting as his shadowy network of family-controlled companies sluice at the US trough.
He will also enjoy the services of the US-taxpayer financed death squads that Dick Cheney thoughtfully shoehorned into the Iraq appropriation in order to secure his rule.
If things get out of hand for Ahmad, well, there are 100,000 US troops on the ground ready, if not eager, to back up the prime minister of New Iraq.
Add to that the local and regional leverage he is supposed to enjoy through his sole custodianship of Saddam’s secret police records (seized by the INC when Baghdad fell), and you can understand why the Pentagon is looking forward to a long successful run in Iraq.
Far from US government oversight, operating through a pliant and corrupt local regime eager to host its bases, welcome its troops, and collude in the extra-legal application of US military force in the Middle East, our neocons can subvert and intimidate Syria and Iran to their hearts’ content.
That whole War on Terror/WMD public relations disaster? Fuhgeddaboudit! A ridiculous relic of 20th century US democracy, when an informed public and congressional advise and consent back in the distant homeland were somehow expected to guide the application of American military power at the frontlines of empire.
Think instead of the Roman Empire, when control over the farflung legions and ambitious centurions slipped out of the hands of the demoralized Senate.
But the Pentagon and Chalabi have been woefully wrong before, and there’s no reason to expect that this last mighty exertion of neocon willpower in the face of conspicuous failure, inconvenient facts, and dangerous realities will succeed.
Ayatollah Sistani, the spiritual leader of the majority Shi’ites, has shown himself remarkably adept and prescient in his campaign to isolate and remove impediments to Iraq self-determination and popular sovereignty.
The first shoe to drop was the exit-eager Paul Bremer and the CPA. Lame-ducked by Bush’s “we’re outta here by June 30” cut and run sovereignty dump, Bremer acceded to Sistani’s insistence that the UN lend its imprature to the sovereignty transfer and election schedule.
Now guess what? The UN and Brahimi are suddenly out of Sistani’s favor for the crime of insufficient enthusiasm for early elections.
That leaves Ahmad Chalabi as the surviving tool of foreign interests in Iraq.
And now we are to believe that Sistani and the Shi’ite forces have been taken in by Chalabi’s bogus demonstrations of Iraqi nationalism and Shi’a piety?
The US government attracted understandable but misdirected derision when Chalabi ostentatiously stood alongside the Sh’ias and condemned the US transition plan.
Then there was a wonderful farce where Chalabi and the IGC made a pilgrimage to US bugbear Iran, and the shocked! shocked! American military shut off some of the Iraq/Iran border crossings in a sign of our displeasure with Ahmad, that prickly and nationalistic DeGaulle of Free Iraq, and his spunky new regime.
I don’t think anybody is fooled. The thing about reliably venal politicians is that they are, well, reliably venal. Chalabi knows his bread is buttered on the US side.
And he has to know that Sistani and the Shi’ites — and indeed most of Iraq — will be ready to turn on him as soon as the CPA and the UN are out of the picture.
Chalabi is, dare I say it, no Saddam Hussein. A greaseball financier by trade, he has no independent power base or experience in the effective application of state violence.
Presumably Wolfowitz is grooming some Mukhabarat retread to apply muscle on Chalabi’s behalf and stampede the Iraqi people with a combination of terror, money, and American pressure.
The neocons want to avoid the Afghanistan precedent, with the woeful Karzai unable to extend the presidential writ beyond the suburbs of Kabul. This time they swear they’ll get it right: plenty of troops, plenty of money, and plenty of neocon will and depraved indifference when it comes time to plunge the country into civil war and destroy the local forces that don’t hew close enough to the American line.
But that’s probably a death sentence for the US presence in Iraq and, maybe, for Chalabi — literally.
Once Bremer and the detested CPA are gone, the last thing we need is Chalabi to emerge as a high-profile US stooge and focus for nationalist resentment of continued US interference in Iraqi affairs.
Iraq isn’t Afghanistan.
It has an energized society and political culture with a sense of grievance and entitlement. It has a well-developed national movement with religious and social legitimacy.
It has the prospect of a prosperity that can be achieved through the early, equitable distribution of immense oil wealth…
…as soon as the UN meddlers, the US troops, and Ahmad Chalabi are out of the way.
A year should be enough both for Iraq and Chalabi…
…unless Bush gets four more years and America has the money and foolishness to continue the farce…
…and Chalabi has the greed and recklessness to continue lining his pockets at the expense of his dupes in the Pentagon and his victims in Iraq.
But I don’t think so.
Next year in Geneva, Ahmad.
