Exile Finds Ties To U.S. a Boon And a Barrier

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, April 27, 2003; Page A01

BAGHDAD, April 26 -- When Rafidain Bank managers wanted American troops to protect their branches from gun-toting looters, they went not to U.S. military headquarters but to a private club in a posh Baghdad suburb where they sought an audience with Ahmed Chalabi.

Chalabi, a suave, Iraqi-born banker who has spent the past 45 years in exile, promised he would get right on it. One of his aides raised the issue with a liaison officer from the U.S. Central Command who is stationed in the club. Another aide, based in Washington, called the Pentagon. A day later, U.S. troops were guarding several Rafidain branches.

In the hurly-burly of postwar Iraq, Chalabi has staked his claim to power with a distinct advantage -- an inside track to the U.S. military now in charge of the country. Other deep-pocketed exiles, tribal sheiks, Muslim clerics and Kurdish leaders have sought to establish themselves on the uncharted political landscape here, particularly leaders of the country's 60 percent Shiite majority. But none other than Chalabi can reach into the Pentagon and get things done.

Chalabi's links to the Pentagon have emerged as his greatest asset and greatest liability as he seeks to build support among ordinary Iraqis for himself and the group he leads, the Iraqi National Congress.

Widely regarded outside Iraq as the Pentagon's favored candidate to lead this battle-scarred nation, Chalabi wields influence that has been growing since his return to Baghdad 13 days ago precisely because he is viewed as the figure best connected to the occupying power. But his relationship with the United States, which has included extensive financial support, also has become a galvanizing force for rising anti-American sentiments across Iraq.

To many here, Chalabi is seen as a Pentagon puppet and an opportunist who is living large, out of touch with Iraqis who stayed in Iraq and weathered fallen president Saddam Hussein's brutality for three decades. Posters and graffiti proclaiming "No Chalabi" and "Chalabi is an American stooge" have recently appeared on walls in Baghdad and other cities.

Chalabi's ability to address that criticism could determine whether he will assume a leadership role by capitalizing on the head start he has been given by the Pentagon, or whether he will be sidelined by a confluence of new political forces led by Shiite clerics, tribal chieftains or other exile leaders.

"This is his chance," said one U.S. official involved in Iraq's reconstruction. "If he plays his cards right, he can come out on top. But he has a lot of work to do."

Mindful of the task, Chalabi has spent almost every waking moment assiduously courting legions of Iraqis, from leaders of tribes with hundreds of thousands of members to individual torture victims. Many are invited to the club for one-on-one meetings in a small lounge. Others show up at the gates unannounced, hoping for a glimpse of the man they are certain will be Iraq's next president. Some come to take the measure of a figure they have only heard about on shortwave radio broadcasts. Some want to curry favor, subtly asking for jobs or cash handouts.

Chalabi said he is not seeking to become Iraq's political leader -- at least not right now. His goal, he said in an interview, "is to promote democracy and build a civil society," both of which were forbidden under Hussein's Baath Party rule.

But Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress may quickly begin playing a much larger role. Jay M. Garner, the retired Army lieutenant general who is serving as Iraq's day-to-day administrator, intends to give former exiles a central role in an interim political authority that will govern the country under American tutelage until elections are held and a permanent government is formed, U.S. officials and former Iraqi exile leaders said.

Chalabi said Garner told him over dinner at the club Thursday night that "the opposition leadership will become the nucleus" of the Iraqi Interim Authority. U.S. and Iraqi officials said Garner is expected to outline that vision for the interim government during a U.S.-sponsored meeting Monday in Baghdad, to which 300 Iraqi political leaders, almost all of them former exiles, have been invited.

"We can write our own ticket," Chalabi said with a broad smile.

Garner's staff, which has begun taking up residence in the opulent Republican Palace on the banks of the Tigris River, also has sought to broaden participation at Monday's gathering. The first meeting convened by Garner to discuss the shape of a new government, held two weeks ago near the southern city of Nasiriyah, was not attended by Chalabi or by representatives of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite group with ties to Iran's leadership that has broad support among Iraq's Shiites.

But Adil Abdul Mahdi, an adviser to the council's leader, Mohammed Bakir Hakim, said it is highly likely his group will attend the Monday meeting. Mahdi said the council has had "mostly positive" discussions with Garner's staff over the past few days. "We see the start of a new attitude," he said.

U.S. officials have long attempted to court the group. President Bush listed it last winter in a directive as one of the Iraqi opposition organizations that would split $92 million to participate in the fight against Hussein. But Hakim has been reluctant to be seen as working too closely with the U.S.-led transitional government and has wanted assurances that the interim authority would be viewed as having a degree of autonomy.

Hakim's and Chalabi's groups said they have been told by U.S. officials that the interim authority probably will include a council of between 70 and 80 members at the outset, 60 of whom will be selected at a meeting in London in December to serve on a coordinating council. The groups said they also have been led to believe that the leaders of the five largest organizations that opposed Hussein's government would have a leadership role in the interim structure. The five are Chalabi, Hakim, Ayad Alawi of the Iraqi National Accord, Massoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

Chalabi said he has invited the four other leaders to a meeting on Wednesday to discuss Garner's presentation.

Garner, who heads the Pentagon's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, "needs a lot of help from Iraqis, and we are going to make sure they get it and they get the job done," Chalabi said. Officials from his organization said they have been working with the Pentagon to assemble a group of Iraqi exiles with administrative and technical skills who will serve as advisers for about 90 days in Iraq's 23 government ministries, working with existing employees to restart operations and redefine their activities in a post-Baath environment.

Former exile leaders said they believe the interim council will double in size as non-exile Iraqis are nominated for seats. But the initial structure does not envision a significant role for those who stuck through Hussein's rule. U.S. officials said that is because it has been difficult to identify promising candidates.

"There was no civil society in Iraq under Saddam," one official said. "There is no easy place to find these people. Every organization was controlled by the Baathists."

But at least a few Iraqis contend Garner's staff has not been looking hard enough. Saad Jawad, a British-educated professor of political science at Baghdad University, was one of four Iraqis who dared submit a petition to Hussein calling for democracy; he said nobody has asked him or any of the other democratic-minded, anti-Baathist intellectuals he knows to participate.

"This is the problem with the Americans," he said. "They have only concentrated on people living outside, and those people don't really represent the people who live in Iraq, the people who lived through the brutality of Saddam Hussein."

The Iraqi people, he claimed, "detest Ahmed Chalabi."

"He went to live a comfortable life in London while people were suffering here," Jawad said.

In his day-long, back-to-back meetings, Chalabi makes a point of addressing that perception -- indirectly. He talks about the quest to create democracy in Iraq. He mentions how he lobbied the Bush administration to go to war to topple Hussein.

Chalabi, 58, has spent much of his life in the West. He was born to a wealthy Shiite Muslim family that left Iraq when he was only 12 years old. He studied mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and earned a doctorate from the University of Chicago.

After a stint teaching at the American University of Beirut, he moved to Jordan in the late 1980s, where he established a bank. The bank eventually collapsed under a swirl of scandal, leading Chalabi to flee to neighboring Syria. In 1992, he was sentenced in absentia by a Jordanian military court to a 22-year prison term on charges of embezzlement and fraud.

Chalabi has insisted he is innocent and has sought repeatedly to have the charges dropped, contending the bank's failure was part of a conspiracy orchestrated by Hussein.

He founded the Iraqi National Congress in 1992 as an umbrella group intended to bring together the country's disparate exile factions, including Shiites, Sunni Muslims and ethnic Kurds. It initially received substantial funding from the CIA but those ties were effectively severed after both parties traded recriminations over failed attempts to promote an uprising against Hussein. Since then, Chalabi has courted the Pentagon, where he enjoys the backing of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz.

During the war, one of Chalabi's senior aides was permitted to serve as a liaison officer at the Central Command's field headquarters in Qatar. Shortly before the war ended, Chalabi flew into southern Iraq on a U.S. military transport plane along with several hundred armed fighters who had been assembled by his group and trained by the U.S. military.

Those fighters, known as the Free Iraqi Forces, operate checkpoints across Baghdad's Mansour neighborhood -- home to the Hunting Club where Chalabi has taken up residence -- a privilege not accorded to any other exile group. Some of the fighters also have been assigned to U.S. military units, where they serve as interpreters.

Chalabi does appear to be gaining support from some unlikely quarters. On Wednesday, he ventured out of the club to the Kadhimiya neighborhood, which is overwhelmingly Shiite and where some clerics had been denouncing him as an American pawn. There he met with Mohammed Hussein Sadr, one of Baghdad's most prominent Shiite ayatollahs.

In his hefty, black turban and flowing black robes, Sadr was skeptical about Chalabi's intentions toward the United States, toward devout Shiites, toward neighboring Iran. Chalabi tried to convince him that he supports religious freedom and that he wants good relations with the United States and Iran. He insisted, however, that neither country should control or manipulate Iraq.

"From what I heard from him, he seemed to be honest and he has an understanding of the new Iraqi situation," Sadr said in an interview.

But just a few blocks away, in a small collection of shops selling cigarettes and sundry items, there was far deeper skepticism about Chalabi's motives. "He is just a frontman for the Americans," said Kadhim Azzawi, one of the shopkeepers. "He has gotten so much money from the Americans. How can we expect him to do what is in the best interests of Iraq?"

"He's not one of us," Azzawi's portly, chain-smoking friend, Mohammed Abbas, piped in. "He has not lived here for years. He doesn't know this country."

A U.S. official involved in the reconstruction effort said Garner and others on his team still are not certain that Chalabi can overcome such negative attitudes. Asked at a news conference Thursday what he thought of him, Garner said: "Mr. Chalabi is a fine man. He is not my candidate. He is not the candidate of the coalition."

But an aide to Chalabi insisted Garner said what he did because the Pentagon wants to show Chalabi is operating independently from the Americans. "I'm glad I'm not his favorite candidate," Chalabi said. "I don't want to be the candidate of the United States under any circumstances."

Many of his visitors seem to think differently. During an hour-long stretch of meetings, he was besieged with requests to fund repairs at the state-run television station, to select a former diplomat to serve in the country's new foreign service and to help provide security to a neighborhood on Baghdad's outskirts. After each appeal, he summoned an aide to pass out a copy of a proclamation issued by Army Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq, which states that the U.S. military "retains absolute authority within Iraq."

"I have no authority," Chalabi insisted to the television station directors, after telling them to detail their request on a spreadsheet that could be delivered to Garner's staff. "I am only trying to promote democracy."