THE WEEKEND INTERVIEW
Survivor
One of Iraq's most controversial politicians offers thoughts on the "surge," Iran and where we go from here.
BAGHDAD--"These people need help. The army must help them more. The government must help them more. They have been fighting alone against a vicious enemy, fighting for all of us to make our country safe."
I'm in Diyala province, watching Ahmed Chalabi shouting into a TV camera over the sound of mortar shells. He's imploring the Iraqi state to support tribesmen fighting off al Qaeda attacks such as the one we're now experiencing.
In the end our entourage, which had driven from Baghdad for lunch with local leaders, escaped unharmed. But the episode showed--as so many events in his turbulent past few years have--that Mr. Chalabi is hardly the transient opportunist that his detractors at the State Department, CIA and on the antiwar left once made him out to be. He's still in Iraq, despite long ago losing whatever American support he once had and failing to win a seat in the last parliamentary election. (He was deputy prime minister in Iraq's first elected government.) And almost alone among the Iraqi political figures, he not only lives but travels widely outside the Green Zone.
Last month, I spent some days in Mr. Chalabi's company in and out of the capital, and at his residence in a well-fortified warren of cul-de-sacs in the wealthy, but dangerous, Mansour district. Though he's not in the current Maliki government, he is still courted by the state and given key appointments. He heads up the De-Baathification program and the Committee for Public Support of the "surge," which engages in reconciliation activities like reopening Sunni mosques in Shiite neighborhoods. Community leaders from all sides troop through his doors daily.
Returning residents back to their purged neighborhoods, Mr. Chalabi says, "is a slow process because people have to learn to trust each other all over again. . . . They're often glad to see their old neighbor again, and it can be very emotional and moving. But underneath it you can't be sure because, after all, they've had brothers or fathers killed, perhaps by people in their neighborhood--reconciliation takes time."
On one occasion, in the post-prayer evening hours, we visited the football-field sized mosque complex of Khadimiya in Baghdad. It is one of Iraq's top Shiite holy sites decorated intricately with floral tiling and cut-mirror facades. Wearing his trademark suit and tie, Mr. Chalabi was continuously mobbed by crowds of women and children, astonished and delighted that a famous official should appear in public and lend an ear to their complaints. Not an hour before, a motorbike-borne suicide bomber had been disarmed nearby.
Mr. Chalabi would appear to be the nearest thing Iraqis currently possess to a genuine walk-and-talk democratic politician, one who will risk life and limb to embody the principle personally. In fact, the U.S.'s main error in Iraq, according to Mr. Chalabi, has been trying to micromanage the development of Iraqi politics. "The U.S. should make a choice," he says, "either to accept full democracy and live with the consequences or undertake full control. They keep trying to 'give local initiatives a boost' instead of letting Iraqi democracy succeed on its own. When you make your own mistakes, you learn. When outsiders make them, unfortunately, they get treated as the enemy."
His recounting of post-war Iraqi history--which began with the high-handed regency of L. Paul Bremer and then the appointed Iraqi government of Ayad Allawi--returns again and again to this point.
"The problems began when the U.S. declared an official occupation," he says. "We told the U.S. not to have an occupation, that it would be a disaster. We never intended that. We wanted the Iraqis to run their own affairs, but we were not trusted to do that. Two years ahead of time, we asked [the U.S.] for a 10,000 man multiethnic military police force of Iraqis to be trained. . . . We were refused."
Mr. Chalabi continues: "We could have prevented the looting and the disbanding of the army. We planned to deploy in front of the army barracks, to disarm the soldiers and keep them in their barracks and tell them 'we are your brothers. Help us run the country, keep order and have democracy.' We intended to pay them, and absorb them selectively into our ranks. We had good intelligence. We knew who was who. Look at it now. The U.S. has had six intelligence chiefs since the war started. They keep changing. Do the allies get any useful intelligence?"
With such views, Mr. Chalabi quickly added parts of the Bush administration to his enemies on the antiwar left. Relations became so strained during the Bremer-era that on May 20, 2004, U.S. soldiers raided his offices in Baghdad. He was also accused of leaking intelligence to Iranian operatives inside Iraq to the effect that the U.S. had broken their communication codes. From Mr. Chalabi's side the accusation meets with a ready dismissal: "It's strange that the Iranians then used the same code to inform Tehran of the fact."
But Mr. Chalabi remains unrepentant in his criticism of what he calls "elementary mistakes" by the U.S., which he believes would not have happened if Iraqis had run things from the start. "We always said, keep the allied military here for a while, but not as part of an occupation government--that was the point. . . . When the president said 'Mission Accomplished' he should have followed through and handed civilian government over to Iraqis, as was originally agreed."
So much for the past. Does he think the "surge" will succeed? "Not if it's just a military action," he says. "It's intended as a political initiative backed by military force. It creates the opportunity for political initiatives to work but they must be pursued. It won't work forever without underlying political agreements. If Sadr City stayed quiet for some months, it's because there was a political rapprochement and Moqtada al Sadr agreed to rein in his militia. But paradoxically, the overall political scene may not clarify while the U.S. is too engaged--all sides are waiting for the real Iraq to emerge from underneath the U.S. shadow. Only when they have to face each other directly will Iraqis make their deals."
Mr. Chalabi's hardheaded views on the allied occupation have an implicit flipside: that some beneficent outcome can still be shaped from the chaos, and that Iraq can gain stability even (or especially) without U.S. ballast. Doesn't he think, as most outside commentators do, that a U.S. withdrawal will create an all-out regional conflict, sucking in nearby countries? "I'd say it's possible but not probable. Look at everyone who works for me, from all sides of Iraqi society. People want peace. They want to go back to their homes. If the U.S. leaves, the present government will fall and there will be elections quickly." To Mr. Chalabi's thinking, this will improve things because Iraqis will choose their real leaders, and they will be accountable to the electorate for delivering peace and practical benefits such as electricity and water.
"Still, in the end," he says, "U.S. policy in Iraq will not be determined by the interests of Iraqis but by U.S. strategic interests and by U.S. domestic pressures. The Iraqi conflict's domestic unpopularity will drive America's decisions on its presence here. In my view, being constructive in preventing conflict is the surest way for the U.S. to exercise positive influence in the region. Iraq is a very strategic country. It borders six countries including the Gulf, so it's in U.S. interests to keep it stable and to keep influence in it."
After listening to Mr. Chalabi over time, one learns how to hear the meaning in his more cautious phrases. By the "real Iraq" he likely means the majority, Shiite-dominated Iraq. He talks about how "the Sunnis have lost the battle for Baghdad," and that the Arab states, having incited them to fight, ultimately abandoned them in ways comparable to the Palestinian conflicts with Israel. He believes that the Sunnis will ultimately face reality and make accommodation with fellow Iraqis once they accept that they are an even smaller minority than previously thought--some 80% Shiite to 20% Sunni in Baghdad by his estimates.
This perhaps is what Mr. Chalabi means by "letting Iraqi democracy succeed"--that is, letting the sheer weight of numbers dictate. "Being constructive in preventing conflict" likely refers to the U.S. reining in Arab support of Sunni Baathists and al Qaeda in Iraq.
Mr. Chalabi has had a lifelong feud with Baathists and one feels that he regards their car bombs as more dangerous and destructive to Iraq's future than the Shiite militias. Still, he defends his position as evenhanded. "With Baathists, it's more complicated than Sunni vs. Shiite," he says. "There were more Shiite than Sunni Baathists. The Shiites hate them, whereas in Sunni areas they're quite popular." In his de-Baathification program, he has, he says, returned most of the Baathists either to their jobs or pensions. "There were some 1.2 million party members, and we have reintegrated all but some 30,000, and those are the hardcore ones, and only 6,000 of those don't have their pensions. [The U.S.] now wants us to return all the Baathists to their former positions or comparable ones, but with the old military and security personnel, that's impossible. They're too hated. We just can't do it."
It's dangerous, Mr. Chalabi believes, even to return Sunni Baathists to certain key strategic posts such as those responsible for guarding electricity plants. He draws a rough 'S'-shaped diagram and says, "Saddam positioned electric plants around Baghdad in that configuration. The very people he put in charge of protecting them are now wrecking them to choke the city. That's one reason why we don't have electricity."
Most interesting perhaps are Mr. Chalabi's views on Iran, which differ substantially from the alarm expressed by many of his current and former American backers. "The influence of Iran on Iraq is inevitable," he says. "It's been there for centuries. They supported the anti-Saddam resistance for years. They were the first to accept trade agreements, transit rights, electricity linkups and the like with the new Iraqi government. Some 90% of Iraq's population lives within 100 miles of Iran. We have an enormous land border in common and it's the only country that ships goods to us unhindered."
"I understand the U.S. has worries about Iranian power so here's a solution," he continues. "Let us quantify and monitor the amount of Iranian influence: Let's make an agreement on how much trade, how much electricity, how many trucks and so on can come through. Iraq needs as many friends as possible and nobody wants to be dependent on one source of help. Everything can be worked out. We will have to in the end anyway. What choice is there?"
Mr. Kaylan is a writer living in New York.
