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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (120920)	12/3/2003 12:49:37 PM
From: greenspirit	Respond to of 281500

Speaking of Jordan, I read recently that Iraqi's are having a lot of trouble crossing into Jordan. Seems they aren't accepting Iraqi passports.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (120920)	12/3/2003 1:09:41 PM
From: Win Smith	Respond to of 281500

The Chalabi installation didn't quite go according to plan, but that doesn't mean that the true believers aren't still professing the faith. From very near the top, in fact from the real "chief architect", as near as I can tell: But Chalabi short-circuited the plan. According to an Iraqi politician who was close to the negotiations, Chalabi, along with the Shiite leader Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, who was killed in an August car bombing, resisted Garner’s idea of including internals—and anyone else who might diminish their power. “They wanted basically to control who would be there,” the Iraqi politician said. Chalabi’s obstructionism ultimately didn’t matter. The handoff scenario that had been hatched in Washington was disintegrating even as Garner was trying to carry it out. “The exiles made a big mistake, thinking that they could ride an American tank into Baghdad and gain legitimacy. It just doesn’t work that way,” the Iraqi politician said. Chalabi and the seven-hundred-man militia of the Iraqi National Congress, which commandeered choice properties upon arrival in Baghdad, were not acclaimed by their compatriots. (“They may have looked like a bit of a warlord group,” Gordon Rudd said. “I told that to Garner. He said, ‘Gordon, I don’t like that word.’”) Making matters worse, the police and the Army had not defected; they had disappeared. Criminal gangs proliferated throughout the city. . . . To this day, key policymakers maintain their faith in the Pentagon’s original plan. According to a senior Administration official, not long ago in Washington, Cheney approached Powell, stuck a finger in his chest, and said, “If you hadn’t opposed the I.N.C. and Chalabi, we wouldn’t be in this mess.” But one Pentagon official acknowledged that his agency was responsible for the debacle. “It was ridiculous,” he said. “Rummy and Wolfowitz and Feith did not believe the U.S. would need to run post-conflict Iraq. Their plan was to turn it over to these exiles very quickly and let them deal with the messes that came up. Garner was a fall guy for a bad strategy. He was doing exactly what Rummy wanted him to do. It was the strategy that failed.” newyorker.com You are, of course, free to judge on whatever "other grounds" you like. Personally, I sort of wish the true believers had taken a little closer look at Sharon's nifty little Lebanon escapade in the "best laid plans" historical precedent department, but that would have been stretching the envelope too much, I guess.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (120920)	12/3/2003 1:32:03 PM
From: GST	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Cronyism in Iraq? Romesh Ratnesar. Time. New York: Nov 17, 2003. Vol. 162, Iss. 20; pg. 17 WHEN U.S. authorities in Iraq picked three companies last month to build a wireless telephone network for the country, they were pleased that no Americans were among the winners, a fact they hoped would silence those who charge that the Bush Administration is handing reconstruction contracts only to business cronies and campaign contributors. But some telecom-industry insiders complain that the winners of the licenses, which cost just $5 million but could eventually be worth as much as $1 billion a year, benefited from ties to prominent Iraqis on the U.S.-backed Governing Council. The majority partner in the consortium that was awarded the southern-Iraq license, for instance, is Dijla Telecommunications Corporation, a Baghdad outfit headed by Ali Shawkat, the son of Mudhar Shawkat, a senior adviser to Iraqi National Congress President Ahmad Chalabi. Coalition officials and the Shawkats denied to TIME that the family's connections were behind the decision to grant Dijla the license. But others contend the deal reeks of cronyism. "The mobile contracts were all politically divided," says an Iraqi emigre who returned as a consultant for a telecom firm. "It's the same as Saddam's time. It's about who you know." Now another deal is coming under scrutiny. A senior Pentagon official told TIME that the U.S. is reviewing its decision to grant the mobile license for Baghdad and central Iraq to a consortium led by Egyptian telecom giant Orascom because of its ties to Nadhmi Auchi, an Iraqi-born billionaire who built his fortune partly through arms deals with the Iraqi regime in the 1980s. Industry sources say Auchi provided Orascom with a $20 million loan to help pay down its $500 million debt. The sources say the loan gave Auchi, who faced French prosecutors earlier this year for his role in a corruption and embezzlement scandal, a controlling stake in Orascom. A senior U.S. official says Orascom's ties to Auchi are being investigated. As a result, no mobile licenses have yet been issued. -By Romesh Ratnesar. With reporting by Hassan Fattah and Vivienne Walt