Chalabi Outlines Steps to Save Iraq from Ruin

BY IRA STOLL - Staff Reporter of the Sun
October 31, 2006
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/42557

LONDON — The former deputy prime minister of post-Saddam Iraq, Ahmad Chalabi, is warning that widespread "sectarian cleansing" could overtake the country, resulting in hundreds of thousands of casualties, unless a series of steps are taken that he says could improve the situation.

In remarks here yesterday to a group including journalists and members of Parliament, Mr. Chalabi offered a dire description of the situation in Iraq. He said 1 million Iraqis have already become displaced by sectarian tension and violence, and he said billions of Iraqi and American taxpayer dollars have gone missing or been wasted.

Mr. Chalabi's comments come a week before an American election in which Iraq has been a top issue and as President Bush prepares to receive the recommendation of a commission set up to consider policy alternatives on Iraq. His remarks also come amid growing tension between the White House and the government in Baghdad headed by Prime Minister al-Maliki. And his remarks come amid speculation about a looming confrontation between America and Iran, which is seeking nuclear weapons and which Mr. Bush has accused of providing bombs used against Americans in Iraq.

After three years of work and $4.2 billion in American spending on electricity, Mr. Chalabi said to the gathering organized by a British think tank, Policy Exchange, "We have a very good minister of electricity, but we have no electricity." Millions of gallons of untreated sewage are fouling the Tigris River. The Coalition Provisional Authority under what Mr. Chalabi called the "satrapy"of L. Paul Bremer was "an unmitigated disaster," Mr. Chalabi said.

In response to a question from The New York Sun, he said 70% of what has gone wrong in Iraq was America's responsibility, with the rest attributable to failings of Iraqis and interference by Iraq's neighbors. Even so, he said, a hasty American retreat would be a mistake.

"I feel that we are moving inexorably to this state of affairs, America going out in a hurry," he said, citing the recurring images in the American press of the evacuation from Saigon in 1975 after the end of the Vietnam War. "If they leave now, things will get much worse."

Mr. Chalabi, who as president of the Iraqi National Congress lobbied for the Iraq Liberation Act that helped set America on the path of overthrowing Saddam Hussein, had a series of suggestions for "how we can get out of this conundrum."

Mr. Chalabi called on America and Britain to "make good on the promise of handing over security to the government of Iraq."

"Iraqis must be in charge of recruitment, training, supply, and deployment of the army," he said. He called for those provisions to be included in a new U.N. Security Council resolution on Iraq that is planned for next month. And he said Iraq needs to build up, within its defense ministry, "a competent staff" of accountants, auditors, and supply officers.

Mr. Chalabi said that while the Iraqi budget funds 372,000 police jobs, fewer than 250,000 of them have been filled.

He said the Iraqi intelligence service is "entirely funded in a mysterious way that is not disclosed."

"Put the Iraqi intelligence service under Iraqi control," Mr. Chalabi urged. Mr. Chalabi also urged a diplomatic offensive aimed at Iraq's neighbors, many of which are hoping that Iraq's experiment with pluralism, democracy, and federalism ends in failure.

Mr. Chalabi said that Iran "is being singled out as the single most destabilizing element in Iraq" for arming Shias, but he said that very few Americans are being killed by Shia Muslims.

Iranian leaders, he said, "are only interested in making Iraq secure if they feel there are sufficient guarantees for them that Iraq will not be used as a base of operations against them."

"Iraq is moving toward being the battleground between the United States and Iran. We must stop that. ...We don't want it to be," he said, warning that Iraq could end up a battleground for a conflict between other countries, as Lebanon was in the 1980s.

He said that an arrangement with Iran about its role in Iraq would require "hard bargaining between the United States and Iran." He said that it should be followed up with an international conference resulting in a treaty between Iraq and its neighbors.

He said Iranian participation in Iraqi affairs now is already "very high." The diplomatic approach he suggests would serve to "bring it out in the open and limit it," he said.

Mr. Chalabi also suggested a "Cabinet reshuffle" by Mr. Maliki. "He must bring competent people," he said.

Mr. Chalabi's career as an Iraqi political leader has been through some ups and downs. Although he played a key role in gaining passage of the Iraq Liberation Act, which made regime change official bipartisan policy of the United States, he warned a year in advance of the invasion of Iraq that American planning for the post-war situation was "abysmal." The official title he now holds is chairman of the de-Baathification commission. He still has friends in America — the historian of the Middle East, Bernard Lewis, called yesterday in the middle of a small lunch to celebrate Mr. Chalabi's 62nd birthday. And he still attracts press attention — the New York Times Magazine is said to have a piece on him scheduled for this weekend.

Asked whether he blamed Mr. Bush, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, or Mr. Rumsfeld's deputy during the war, Paul Wolfowitz, for the problems in Iraq, Mr. Chalabi replied, "Don't ask me to delve into American politics one week before the elections."

Still, the feeling one gets in spending time with Mr. Chalabi is not of someone embittered or betrayed but rather someone determined, even optimistic about Iraq's future, and enjoying his role in bringing freedom, even with all its imperfections, to his country.

He says he tells his fellow Iraqis, "You have been sitting here for three hours complaining about the government and proposing solutions. Could you do it while Saddam was in power? Of course the answer is not."