Iraq’s Phoenix Rising Again?

(with thanks to Donald A. Weadon, Jr. for his comments – below))
Heeee’s back. No, not Virgil Goode, (!) but Ahmad Chalabi. Friday’s Wall Street Journal cover headline proclaims that the American “Surge” has returned Chalabi to the “Center Stage” of Iraqi politics.
I wonder how many coffee cups spilled over this one.
Chalabi has become so infamous that his very name deserves a Webster’s dictionary entry. Just as one would not want one’s reputation “Borked” or “Swift-boated,” one would not want to have the “Chalabi” pulled over one’s eyes.

If we observe (correctly) that the neocons wish to anoint an Iranian “Chalabi,” it will be understood that we mean a “fraud,” a “slippery character” who speaketh, as one line of my ancestors might say, “with forked tongue.” An Iranian Chalabi would be an Iranian expatriate who will prattle nicely in English about “democracy” and Israel, will prophecy that an American military overthrow of the Iranian government will be easy and popular, and will boast of a huge personal following inside Iran.
An “Iranian Chalabi” would also have influential MSM columnists publishing glowing tributes to his “leadership” credentials. In case anyone is paying attention (as we all should be), the current neocon frontrunner candidate for “liberating” Iran is Amir Abbas Fakhravar.

JWN regulars over the past four years will recall that Chalabi has long been at the top of Helena’s least favored list, and she has appropriately taken apart (in)famous colleagues like Jim Hoagland (“Hoagie”) and Judith Miller for their willing roles in promoting Chalabi’s frauds. (Type in “Chalabi” on the jwn search feature, and you’ll get a feast of Chalabi bad memories.)
Chalabi’s star status in Washington deteriorated along with America’s misadventure in Iraq, as it devolved from “mission accomplished” to “central front in the war on ter-er.” Over the past year or so, key neocons and even intelligence veteran Pat Lang intimated that Chalabi must have been an Iranian double agent all along. After all, the logic went, how could somebody that nefarious, unscrupulous, and prone to dissimulation have been anything but Iranian connected? Besides, he visits Iran. (as if that proves anything – in itself.)
I was never convinced of this argument. That the Iranians might have endeavored to connect to Chalabi is hardly suprising, as the Iranians have every “rational” interest in trying to have ties to as many Iraqi poltiical players as possible, from Talibani to Sadr to Hakim, to Maleki, to yes, Chalabi.
The Iranians, by the way, were similar disposed to assorted Afghan players in the late 1990’s – amid Iran’s severely strained relations with the Taliban. I recall even warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar finding exile in Iran…. even as it was clear Iran was less than thrilled to have him. (He was expelled in early 2003.)
Still, the bizarre, if tantalizing suggestion that Chalabi was a deep cover Iranian agent back when he was being hawked so rapturously by Miller, Hoagland,(Bernard) Lewis, Perle, Wolfowitz, Cheney, etc. is too “good” to be believable…. no? Were Miller & Hoagie that blind? Well, the possibility at least made for delicious irony…. :-}
As the neocons and Chalabi went through bitter reciminations and public mutual finger pointing, Chalabi’s political stature appeared to hit rock bottom when his (American favored) list of candidates failed to win a single seat in the December 2005 elections for Iraq’s Parliament.
Phoenix….
Alas, reports of Chalabi’s political demise were premature.
Today’s Journal reports he’s back at the center stage of Iraqi politics, having been appointed by Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki to serve as “chairman” of a “popular committee to mobilize public support…” for the surge. Astonishingly, Chalabi has been installed as the top “liaison,” the “indispensable link” between the counter-insurgency and the people.
Excerpts of the WSJ report follow below. Yet first, here’s a brilliantly sardonic take on Chalabi’s rising from the ashes, from Donald A. Weadon, Jr. — a distinguished international lawyer, and friend in Washington. Don first contributed this comment on “peace, harmony, & bunny rabbits” to the closed “Gulf 2000 forum.” I re-post here, with Don’s permission and his edits:

“Like a mischievous cat, Ahmad Chalabi bears close watching as he runs through his nine lives.
After dodging a bullet in Jordan for massive bank fraud, he ran to the United States to parlay his intellect and his guile into a close connection to a band of lost intellectuals with grandiose plans, the neoconservatives.
While it is difficult in retrospect to imagine a University of Chicago professor who, being followed by an InterPol warrant for his arrest, comes to Washington D.C. as the darling of a cabal of folks who want to unleash their mindless vision of harmony by way of the sword in the Middle East and provides them the werewithal to give it a try at the public’s expense — well, that’s what happened.
Feeding the neocon butterflies who hovered about the early Bush 41 White House the nectar of fraudulent defectors with fabulous tales of secret WMD shenanigans, mobile nerve gas vans and the like to bolster their grandiose fantasies, he seduced the Administration and Congress into feeding him tens of millions of dollars a year for his most bogus Iraq National Congress and then even more national treasure into a Defense Department petri dish — a building next to the Pentagon under Wolfowitz’s patronage where AC toiled to create a government in exile, ready to “plug in” the minute Saddam was toppled. No wonder Rumsfeld didn’t want to know about “Day 2” onwards — he, too, had been bamboozled by AC, the celestial fraudster, into believing that all one had to do was to topple Saddam and plug him and his coterie in, and all Americans could just go home, and AC would lead the newest, friendliest client state for America smack dab in the middle of the Middle East. Peace, harmony and bunny rabbits.

Rubbish!
But he bamboozled ’em all (and had a world of help from the White House’s preferred agitprop think tanks and middle east “consultants” who bought his poop hook, line and sinker) as saner heads screamed bloody murder to no avail whilst the Defense Department’s Office of Special Plans was hard at work stovepiping bogus sewage labelled as “intelligence” to the Vice President’s office and utilizing illegal lobbyists to smooth the way to war with a pliant Congress.
And even though we was ultimately removed from his perch in Iraq, he has been zipping about untethered, both in Iraq and Iran, to make himself the indispensable man to the United States, and to a lesser extent Iraq and Iran. He knows how to work a room, and a government and a region probably better than anyone, with skills honed from having pulled off the biggest fraud in history — getting the U.S. to do his dirtywork and make him King for a Day in his homeland.
Now, swimming in a familiar pond of religious and tribal alliances, he is slowly rising like the proverbial phoenix to significant power and utility to a desperate Administration and a frustrated Iran.
Watch as he becomes the “go to” guy in Iraq to whom the Administration must turn to extract the U.S. from the disaster of their unique making. Not to worry, though, since most of the Iran team know him ( from Shulsky to Abrams, they are all colleagues) and, I might add with a smirk, he knows them all too well.
As I am wont to quote the classical philosophers, I turn today to the great Yogi Berra, who would declare this quintessentially is “déjà vu, all over again”.

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Well said Don – and Yogi. Here are excerpts from the original WSJ report:
Baghdad ‘Surge’ Returns Chalabi To Center Stage — Political Survivor Gets Post as Public Liaison; Does Bigger Role Loom?
By Yochi J. Dreazen
23 February 2007 The Wall Street Journal, A1

BAGHDAD, Iraq — In his latest remarkable political reincarnation, onetime U.S. favorite Ahmed Chalabi has secured a position inside the Iraqi government that could help determine whether the Bush administration’s new push to secure Baghdad succeeds.
In a new post created earlier this year, Mr. Chalabi will serve as an intermediary between Baghdad residents and the Iraqi and U.S. security forces mounting an aggressive counterinsurgency campaign across the city. The position is meant to help Iraqis arrange reimbursement for damage to their cars and homes caused by the security sweeps in the hope of maintaining public support for the strategy.
Mr. Chalabi’s writ is supposed to be limited mainly to security, according to aides to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, but he is already speaking ambitiously about playing a larger role in economic, health and reconstruction efforts as well. In his new capacity, Mr. Chalabi answers directly to Mr. Maliki and is already taking part in weekly planning meetings with senior American officials such as Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq.

Mr. Chalabi’s position was created as part of a broad push by Mr. Maliki’s government to capitalize on any positive momentum created by the addition of 21,500 additional American forces to Iraq, of which some 3,000 have arrived so far.

Has it dawned on anyone just how slow this “surge” is in materializing? Guess it takes a while for the “stealth draft” to call-up and re-deploy all those part time reservists….

In the weeks after President Bush disclosed his plans to “surge” additional forces to Iraq, Mr. Maliki created five new government committees charged with making the plan work on the ground. They include panels focused on economic development, the restoration of basic services such as electricity, and, in Mr. Chalabi’s case, the critical task of maintaining public backing for the initiative.
The new position is vaguely defined, and it is too early to tell how much power Mr. Chalabi will ultimately wield. How much money will be available to pay claims and how it might be awarded and disbursed remains to be finalized, too. But he is a skilled political infighter who has often shown a talent for making the most out of whatever hand he is dealt. Mr. Chalabi also maintains close ties with key political allies of Mr. Maliki such as radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, which gives him extra sway within Mr. Maliki’s government. Indeed, U.S. Embassy officials suggest Mr. Chalabi’s closeness to Mr. Sadr is a major reason he was offered the liaison post.

Oh swell: Mr. Chalabi supposedly owes his resurgence to the one Shia figure most frequently cited as a key source of violent trouble.

Already, some U.S. officials are expressing concern about Mr. Chalabi’s new role… “The question is whether he is really doing this to help, or whether he’s trying to build himself a new political base in Baghdad or carry water for the Shiites,” said a senior American official here. “And we simply don’t know the answer to that yet.”
In an interview yesterday, Mr. Chalabi said such concerns are unfounded, and stressed that he would use his position solely to help maintain public backing for the security push. “This is not about political parties, or about sectarian groups,” he said. “We just want to motivate people to support the security plan, because otherwise it can’t succeed.” Mr. Chalabi said he envisions helping Iraqis get the government to repair homes or furniture harmed in security raids, or to reimburse them for damage caused by the sweeps….

The WSJ story then reveals that Chalabi still wears his other hat of heading the de-Baathification crusade within the Iraqi government – the same effort widely “credited” with causing massive unemployment, swelling insurgent ranks, and generally being “counterproductive.”
As I suggested to students in early 2003, knocking Iraq’s Humpty Dumpty off his wall would be easy. Putting Saddam’s Iraq “back together again” would be the supreme challenge, and that was before somebody “brilliant” decided to get rid of “all the King’s horses and men.”
Never mind. Chalabi now says he “wants to bring most former Baathists back” into the civil service, except for 1,500 of the highest ranking Baathists.

Despite such assurances, Mr. Chalabi remains a deeply divisive figure in Iraq, viewed skeptically by many U.S. as well as Iraqi officials. Critics see him as openly sectarian, and say they have little faith that he will treat Shiites and Sunnis equally in his new role.
“Chalabi is a very good politician, but we don’t know his true intentions,” said Mohammad al-Rubaie, who heads the district government in Baghdad’s Karrada neighborhood. “We have to make sure that he doesn’t have a free hand to do everything he wants, because otherwise his position can cause more harm than good, and create even more sectarian dangers.”

An aide to Mr. Chalabi said the vehicle for his latest renaissance was born of the realization that an aggressive counterinsurgency — which involves breaking down doors, rifling through houses and making wide-scale arrests — can quickly alienate the public.

No kidding. But the question remains, why Chalabi – of all people?

Mr. Maliki tasked Mr. Chalabi with building a system of district committees that will work with American and Iraqi security forces operating in each area of the city, the aide said. The hope is that these committees will make it easier for residents to get restitution from the Iraqi government — and possibly the American military — if their property is harmed, and give them an incentive to approach Iraqi and American forces with information about insurgents.

Ah, so that’s it. Nobody knows better how to get money out of America than Chalabi…? (and no doubt Chalabi will morph into a “good-time Charlie” who knows well how to doll and control the patronage and favors)

Fueling speculation that he will expand his role, Mr. Chalabi invited dozens of political, tribal and religious leaders to a meeting in a Baghdad hotel Wednesday to explain how his new post would function and begin the process of choosing the members of the liaison committees meant to operate in Baghdad’s 10 districts….
Even Mr. Chalabi’s critics acknowledge he is an unusually skilled politician, a gift on full display as he made his way through a smoke-filled banquet hall in the Mansoor Hotel Wednesday, nattily attired and trailed by a retinue of bodyguards and aides. Mr. Chalabi glad-handed his way from table to table, exchanging handshakes and kisses with the local Iraqi political officials clamoring for a moment of his time….
“It doesn’t matter that he didn’t win a seat in the elections — this is a man who is better than most of the current people in parliament,” said Muslim Ahmad Saleh, chairman of the district government in the Kadhamiya neighborhood.

Doesn’t matter? To whom? And “better than most of the… parliament…???
At what, pray tell?
So much for the neocon agenda for Iraq to be a model democracy.
Oh never mind. If this “devil’s choice” is what it takes for America to be able to “declare victory and come home,” well then, by George (Tom, Dick & Harry), maybe we are to hold our collective noses and not look too closely.
On second thought, I’m not ready yet to supsend my wits. A spade is still a spade.