Ahmed Chalabi: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

Ahmed Abdel Hadi Chalabi (Arabic: احمد الجلبي) (born October 30, 1944) is 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. The INC has received major funding and assistance from the United States.

Chalabi is a highly 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 [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. Much of this information has turned out to be false. In addition, many observers point to the cozy political and business relationships between Chalabi and some members of the United States government, including some prominent neoconservatives within the Pentagon. Chalabi is said to have had political contacts within the PNAC, 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. Chalabi's opponents, on the other hand see him as a charlatan of questionable allegiance, out of touch with Iraq and with no effective power base there. 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% of respondents said he was the most trustworthy leader in Iraq (see survey link below, question #13).

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 or 1958 and spent most of his life in the USA and the UK. In 1969, he received a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Chicago (dissertation title: On the Jacobson Radical of a Group Ring, see [6]), after which he took a position in the mathematics department at the American University of Beirut.

In 1977 he founded the Petra Bank in Jordan. After the bank's failure, Chalabi was convicted and sentenced in absentia for bank fraud by a Jordanian court. He reportedly fled the country in the trunk of a car. He faces seventeen years in prison, should he again enter Jordan. Chalabi maintains that his prosecution was a politically motivated effort to discredit him. (BBC profile, 2002).

He was involved in organizing a resistance movement among Kurds in northern Iraq in the mid-1990s. When that effort was crushed and hundreds of his supporters were killed, Chalabi fled the country. Chalabi lobbied in Washington for the passage of the Iraq Liberation Act (passed February 1998), which earmarked USD $97 million to support Iraqi opposition group, virtually all of which was funneled through the INC.

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 is time for the Iraqi people to run their affairs," he was quoted as saying (NY Times).

Before the war, the CIA was largely skeptical of Chalabi and the INC, but information from his group (most famously from a defector codenamed "Curveball") made its way into intelligence dossiers used to help convince the public in America and Britain of the need to go to war. "Curveball" – the brother of a top lieutenant of Chalabi – fed hundreds of pages of bogus "firsthand" descriptions of mobile biological weapons factories on wheels and rails. Secretary of State Colin Powell later used this information in a UN 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 Colin Powell apologized for using the information in his speech.

The INC often worked with the media, most notably with Judith Miller, concerning her sensational WMD stories for the New York Times. After the war, given the lack of discovery of WMDs, most of the claims of the INC were shown to have been either misleading, exaggerated, or completely made up. INC reports, on the other hand, were quite useful and accurate in locating the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein's loyalists and Chalabi's personal enemies.

In response to the 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 is not important. The Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat."

Throughout the period, Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress was paid $335,000 per month by the Pentagon for the intelligence provided. In addition, the US State Department paid over $33 million, according to a US General Accounting office report in 2004.

As Chalabi's position of trust with the Pentagon crumbled, he found a new political position as a champion of Iraq's Shi'ites. Beginning January 25, 2004, Chalabi and his close associates have been promoting 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 has yet to provide any documents or other evidence. The US 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 US soldiers raided his offices and residence, taking documents and computers, presumably to be used as evidence. (NBC/MSNBC report, 2004). 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 US funding. Chalabi's future remains uncertain.

In June 2004, it was reported that Chalabi gave US state secrets to Iran in April, including the fact that one of the US's 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. [7]

He is uncle to Salem Chalabi, head of the Iraqi Special Tribunal. Arrest warrants for both Ahmed Chalabi and his nephew were issued on August 8, 2004, while they were out of the country. Chalabi returned to Iraq on August 10, but as of August 11, he had not been arrested. According to press reports, Chalabi planned to make himself available to Iraqi government officials.

References

• October 3, 2002. Profile: Ahmed Chalabi. BBC News.
• May 5, 2003. Selective Intelligence by Seymour M. Hersh, the New Yorker.
• September 3, 2003. US paid $1m for 'useless intelligence' from Chalabi, the Independent (UK).
• January/February 2004. The Lie Factory Mother Jones Magazine.
• February 2004. National Survey of Iraq (PDF). Oxford Research International, Ltd.
• May 20, 2004. Onetime U.S. ally Chalabi's home, offices raided. MSNBC.
• May 20, 2004. The Truth About Ahmed Chalabi. CounterPunch.
• Aug 8, 2004: Iraqi judge issues arrest warrants for Ahmed and Salem

• The name is sometimes transcribed as Ahmad al-Jalabi.