WHO'S IT HELP?:

The Chalabi Fiasco: He's a pawn in a much larger strategic game. (Wall Street Journal, May 26, 2004)

The more we dig into last week's Baghdad raid against Ahmed Chalabi, the more curious it seems. Clearly there's much more going on here than a fight over one man's credibility.

If nothing else, this has to be the strangest "spy" case in U.S. history. On the day of last week's raid, a spokesman for U.S. regent L. Paul Bremer denied that Mr. Chalabi was even the target. But the papers and TV shows have since been filled with accusations that Mr. Chalabi provided classified information to Iran. None of his accusers is ever on the record, and no one has explained how Mr. Chalabi would have access to such U.S. secrets. But someone in the U.S. government clearly wants to damage him. [...]

The charge of spying for Iran is serious enough that Mr. Chalabi, Iraqis and the U.S. have a substantial stake in getting to the truth. As Mr. Chalabi suggests, ideally that would be in public, before Congress.

Mr. Chalabi has long maintained good relations with Iran, in particular to gain access to northern Iraq during Saddam's rule. But this is hardly news to U.S. officials, who financed the INC's Tehran office. In any event, the last thing Iran's mullahs want is the emergence of a secular, stable, Shiite-led free government of the kind Mr. Chalabi has long favored.

So what's really going on here? We think Mr. Chalabi is a pawn in a much larger battle that is strategic, ideological and personal. [...]

The ideological battle concerns Iraq's future governance. As a secular Shiite, Mr. Chalabi has sought to make an alliance with Grand Ayatollah Sistani and other moderate Shiite leaders. This puts him at odds with Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. special envoy to Iraq, as well as with the neighboring Arab leaders who are wary of control by the Shiite majority.

Jordan's King Abdullah, a longtime Chalabi enemy who is close to Mr. Brahimi, has already called for another Sunni strongman to run Iraq. Mr. Bremer and the Bush Administration have handed control over the June 30 transition to Iraqi sovereignty to Mr. Brahimi, and one of his demands is that Mr. Chalabi be frozen out.

As for the personal, Mr. Chalabi is a blunt man who can seem arrogant even to his friends. Unlike some others on the Iraqi Governing Council, he has frequently been critical of Mr. Bremer and has fought him over many issues, especially elections and the probe into the U.N. Oil for Food scandal.

All of this is to suggest that there are many people, in the U.N. and U.S. government, who were only too happy to see Mr. Chalabi humiliated in that raid and then trashed afterward.

Mr. Bremer triggered much of the Sadr mess by shutting down his trivial "newspaper"--let's hope there's more to the Chalabi stroy than just thin skin.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 27, 2004 8:49 AM