Everything about Ahmed Chalabi totally explained
Ahmed Abdel Hadi Chalabi (
Arabic: أحمد الجلبي 'Ahmad al-Jalabī) (born
October 30, 1944) was interim oil minister in
Iraq in
April-May 2005 and
December-January 2006 and deputy
prime minister from May 2005 until May 2006. Chalabi failed to win a seat in parliament in the December 2005 elections, and when the new Iraqi cabinet was announced in May 2006, he wasn't awarded a post. Once dubbed the "
George Washington of Iraq" by American
neoconservatives, he's fallen out of favor and is currently under investigation by several U.S. government sources. He is also wanted for
embezzling nearly $300 million through a bank he created in
Jordan.
Chalabi was also part of a three-man executive council for the umbrella
Iraqi opposition group, the
Iraqi National Congress (INC), created in 1992 for the purpose of fomenting the overthrow of Iraqi president
Saddam Hussein. Although the INC received major funding and assistance from the
United States, it never had any influence or any following to speak of in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. The INC's influence gradually waned until the December 2005 elections, in which it failed to win a single seat in Parliament.
Chalabi is a controversial figure for many reasons. In the lead-up to the
2003 invasion of Iraq, under his guidance the INC provided a major portion of the information on which
U.S. Intelligence based its condemnation of
Saddam Hussein, including reports of
weapons of mass destruction and alleged ties to
al-Qaeda. Nearly all, if not all, of this information has turned out to be false. That, combined with the fact that Chalabi subsequently boasted about the impact that their falsifications had in an interview with the British Sunday Telegraph, led to a falling out between him and the
United States.
Initially, Chalabi enjoyed close political and business relationships with some members of the U.S. government, including some prominent
neoconservatives within
the Pentagon. Chalabi is said to have had political contacts within the
Project for the New American Century, most notably with
Paul Wolfowitz, a student of nuclear strategist
Albert Wohlstetter and
Richard Perle who was introduced to Chalabi by Wohlstetter in 1985. He also enjoyed considerable support among politicians and political
pundits in the United States, most notably
Jim Hoagland of
The Washington Post, who held him up as a notable force for
democracy in Iraq..
Background
Chalabi is the scion of a prominent
Shi'a family, one of the wealthy power elite of
Baghdad, where he was born. Chalabi left Iraq with his family in 1956 and spent most of his life in the United States and the
United Kingdom. He studied with
cryptographer Whitfield Diffie at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the mid-1960s from which he received a
bachelor of science degree in
mathematics. In 1969, he earned a
Ph.D. in mathematics from the
University of Chicago under the direction of
George Glauberman, after which he took a position in the mathematics department at the
American University of Beirut. He published three mathematics papers between 1973 and 1980, one being "Modules over group algebras and their application in the study of semi-simplicity." His
Erdős number is 6.
In 1971, Chalabi married Leila Osseiran, daughter of
Lebanese politician
Adil Osseiran. They have four children.
In 1977, he founded the
Petra Bank in
Jordan. In the late 1980s, the
government of Jordan issued a decree ordering all banks in the country to deposit one fifth of their reserves with the
Central Bank. Petra Bank was the only bank that was unable to meet this requirement, and so Chalabi fled the country before the authorities could react. Chalabi was convicted and sentenced
in absentia for
bank fraud by a Jordanian
military tribunal. He faces 22 years in prison, should he again enter Jordan. Chalabi maintains that his prosecution was a politically motivated effort to discredit him. In May 2005, it was reported that
King Abdullah II of Jordan had promised to
pardon Chalabi, in part to ease the relations between Jordan and the new Iraqi government of which Chalabi was a member. According to one report, Chalabi proposed a $32 million compensation fund for depositers affected by Petra Bank's failure. The website for Petra Bank contains a press release stating that Chalabi would refuse the pardon. Although he's always maintained the case was a plot to frame him by
Baghdad, the issue was revisited later when the
U.S. State Department raised questions about the INC's accounting practices. According to the
New York Times, "Chalabi insisted on a public apology, which the Jordanians refused to give."
Secretary of State Colin Powell later used this information in a
U.N. presentation trying to garner support for the war, despite warnings from
German intelligence that "Curveball" was fabricating claims. Since then, the CIA has admitted that the defector made up the story, and Powell apologized for using the information in his speech. A later congressionally appointed investigation (Robb-Silberman) concluded that Curveball had no relation whatsoever to the INC, and that press reports linking Curveball to the INC were erroneous.
The INC often worked with the media, most notably with
Judith Miller, concerning her
WMD stories for the
New York Times starting on
February 26,
1998. After the war, given the lack of discovery of WMDs, most of the WMD claims of the INC were shown to have been either misleading, exaggerated, or completely made up while INC information about the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein's loyalists and Chalabi's personal enemies were accurate. Another of Chalabi's advocates was
American Enterprise Institute's Iraq specialist
Danielle Pletka. Chalabi received advice on media and television presentation techniques from the
Irish scriptwriter and commentator
Eoghan Harris prior to the
invasion of Iraq.
As U.S. forces took control during the
2003 Invasion of Iraq, Chalabi returned under their aegis and was given a position on the
Iraq interim governing council by the
Coalition Provisional Authority. He served as president of the council in September 2003. He denounced a plan to let the UN choose an interim government for Iraq. "We are grateful to
President Bush for liberating Iraq, but it's time for the
Iraqi people to run their affairs," he was quoted as saying in the
New York Times.
In August 2003, Chalabi was the only candidate whose unfavorable ratings exceeded his favorable ones with Iraqis in a State Department poll. In a survey of nearly 3000 Iraqis in February 2004 (by
Oxford Research International, sponsored by the
BBC in the
United Kingdom,
ABC in the U.S.,
ARD of
Germany, and the
NHK in
Japan), only 0.2 percent of respondents said he was the most trustworthy leader in Iraq (see survey link below, question #13). A secret document written in 2002 by the British Overseas and Defence Secretariat reportedly described Chalabi as "a convicted fraudster popular on
Capitol Hill".
In response to the WMD controversy, Chalabi told London's
Daily Telegraph in February 2004, "We are heroes in error. As far as we're concerned, we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before isn't important. The
Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat."
During the period from March 2000 through September 2003, the U.S. State Department paid nearly $33 million to the Iraqi National Congress, according to a
General Accounting Office report released in 2004. Subsequently, Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress was paid about $335,000 per month by the Defense Intelligence Agency until
May 18, 2004.
Falling out with the U.S., 2004-5
As Chalabi's position of trust with the Pentagon crumbled, he found a new political position as a champion of Iraq's Shi'ites (Chalabi himself is a Shi'ite). Beginning
January 25, 2004, Chalabi and his close associates promoted the claim that leaders around the world were illegally profiting from the
Oil for Food program. These charges were around the same time that UN envoy
Lakhdar Brahimi indicated that Chalabi would likely not be welcome in a future Iraqi government. Up until this time, Chalabi had been mentioned formally several times in connection with possible future leadership positions. Chalabi contends that documents in his possession detail the misconduct, but he's yet to provide any documents or other evidence. The U.S. has sharply criticized Chalabi's Oil for Food investigation as undermining the credibility of its own.
Additionally, Chalabi and other members of the INC have been being investigated for fraud involving the exchange of Iraqi currency, grand theft of both national and private assets, and many other criminal charges in Iraq. On
May 19, 2004 the U.S. government discontinued their regular payments to Chalabi for information he provided. Then on
May 20, Iraqi police supported by U.S. soldiers raided his offices and residence, taking documents and computers, presumably to be used as evidence. A major target of the raid was
Aras Habib, Chalabi's long-term director of intelligence, who controls the vast network of agents bankrolled by U.S. funding.
In June 2004, it was reported that Chalabi gave U.S. state secrets to
Iran in April, including the fact that one of the United States' most valuable sources of Iranian intelligence was a broken Iranian
code used by their spy services. Chalabi allegedly learned of the code through a drunk American involved in the
code-breaking operation. Chalabi has denied all of the charges, and nothing has ever come of the charges nor do the Iraqi or U.S. governments currently seem very interested in pursuing them.
An arrest warrant for alleged counterfeiting was issued for Chalabi on
August 8, 2004, while at the same time a warrant was issued on murder charges against his nephew
Salem Chalabi (at the time, head of the
Iraqi Special Tribunal), while they both were out of the country. Chalabi returned to Iraq on
August 10 planning to make himself available to Iraqi government officials, but he was never arrested. Charges were later dropped against Ahmed Chalabi, with Judge
Zuhair al-Maliki citing lack of evidence.
On
September 1, 2004 Chalabi told reporters of an assassination attempt near
Latifiya, a town south of Baghdad. Chalabi was said to be returning from a meeting with Ayatollah
Ali al-Sistani in
Najaf, where a few days earlier a cease fire had taken effect, ending three weeks of confrontations between followers of
Muqtada al-Sadr and the U.S. military.
He regained enough credibility to be made deputy prime minister on
April 28, 2005. At the same time he was made acting oil minister,
before the appointment of
Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum in May 2005. On protesting IMF austerity measures, Al-Uloum was instructed to extend his vacation by a month in December 2005 by Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, and Chalabi was reappointed as acting oil minister. Al-Uloum returned to the post in January 2006 but now may or may not be "resigning" again.
In November 2005, Chalabi traveled to the U.S. and met with top U.S. government officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, Robert Zoellick, the deputy secretary of state, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Stephen Hadley, President Bush's national security adviser. At this time Chalabi also traveled to Iran to meet with controversial Iranian president
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Political activity in Iraq, 2005-present
The
Iraqi National Congress, headed by Ahmed Chalabi, was a part of the
United Iraqi Alliance in the
Iraqi legislative election, 2005. After the election, Chalabi claimed that he'd the support of the majority of elected members of United Iraqi Alliance and staked claim to be the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Iraq. However,
Ibrahim al-Jaafari later emerged as the consensus candidate for prime minister.
Prior to the December 2005 elections, the Iraqi National Congress left the United Iraqi Alliance and formed the National Congress Coalition, which ran in the elections but failed to win a single seat in Parliament, gaining less than 0.5% of the vote. Other groups joining the INC in this list included: Democratic Iraqi Grouping, Democratic Joint Action Front, First Democratic National Party, Independent List, Iraqi Constitutional Movement, Iraqi Constitutional Party, Tariq Abd al-Karim Al Shahd al-Budairi, and the Turkoman Decision Party.
Chalabi attended the 2006
Bilderberg Conference meeting outside of
Ottawa, Ontario,
Canada.
In October 2007, Chalabi was appointed by Prime Minister
Nouri al Maliki to head the Iraqi services committee, a consortium of eight service ministries and two Baghdad municipal posts tasked with the "surge" plan's next phase, restoring electricity, health, education and local security services to Baghdad neighborhoods. "The key is going to be getting the concerned local citizens — and all the citizens — feeling that this government is reconnected with them.... [Chalabi] agrees with that," said Gen.
David Petraeus. Chalabi "is an important part of the process," said Col. Steven Boylan, Petraeus' spokesman. "He has a lot of energy."
Further Information
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