The man who conned the neocons

At the US president's State of the Union address a few months ago, Laura Bush's special guests included a beaming Ahmed Chalabi. By then Chalabi's fantasy of riding to power on an American tank had floundered, but he remained reasonably high in the pecking order among the collaborationist elite.

By last week, there appeared to have been a remarkable reversal of fortune. Last Thursday in the middle of the night, Chalabi's palatial home was raided by a posse of Iraqi police accompanied by US troops and CIA agents. They broke down doors and barged into Chalabi's bedroom.

His offices were searched, and the intruders took away with them a computer and stacks of files. (It emerged this week that Chalabi had prior warning of the raid, and everything sensitive was long gone from the premises.)

A predictably indignant Chalabi, who is a member of the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), "broke off relations" with the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). "I am America's best friend in Iraq," he whined at a press conference. "If the Coalition Provisional Authority finds it necessary to direct an armed attack against my home, you can see the state of relations between the CPA and the Iraqi people."

In truth, relations between the CPA and the Iraqi people have always been tense. And many of the Americans who would last year have concurred with Chalabi's description of himself have since had second thoughts.

These two points are not unrelated. Chalabi was instrumental in what has turned into the United States' biggest foreign policy disaster since Vietnam. It was he who convinced US policy-makers that Iraqis would welcome their American "liberators" with open arms. And much of the so-called intelligence about Saddam Hussein's post-1991 weapons of mass destruction came from Chalabi's US-funded Iraqi National Congress (INC).

What the neoconservatives running the Bush government's agenda heard from Chalabi and his associates was contradicted by countless military analysts and intelligence operatives, and the CIA as well as the State Department knew better than to take him at face value. But the Chalabi version was what the neocons wanted to hear.

In the neocon heartland also known as the Pentagon, Chalabi was king. Or at least a would-be king. He has been acquainted with the likes of Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle since the 1960s, when he was introduced to them by one of the founders of neoconservatism, Albert Wohlstetter.

Familiarity with the neocons enabled Chalabi to exploit their weaknesses, and the biggest among these is Israel. Ideologically wedded to the Likudite goal of a Greater Israel, they were appalled by the drift towards land for peace.

One of the main reasons they are so keen to remake the Arab world is in order to create an environment more conducive to Israeli security and prosperity, without any concessions to the Palestinians.

Thus, when Chalabi sold them the chimera of an Iraq on excellent terms with Israel both diplomatically and as a trading partner, they fell for it hook, line and sinker. He promised, among other things, to revive a pipeline built by the British in the 1920s from the oilfields of Kirkuk and Mosul to Haifa.

Anyone with a basic knowledge of the Middle East would have recognized this as a pipe dream in the present circumstances. But there's the rub: the neoconservatives knew precious little about Iraq.

The wily Chalabi understood this and filled the void with a vision that bore no resemblance to reality. To Iraqi associates who questioned the practicality of his promises, he said in effect: Don't worry, I'm just using the neocons and the Jews; we'll dump them after they9ve served their purpose.

Such duplicity has been a Chalabi hallmark for decades. The question of who dumps whom is in the process of being settled. But the ploy served the INC chieftain well until last year.

Chalabi was born in 1944 into a family accustomed to serving occupation regimes. His father was a minister under the British-imposed Hashemite dynasty and the family fled Iraq when the Hashemites were overthrown in 1958.

They went to London via Jordan, but eventually settled in Lebanon. The precociously intelligent Ahmed entered MIT at 16 and subsequently obtained a doctorate in algebra from the University of Chicago before taking up a teaching post at the American University of Beirut.

But his stint in academia didn't last long. His family had gone into banking, and Chalabi says he was persuaded by crown prince Hassan to launch the Petra Bank in Jordan in 1977.

Shareholders included Saudi and Kuwaiti families, as well as Abu Dhabi's Al Nahyans, and the bank was initially a success. It later turned out that a large proportion of depositors' money was ending up in the Chalabi family's Middle East Banking Corporation, which funded Lebanon's Amal militia during the civil war.

Details of shady book-keeping and suspicious loans emerged after the bank was shut down in 1989, after Jordan's central bank demanded deposits of 30 per cent of foreign currency holdings from 20 banks.

Petra was the only one unable to comply, and Chalabi is reported to have fled Jordan in the boot of a car. He was later tried in absentia on 31 counts of embezzlement and related misdeeds and sentenced to 22 years in prison.

Chalabi has consistently blamed Saddam for his misfortune, but Jordanian officials treat this allegation with disdain. Besides, according to Financial Times columnist John Dizard, the claim seems particularly ludicrous in the light of the fact that Chalabi "helped finance Saddam Hussein's trade with Jordan during the 1980s" by organizing "a special trading account for Iraq at the Jordanian central bank [which] allowed him to swap oil for necessary imports.... without going through the international credit system".

The 1991 Gulf war and its inconclusive aftermath gave Chalabi ideas. "The United States," he reportedly told an opposition activist at the time, "is prepared to allocate substantial sums for the Iraqi opposition. We should go for that money."

That's when the INC came into being, and CIA funds started flowing in. Chalabi's relations with the agency ran into trouble following an ill-advised attempt in 1995 to launch an anti-Saddam uprising from Iraq's Kurdish zone. The CIA was also uncomfortable about the INC leader's closeness to Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

So Chalabi played the neocon card. When a bunch of neoconservatives - including Perle, Wolfowitz, Doug Feith and Donald Rumsfeld - signed an open letter to Bill Clinton demanding certain "vital" foreign policy measures, the first of these was to: "Recognize a provisional government of Iraq based on the principles and leaders of the Iraqi National Congress that is representative of all the peoples of Iraq."

In fact, the INC was by any criterion considerably less "representative" than Saddam. The government-in-exile idea didn't catch on, although more cash was made available to the non-resident oppositionists. But fortune truly smiled on Chalabi when the neocons captured the White House.

As an advocate for war, Chalabi had few equals. April 2003 was a dream come true. He and a couple of hundred "fighters" were airlifted into southern Iraq with the aim of cutting a swath to Baghdad.

"It was the moment of truth for Chalabi," recalls a senior US official, "and it was literally a moment. It was over almost the minute it happened." Another American official puts it more bluntly: "He was jeered more than cheered. Iraqis were shouting him down. It was embarrassing. We had to help bail him out."

As soon as he got to Baghdad, Chalabi nonetheless made a bid for power: an aide declared himself "mayor" of Baghdad, INC goons started collecting road tolls, and Chalabi grabbed hold of all the secret Saddam files he could find. When the occupation authorities set up the IGC, not only was Chalabi a prominent member, but a number of his relatives also got plum posts - particularly in the financial sphere.

UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi's proposal that none of the IGC's members should be a part of the interim administration after June 30 panicked Chalabi. He has also failed to get along with Paul Bremer as well as the proconsul's successor, John Negroponte. That's what has prompted him to call for "full sovereignty" from July 1 and to demand, Moses-like: "Let my people go."

Some of Chalabi's neocon patrons continue to support him, but others scorn him as a turncoat. As if his failure to keep his promises vis-a-vis Israel wasn't bad enough, they now know of the INC's close connections with Iranian intelligence, acknowledged by Tehran on Monday.

What's more, according to well-informed Iraq expert Andrew Cockburn, Chalabi has surreptitiously been cobbling together a Shia coalition with a view to effectively staging a coup, appealing to fellow sectarians on the basis of Brahimi and Bremer's supposed tilt towards Sunnis and Kurds.

The CPA has claimed that the raid on Chalabi was an Iraqi initiative based on corruption and kidnapping charges against certain INC members, and that Bremer was informed of it only after the event.

That's about as credible as US insistence that the more than 40 wedding guests its troops slaughtered in a village near the Syrian border were in fact dangerous militants.

The tussle between Chalabi and his erstwhile champions promises to be entertaining, but only if one plucks it out of the context of a devastated Iraq, for which both parties bear responsibility.

If Chalabi has the last laugh, chances are it'll be in an irreparably fractured Iraq, as far as ever from Israel, closer than before to Iran. More crucially, what - and who - will the neocons think of next?

Email: mahirali2@netscape.net.

Religious debate at EU picks up momentum

The European Union's transformation on May 1 from an exclusive 15-member club of prosperous western European countries to a bigger, more diverse union of 25 nations, including eight former communist states, marked the beginning of a new era for a once-divided continent. But the new and rapidly changing EU faces even more historic changes ahead.

EU leaders will decide in December whether to start membership negotiations with Turkey, a Muslim country and NATO member, which has been knocking on the Union's doors for decades but whose entry application was only formally accepted by the EU in 1999.

Europeans have spent the last few years giving what EU external relations commissioner Chris Patten recently described as "halting, embarrassed and obfuscatory answers" to Ankara's entry request. But the EU's seriousness about the need to build bridges between the West and Islam will depend on how it responds to Turkey's membership bid.

EU treaties underline that membership of the Union is open to any European country that respects the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law. That naturally raises two questions: first, is Turkey European? And secondly, does it respect the principles that Europeans profess to hold dear?

Few can deny that Turkey has resolutely steered a European course ever since Kamal Ataturk decreed the end of the Sultanate in 1922. The feeling runs deep, and is promoted with unrelenting vigour by successive Turkish governments.

Does Turkey respect EU principles? Certainly, the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is working harder than ever to meet EU political standards for membership by stepping up constitutional reform designed to entrench democracy, promote the protection of minorities, and limit the role of the military in government.

Yet European opinion on Ankara's entry bid remains fiercely divided, with politicians across the bloc locked in bitter battle over whether Turkey is too big, too poor, too neglectful of human rights - and too Muslim and Asian - to join the Union.

Religion remains an important issue. Although Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) rejects the Islamist label, centre-right parties in Germany and France which oppose Turkish membership say Ankara's entry will undermine Europe's still-largely Christian character.

The religious debate has picked up momentum in recent weeks as EU governments study calls for references to Europe's Christian heritage to be included in the new constitution being debated by the bloc.

Italy, Poland and Portugal are adamant that the new EU treaty must not ignore Christianity. Others, including Britain, France and Germany, warn that references to one religion must be balanced by equal mention of the influence of Islam, Judaism and secularism on European society.

More practically, many argue that the entry of a country as big as Turkey will destabilize current EU power politics, giving the country as many votes as current EU giant Germany in the bloc's decision-making machinery.

There is also concern that Turkish accession will mean additional burdens on already cash-strapped EU budgets while many also remain anxious about Turkey's human rights record.

Significantly, however, arguments in favour of Turkish membership are beginning to gain ground. Senior EU policy-makers and many independent analysts insist that the EU, seeking to compete with the US and emerging powers like China and India, must acquire more territory, more people -especially young people - and more soldiers.

There is a growing sentiment that opening the doors to Ankara will help Europe cope with a spate of specific social and civilizational challenges sparked by the September 11 attacks on the US.

Embracing Turkey as a member will prove that EU calls for a dialogue between the west and Islam are not mere fiction. Striving to keep the debate as objective as possible, the Commission has promised to deliver a "factual assessment" of Turkey's member bid to EU leaders this autumn.

But the already-heated debate on Turkey is getting even more acrimonious ahead of elections to the European Parliament in mid-June. Hoping to capitalize on rising public fears over Islamic radicalism and the presence of Muslim migrants in Europe, rightist and conservative parties are deliberately stirring passions over Turkey.

This appears to be especially the case in France where much to Turkey's dismay, politicians who were once viewed as stalwart defenders of Turkish membership of the EU, appear to be having second thoughts.

But short-term political gains aside, most EU watchers agree that come November the bloc's leaders will find it impossible to disappoint Ankara by saying no to opening entry talks.

Turkish entry into the Union may be unlikely for another 10 to 15 years but an outright EU "no" would ruin Europe's international standing, especially in the Muslim world.

Hasrat in Korangi

Korangi, the semi-built town on the outskirts of affluent Karachi, inhabited by working people of the lower middle class, a place the rebel politician and poet Hasrat Mohani would have loved to live in, was the venue of a mushaira held in his honour by the Sindh Awami Sangat on Saturday (May 22).

The mushaira, chaired by Yusuf Jamal, was attended by about 40 Karachi poets, popular for their soulful ghazals. It started at 10.45pm and concluded in the early hours of Sunday.

Mr Yusuf Jamal, known for his taste for poetry and erudition, spoke with zest about Hasrat Mohani, 'raisul-ahrar' and also supreme in ghazal writing - 'rais-ul-mutaghazzalin' - and narrated what critics and writers have written about him.

He richly admired the Sindh Awami Sangat and its activists for rendering a great service by reviving memories of a great man. Hasrat had rejuvenated the genre of ghazal and restored its original beauty and charm, he said.

The event owed itself entirely to the efforts of the local people who met expenses through modest contributions. Manzar Abedi, who welcomed the guests, drew a graphic picture of the hardships suffered by low-income people such as those who lived in Korangi and said it pained him to see women even from some respectable families seeking alms. He asked writers to expose these realities of life and concluded his brief discourse with the following lines:

Alhazer alhazer ae khudayaan-i-zar

Aur phir shehr ka shehr jalney laga.

Writer Jazib Qureshi has written a comprehensive paper on the protest poetry of Hasrat, and read out a brief extract from it. He said Hasrat was the first poet of resistance in Urdu who had started writing in 1908. Hasrat was in Iqbal's 'mard-i-momin' in the true sense.

Most of the poetry presented at the mushaira reflected the social and political consciousness of the writers and also the hard realities of life. Nishat Ghauri recited the following:

Is mein dastaar bhi nahin aati

Gham ki roedad mukhtaser ki hai

Mobarak Ahmad Mobarak and Nida Ali, the latter also a journalist, reflected on the current socio-political life in the country. Rehana Ehsan recited a poem about the tormented Iraqi prisoners.

Most of the verses and ghazals spoke of the realities of life composed by younger poets.

Maen hijrat ki had-i-aakhir batana chahta tha

So maqtal ko bhi ek jae aman likhna parra hai

- Ishrat Husain Ishrat

Loag sadmon say mar naheen jatey

Saamney ki misaal hai meri

- Anwer Shaur

* * * *

Culture has no bounds. When the bowl is full, a spillover is but natural. This applies to the Arts Council as well which writers and art lovers happen to visit frequently, each eager to excel others.

There is an Adabi Committee at the Arts Council which holds a literary evening once a month. In order to accommodate the over-ambitious youngsters, a new forum was created with the pompous title, "Hum haen naqeeb-i-fikr-i-nau", where young people gather every Monday and present their writings.

As if this was not enough, some others were found promoting culture in their own way. So the Arts Council president and DCO Mir Hussain Ali had to intervene and issue a circular as if to warn encroachers.

The story goes that the Council in its precinct has a cafe known as Gulrang. To keep a watch on the working of the cafe, though owned and managed by a private contractor, the Arts Council formed a committee, which soon after assumed the title of Gulrang cultural cafe committee.

Mr Naqqash Kazmi, who has been running the Adabi Committee of the Arts Council for more than a decade, and the secretary, Mr Yaawer Mehdi, both to their horror found one day that this newly-formed committee had started running in almost a way parallel to the Adabi Committee.

The Gulrang committee had held literary sittings during April- May and was due to organize a meeting on a grand level, invitation cards for which were sent out to most members. The DCO had to act and rescue the Adabi Committee.