The 'martyrdom' of Chalabi
Seasoned scholars of the Arab world would undoubtedly be familiar with the name of Ahmed Chalabi, the Baghdad-born Iraqi Shia leader who, since the 1970s, has been one of the most outspoken critics of the Saddam Hussein regime.
But even the most jaded of observers of Arab politics would not be able to comprehend the meteoric rise and fall of the man whom Washington and the Pentagon once touted as a possible future presidential candidate for post-Saddam Iraq and who was seen as the public face of Iraqi opposition movements outside the country.
Notwithstanding the man's own colourful past (he was widely blamed for the collapse of Petra Bank which he established in Jordan with the help of Crown Prince Hassan, brother of King Hussein) and the myriad charges that have been levelled against him (he was convicted of embezzlement and was charged in absentia by a Jordanian court after he fled the country), Chalabi was seen as the closest ally of the West and a bugbear who stalked the failing Saddam regime right up to its collapse.
During his years in exile Chalabi was granted British citizenship and was soon seen lobbying in the halls of power of London and Washington. Despite the array of accusations and scandals that invariably followed in his wake, he remained a favourite among the politicians and members of the intelligence community in the West, plying the CIA and Pentagon with tantalising tit-bits of intelligence about the weaknesses in Saddam's authoritarian political system.
Following the American-led invasion of Iraq and the graceless fall of Saddam, Chalabi was one of the first Iraqi leaders in exile who were sent back to Iraq by the US, with the hope of establishing a new regime that would be indebted to the West and whose interests would coincide with Washington's and the neo-Con lobby installed there.
Chalabi's party, the Iraqi National Congress was the recipient of a monthly payment of US$300,000, courtesy of the American government. He was made a member of the Interim Governing Council (IGC) of Iraq and promoted to head its Economic and Finance Committee. Other members of his family were likewise 'rewarded' with key posts in the new interim administration, including the court that will eventually put Saddam on trial.
All that came to an end when Chalabi's political offices were raided recently by Iraqi police authorities, whom he claims were acting at the behest of the Americans the de facto rulers of Iraq in the country.
The Americans, true to form, have chosen to wash their hands off Chalabi and claim that this was and remains a matter of domestic political concern among the Iraqis themselves.
Seasoned scholars of the Arab world would undoubtedly be familiar with the name of Ahmed Chalabi, the Baghdad-born Iraqi Shia leader who, since the 1970s, has been one of the most outspoken critics of the Saddam Hussein regime.
But even the most jaded of observers of Arab politics would not be able to comprehend the meteoric rise and fall of the man whom Washington and the Pentagon once touted as a possible future presidential candidate for post-Saddam Iraq and who was seen as the public face of Iraqi opposition movements outside the country.
Notwithstanding the man's own colourful past (he was widely blamed for the collapse of Petra Bank which he established in Jordan with the help of Crown Prince Hassan, brother of King Hussein) and the myriad charges that have been levelled against him (he was convicted of embezzlement and was charged in absentia by a Jordanian court after he fled the country), Chalabi was seen as the closest ally of the West and a bugbear who stalked the failing Saddam regime right up to its collapse.
During his years in exile Chalabi was granted British citizenship and was soon seen lobbying in the halls of power of London and Washington. Despite the array of accusations and scandals that invariably followed in his wake, he remained a favourite among the politicians and members of the intelligence community in the West, plying the CIA and Pentagon with tantalising tit-bits of intelligence about the weaknesses in Saddam's authoritarian political system.
Following the American-led invasion of Iraq and the graceless fall of Saddam, Chalabi was one of the first Iraqi leaders in exile who were sent back to Iraq by the US, with the hope of establishing a new regime that would be indebted to the West and whose interests would coincide with Washington's and the neo-Con lobby installed there.
Chalabi's party, the Iraqi National Congress was the recipient of a monthly payment of US$300,000, courtesy of the American government. He was made a member of the Interim Governing Council (IGC) of Iraq and promoted to head its Economic and Finance Committee. Other members of his family were likewise 'rewarded' with key posts in the new interim administration, including the court that will eventually put Saddam on trial.
All that came to an end when Chalabi's political offices were raided recently by Iraqi police authorities, whom he claims were acting at the behest of the Americans the de facto rulers of Iraq in the country.
The Americans, true to form, have chosen to wash their hands off Chalabi and claim that this was and remains a matter of domestic political concern among the Iraqis themselves.
Unexplained discrepancies
But none of these developments make sense unless one takes into account the convoluted politics of post-Saddam Iraq and the disastrous performance of the US and its Western allies in their so-called 'liberation' of the country.
Eager to prop up some semblance of a credible local power in the lead-up to the handover of power at the end of June, the Americans have finally come to realise that their clumsy meddling in the internal politics of Iraq has opened a can of worms that may well lead to a spiral of conflict and violence that may spill beyond the borders of the country.
By depending so much on Chalabi and his coterie of Western-educated and Westernised smooth-talkers and soothsayers, the American government is now at a loss over how to explain the obvious discrepancies in the intelligence they received prior to the ill-fated invasion of Iraq.
To add insult to injury, a further spin has been added to the story with the claim that Washington and the Pentagon were lied to by Chalabi, who is now portrayed as an Iranian double agent (the man, after all, is a Shia by persuasion, even if nominally so) and that the faulty intelligence given by Chalabi and co to the US and its allies were all part of some dastardly plot hatched in Tehran to get the US to invade Iraq, topple Saddam and pave the way for a major Shia uprising in the country that would serve the strategic and political interests of Shia Iran instead.
As far as red herrings go, this one is big enough to block the port of Marseilles! Not only has there not been a single shred of evidence to support this ludicrous claim, but the proposition itself beggars belief when we consider the all-out of such an enterprise, which would undoubtedly work against Iran's own interests in the long run (by making it the next target for Washington and its crony-allies).
What has been missed out in practically all the editorials of the Western press and global media is the obvious fact that Washington was never really prompted to act on the intelligence it received in the first place.
While numerous public enquiries and senate hearings are conducted on an hourly basis, the public has been distracted from the most obvious commonsensical truth: that wars and invasions have seldom been based on 'real', 'true' or justifiable reasons but rather the opposite that instrumental fictions (such as the bare-faced lie over 'weapons of mass destruction') often serve as the most effective and convenient means to mobilise countries and get them to go to war.
Discrediting the ally
Now, as Washington's grand liberation project goes embarrassingly pear-shaped and Iraq is set on the path of civil war, there is the urgent need to find scapegoats to blame.
And what better scapegoat can one find if not Chalabi, the man who was once seen to be so close to the Bush government that he sat behind Laura Bush during her husband's State of the Union Address? That he is an Arab and a Shia makes him doubly guilty to boot, and to add weight to the campaign to discredit the man his sordid past has been dug up from the grave to haunt him further.
This is not to suggest that Chalabi is a saint by half after all his previous record in the world of business and politics was common knowledge to most who have studied Arab politics since the post-war era.
But the real question that is being dodged at the moment is how and why such an individual, with an agenda as personal as it is short-sighted, could have been selected as the chief advisor and informant by the American government and its intelligence agencies in the first place.
If, as the Americans claim, Chalabi was merely 'using' the US, then surely the same claim can be thrown back Washington's way for surely the Americans were on the look-out for useful cronies who they could count upon for help and intelligence (no matter how faulty) as well?
The acid test which we are not able to conduct, due to the vicissitudes of time and history would have been to gauge the political fortunes of Chalabi had the US-led invasion of Iraq proved to be successful.
Had the people of Iraq rushed to the streets to welcome the American troops as 'liberators' (as Chalabi himself had predicted they would), the man who has now come under the glare of the Western media and who is now being blamed for all that has gone wrong in that unfortunate country could well have ended up as the next president of Iraq.
While fate and fortune have been kinder to that other American-backed pretender Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan,Chalabi's spectacular rise and fall from power proves that stooges shall forever remain stooges despite their most valiant efforts to ingratiate themselves with their patrons and masters.
The irony of it all is that the real power behind the throne and the ones who are truly responsible for the chaos and tumult in Iraq today namely, the American government and its clique of Neo-Con warmongers have once again been allowed to slip away into the shadows.
The 'martyrdom' of Chalabi at the hands of the US media (which has suddenly realised its duty and responsibility to truthful investigative journalism) shows that while in the company of rogues and bandits it is innocence, no matter how superficial, that matters most.
Dr FARISH A NOOR is a Malaysian political scientist and human rights activist. His 'The Other Malaysia' column appears in malaysiakini.
