Chalabi Out?
It's looking more and more like Ahmad Chalabi will be left holding the bag in Iraq. Signs are piling up that Chalabi—the silk-suited embezzler who was the neocons' favorite to lead Iraq—will be elbowed out of the transitional government that will run Iraq after June 30. In the past week, the United States has seemingly backed a decision by UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to block members of the Iraqi Governing Clowncil from taking part in the transition, and announced plans to un-de-Baathify Iraq, halting the unjustified purge of Baathists that Chalabi was in charge of.
Chalabi, and the neocons, are screaming.
Chalabi himself, on Fox News Sundaycalled Brahimi" an Algerian with an Arab nationalist agenda." And in an interview published in today's New York Sun—a right-wing outlet whose board includes Richard Perle, Chalabi's long-time ally—Chalabi also attacked the Brahimi plan more broadly:
The leader of the Iraqi National Congress, Ahmad Chalabi, in an interview yesterday sharply criticized an American plan to transfer limited sovereignty to an Iraqi government on July 1 as unworkable and warned that most Iraqis would not accept it.
He also criticized a plan by the United Nations envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, to allow those who were high-level members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party to serve in the new government.
Mr. Chalabi's remarks come after one of the most concerted efforts to discredit Mr. Chalabi in Washington and as the Bush administration announced that it would be putting Mr. Brahimi in charge of selecting a temporary government meant to prepare Iraq for free elections.
Mr. Brahimi has said he would choose a prime minister, a president and two vice presidents, largely from a candidate pool that has been described as nonpolitical technocrats who will not likely run for office when elections are scheduled for January 2005.
Last week, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, Marc Grossman, and the deputy defense secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, said the new government would have "limited" sovereignty.
They said its army would still fall under operational command of American officers and that the government would not be allowed to promulgate legislation in the absence of a political assembly.
"The government after June 30 is going to have limited sovereignty. That's what Marc Grossman and others said last week to Congress," Mr. Chalabi said. "What kind of government is that? Iraqis will not accept this. Iraq is supposed to be sovereign. What happens if the government folds after June 30?"
Of course, Chalabi's right that the "limited sovereignty" plan is a bad idea, and it's not clear that the UN will support the concept. But Chalabi's not worried about Iraqi sovereignty; he's worried about Chalabi. And he's counting on his neocon allies to derail the UN plan and bail him out. As yesterday's Los Angeles Times reported:
Many in Washington doubt that the administration really intends to let the United Nations name the new government until Brahimi's choices have been vetted by the United States, other coalition nations, and possibly the Governing Council itself.
Nevertheless, a number of prominent conservatives have begun warning that to abdicate responsibility for the transition to the U.N. is to invite disaster.
The conservatives have avoided criticizing Bush directly, but are scathing about the implications of handing the Iraqi experiment over to a world body they consider inept, possibly corrupt and anti-American and especially of ceding authority to a diplomat whom many distrust.
"It makes no sense for the United States to give the United Nations a blank check to remake Iraq's government," argued Ed Feulner, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, in an online column last week. "After all, the world body has no credibility in Iraq."
"We should note [their] appalling record, take it to heart, and hold the U.N. role in Iraq to an absolute minimum," Richard Perle, a member of the Defense Policy Board, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week.
Other conservatives say that the U.N.—by leaving Iraq after the August bombing of its headquarters—has displayed a dangerous weakness that makes it ill-suited to supervising what is likely to be a violent transition.
Michael Rubin, who spent eight months advising the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and is now at the American Enterprise Institute, said, "The U.N. has already shown that it responds to violence."
"People are upset with the U.N.? Blow it up and the U.N. goes fleeing," Rubin said, arguing that it would be better to extend the term of the Governing Council until elections—the only real path to a legitimate government—could be held.
Rubin, a close Chalabi ally and friend of Perle's just landed at AEI after a stint at the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans. So, Chalabi, Perle, Rubin et al. are screaming. The question is: do they have any clout left? More on that soon.
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