Chalabigate
"Weapons of Mass Deception"
2003-04-06
What do the Americans want to control? As of now, everything
06/04/2003
On a beach in Kuwait, 300 Americans are plotting the future of Iraq. It looks like a pure Pentagon operation, to the consternation of the State Department - and Tony Blair. Julian Coman, in Washington, and Colin Brown report
The seaside setting is idyllic if somewhat incongruous. Each morning, at 7.30, as Iraq wakes to another day of bloody combat, its future governors assemble in long shorts and khaki shirts on the sun-drenched patios of luxury beachside villas, 20 miles south of Kuwait City.
On the sands, British Gurkhas patrol at a discreet distance. In the shade, more than 300 American planners examine flow-charts, consult lap-top computers and study maps.
In one session, the "indigenous media group" discusses the transformation of Iraqi newspapers, radio and television. Further along the beach, American Treasury officials talk through the problems of temporarily replacing Iraqi banknotes, bearing the image of Saddam Hussein, with US dollars.
A third group discusses the drafting of a new Iraqi criminal code. Others run through schemes to re-start power plants and dispose of corpses. Filofaxes, folders and worthy tomes covering centuries of Iraqi history jostle for space with gas-masks and guns.
"It's Washington DC brought to the Persian Gulf," said one US aid worker who has briefly returned from Kuwait. "Hundreds of DC brains trying to figure out how you fashion a new country. It's quite an amazing thing to witness."
Following yet another week of fraught international diplomacy, Tony Blair will not share such enthusiasm at the dedicated planning for an open-ended American occupation of Iraq. After fighting and failing to maintain a United Nations dimension to the war against Saddam, Mr Blair is now confronting the danger of an identical defeat when it comes to organising the post-Saddam peace.
In Brussels last week, the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, was feted by European ministers at Nato headquarters, when he pledged that there would at least be some kind of role for the United Nations in the reconstruction of Iraq.
Over a lunch of smoked salmon, veal and fresh strawberries, Mr Powell even said that he believed that Europe and the United States were beginning to put past divisions on how to deal with Iraq behind them.
A delighted foreign office official, Peter Ricketts, sent a confidential telegram to Tony Blair, seen by The Telegraph, stating: "Powell said on the role of the UN he agreed with Jack Straw that we have the beginnings of a dialogue."
Mr Blair later said: "There's no doubt at all that the United Nations has got to be closely involved in this process. That's not just right. It's in everyone's interest that it happens."
Unfortunately for Mr Blair, Mr Powell's sentiments are far from shared on the coast of Kuwait. There, Pentagon officials and other Bush administration hardliners have their own plan; one that happily by-passes Mr Powell, Mr Blair, the UN and the European Union. No one in the cream-coloured villas where Iraq's fate is being decided will be making a call to Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister, or Dominique de Villepin, his French counterpart, anytime soon. In the words of one senior UN diplomat, speaking after a recent meeting with administration officials: "What do the American hawks want to control? As of now, everything."
It has already been agreed that a US military man, Major General Jay Garner, will take charge of the new civilian administration that will take over the running of much of Iraq, re-inventing its 23 government ministries, perhaps even before Baghdad has fallen.
The chief civilians at the Pentagon, Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, are doing their best to make sure that their control of post-war Iraq does not end there.
The construction of a new democracy in the heart of the Middle East, as far as the Pentagon is concerned, will be a primarily American enterprise, with substantial help from Iraqi exiles such as Ahmed Chalabi, the controversial leader of the Iraqi National Congress, and some assistance from Britain.
The urbane Mr Chalabi is a 57-year-old US-educated banker who left Iraq during the 1950s, but his Western links have never been enough to make him respectable in the eyes of the State Department and the CIA. He has been tried in absentia and convicted for bank fraud in Jordan. Senior Arab officials have stated that he would not be welcome in many Middle Eastern countries. The State Department has raised persistent queries about the accounting practices of the Iraqi National Congress that he heads, which has been generously funded in the past, to little apparent effect. Much of Washington considers him plausible but untrustworthy, possessing little real support inside Iraq. But he has managed to retain the ear of the most powerful men in the current Pentagon.
A UN envoy, with token powers of consultation, may also be permitted. UN stewardship of the reconstruction of Iraq, said the UN diplomat, "is like a suggestion from outer space for the Bush administration".
Nor, says the Pentagon, will the UN need to be tapped for funds. Iraq's vast oil reserves, worth an estimated $16 billion a year, will be expected to help pay for the cost of re-building the country, minimising the need to beg and borrow from international allies.
"For some in the Bush administration," said a senior official close to Mr Blair, "Iraq is like the perfect takeover target: a 'company' that possesses assets that can be used to finance its own re-structuring."
Mr Wolfowitz told the US Congress last week that: "We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction relatively soon."
Mr Chalabi, whose relatives are already in discussions with Pentagon officials in Kuwait, is to be quickly placed in key positions of power in an Iraqi interim authority, along with other exiles linked to the Iraqi National Congress. "Chalabi is the Pentagon's guy and the Pentagon is in charge," said one senior administration official.
American firms will be relied upon to provide economic expertise and investment, in return for which they can expect privileged access to Iraqi markets for 15 to 20 years. Philip Carroll, the former head of the Houston-based Shell Oil Co. has been asked to bring Iraq's oil production facilities up to scratch.
"I think the feeling is that you need to have earned the right to participate in the reconstruction of Iraq," an influential former Pentagon official told The Sunday Telegraph. "America, Britain and Australia have risked lives to liberate Iraq. The UN chose not to take part. I have an idea that it won't be wanted by Iraqis either after the war. There is also the question of the UN's dismal record elsewhere in peacekeeping and reconstruction. Ask any Bosnian about that."
Objections to the Pentagon's plans have come thick and fast in an extraordinary week of rows in Washington. "The stakes here are unbelievably high," said one senior adviser to the White House on Iraq. "There is a passionate, bitter battle going on both in Washington itself and by proxy out there in Kuwait. A fight is going on for the heart and soul of this administration's policy in the Middle East."
A remarkable open letter, signed by members of some of Washington's most prestigious conservative think tanks, last week stated that: "Some (administration members) seem determined to create an ever deeper divide between the United States and Europe and others seem indifferent to the long-term survival of the transatlantic partnership. We believe it is essential, even in the midst of war, to begin building a new era of transatlantic co-operation."
Tod Lindberg, a foreign policy expert at the Hoover Foundation, said: "To my mind, the letter was a statement of opposition to the 'scorched earth' sense that we have crossed the rubicon and we can do everything by ourselves."
Bathsheba Crocker, director of the Post-War Reconstruction Project at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said Iraq's oil money is not the providential source of funds that many Bush officials seem to think it is.
"It's unreasonable to think that oil is going to finance all of the needs of the country," said Ms Crocker. "There's just not enough money to go around. Reconstruction alone is going to require between $20 billion and $25 billion a year. Oil revenue is about $16 billion, over 70 per cent of which already goes on humanitarian aid. Iraq already owes $300 billion in reparation claims from the first Gulf war. Whatever it is saying now, the administration is going to need financial help from its international allies to sort all this out."
At the State Department, officials briefed furiously against Mr Chalabi, who they believe lacks meaningful support inside Iraq. "We're on the verge of further alienating allies," said one official. "And it looks like we're going to do exactly what we promised we wouldn't - take small groups of exiles with limited influence in Iraq and bring them in as the bulk of a transition government."
By last Friday, as vitriolic criticism continued to pass back and forth between the State Department and the Pentagon, the White House felt obliged to intervene.
"Nothing's being decided by fiat," said a White House official. "There are no coronations going on."
Condoleezza Rice, the US National Security Adviser, said that Iraqi exiles such as Mr Chalabi would only be one part of a solution to post-war Iraq.
The Iraqi Interim authority, which will eventually replace Gen Garner's administration, "should also have membership from within the country," said Ms Rice, "where there are people being liberated every day."
The role of the UN, she stated, may not be simply a humanitarian one, but: "We are not in a position, with the liberation of Iraq still going on, to know what is going to be needed."
"You could say that the peace looks pretty foggy at the moment," said one government official. "The White House intervened to try to calm things down. Perhaps the Pentagon overplayed its hand this week. But it still holds the better cards."
The influence wielded on Gen Garner's shadow team by Mr Wolfowitz - who has earned the nickname Wolfowitz of Arabia - is being muttered through gritted teeth in the corridors of the State Department.
The Deputy Defence Secretary's closest allies on Iraq - known in the Kuwait villas as "Wolfie's people" or the "true believers" - have already been earmarked for key positions in Iraq's first postwar administration. James Woolsey, the former CIA director, and a strong supporter of Mr Chalabi, is certain to have a senior role.
Michael Mobbs, a Pentagon lawyer and arms control specialist who made his name as a hardline hawk during the Cold War, may oversee as many as 11 of Iraq's 23 existing government ministries. Both men envision a rapid transition to a pro-American Iraqi democracy, probably led by Mr Chalabi. The UN is rarely mentioned.
As if to further underline who is in charge, eight State Department nominations to Gen Garner have been vetoed by Donald Rumsfeld. According to a Pentagon official, the candidates - mostly former ambassadors and diplomats with experience in the Middle East - were "run of the mill figures with an old-style bureaucratic mindset".
The outmanoeuvered officials of the State Department, who expected to play the leading role in the reconstruction of Iraq, can barely contain their fury. "Is there anything in this administration that Donald Rumsfeld doesn't want to control?" asked one despairing State Department analyst.
When Mr Blair welcomes President Bush to the summit in Belfast on Tuesday, he may find himself asking the same question.
Telegraph
This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
On a beach in Kuwait, 300 Americans are plotting the future of Iraq. It looks like a pure Pentagon operation, to the consternation of the State Department - and Tony Blair. Julian Coman, in Washington, and Colin Brown report
The seaside setting is idyllic if somewhat incongruous. Each morning, at 7.30, as Iraq wakes to another day of bloody combat, its future governors assemble in long shorts and khaki shirts on the sun-drenched patios of luxury beachside villas, 20 miles south of Kuwait City.
On the sands, British Gurkhas patrol at a discreet distance. In the shade, more than 300 American planners examine flow-charts, consult lap-top computers and study maps.
In one session, the "indigenous media group" discusses the transformation of Iraqi newspapers, radio and television. Further along the beach, American Treasury officials talk through the problems of temporarily replacing Iraqi banknotes, bearing the image of Saddam Hussein, with US dollars.
A third group discusses the drafting of a new Iraqi criminal code. Others run through schemes to re-start power plants and dispose of corpses. Filofaxes, folders and worthy tomes covering centuries of Iraqi history jostle for space with gas-masks and guns.
"It's Washington DC brought to the Persian Gulf," said one US aid worker who has briefly returned from Kuwait. "Hundreds of DC brains trying to figure out how you fashion a new country. It's quite an amazing thing to witness."
Following yet another week of fraught international diplomacy, Tony Blair will not share such enthusiasm at the dedicated planning for an open-ended American occupation of Iraq. After fighting and failing to maintain a United Nations dimension to the war against Saddam, Mr Blair is now confronting the danger of an identical defeat when it comes to organising the post-Saddam peace.
In Brussels last week, the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, was feted by European ministers at Nato headquarters, when he pledged that there would at least be some kind of role for the United Nations in the reconstruction of Iraq.
Over a lunch of smoked salmon, veal and fresh strawberries, Mr Powell even said that he believed that Europe and the United States were beginning to put past divisions on how to deal with Iraq behind them.
A delighted foreign office official, Peter Ricketts, sent a confidential telegram to Tony Blair, seen by The Telegraph, stating: "Powell said on the role of the UN he agreed with Jack Straw that we have the beginnings of a dialogue."
Mr Blair later said: "There's no doubt at all that the United Nations has got to be closely involved in this process. That's not just right. It's in everyone's interest that it happens."
Unfortunately for Mr Blair, Mr Powell's sentiments are far from shared on the coast of Kuwait. There, Pentagon officials and other Bush administration hardliners have their own plan; one that happily by-passes Mr Powell, Mr Blair, the UN and the European Union. No one in the cream-coloured villas where Iraq's fate is being decided will be making a call to Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister, or Dominique de Villepin, his French counterpart, anytime soon. In the words of one senior UN diplomat, speaking after a recent meeting with administration officials: "What do the American hawks want to control? As of now, everything."
It has already been agreed that a US military man, Major General Jay Garner, will take charge of the new civilian administration that will take over the running of much of Iraq, re-inventing its 23 government ministries, perhaps even before Baghdad has fallen.
The chief civilians at the Pentagon, Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, are doing their best to make sure that their control of post-war Iraq does not end there.
The construction of a new democracy in the heart of the Middle East, as far as the Pentagon is concerned, will be a primarily American enterprise, with substantial help from Iraqi exiles such as Ahmed Chalabi, the controversial leader of the Iraqi National Congress, and some assistance from Britain.
The urbane Mr Chalabi is a 57-year-old US-educated banker who left Iraq during the 1950s, but his Western links have never been enough to make him respectable in the eyes of the State Department and the CIA. He has been tried in absentia and convicted for bank fraud in Jordan. Senior Arab officials have stated that he would not be welcome in many Middle Eastern countries. The State Department has raised persistent queries about the accounting practices of the Iraqi National Congress that he heads, which has been generously funded in the past, to little apparent effect. Much of Washington considers him plausible but untrustworthy, possessing little real support inside Iraq. But he has managed to retain the ear of the most powerful men in the current Pentagon.
A UN envoy, with token powers of consultation, may also be permitted. UN stewardship of the reconstruction of Iraq, said the UN diplomat, "is like a suggestion from outer space for the Bush administration".
Nor, says the Pentagon, will the UN need to be tapped for funds. Iraq's vast oil reserves, worth an estimated $16 billion a year, will be expected to help pay for the cost of re-building the country, minimising the need to beg and borrow from international allies.
"For some in the Bush administration," said a senior official close to Mr Blair, "Iraq is like the perfect takeover target: a 'company' that possesses assets that can be used to finance its own re-structuring."
Mr Wolfowitz told the US Congress last week that: "We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction relatively soon."
Mr Chalabi, whose relatives are already in discussions with Pentagon officials in Kuwait, is to be quickly placed in key positions of power in an Iraqi interim authority, along with other exiles linked to the Iraqi National Congress. "Chalabi is the Pentagon's guy and the Pentagon is in charge," said one senior administration official.
American firms will be relied upon to provide economic expertise and investment, in return for which they can expect privileged access to Iraqi markets for 15 to 20 years. Philip Carroll, the former head of the Houston-based Shell Oil Co. has been asked to bring Iraq's oil production facilities up to scratch.
"I think the feeling is that you need to have earned the right to participate in the reconstruction of Iraq," an influential former Pentagon official told The Sunday Telegraph. "America, Britain and Australia have risked lives to liberate Iraq. The UN chose not to take part. I have an idea that it won't be wanted by Iraqis either after the war. There is also the question of the UN's dismal record elsewhere in peacekeeping and reconstruction. Ask any Bosnian about that."
Objections to the Pentagon's plans have come thick and fast in an extraordinary week of rows in Washington. "The stakes here are unbelievably high," said one senior adviser to the White House on Iraq. "There is a passionate, bitter battle going on both in Washington itself and by proxy out there in Kuwait. A fight is going on for the heart and soul of this administration's policy in the Middle East."
A remarkable open letter, signed by members of some of Washington's most prestigious conservative think tanks, last week stated that: "Some (administration members) seem determined to create an ever deeper divide between the United States and Europe and others seem indifferent to the long-term survival of the transatlantic partnership. We believe it is essential, even in the midst of war, to begin building a new era of transatlantic co-operation."
Tod Lindberg, a foreign policy expert at the Hoover Foundation, said: "To my mind, the letter was a statement of opposition to the 'scorched earth' sense that we have crossed the rubicon and we can do everything by ourselves."
Bathsheba Crocker, director of the Post-War Reconstruction Project at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said Iraq's oil money is not the providential source of funds that many Bush officials seem to think it is.
"It's unreasonable to think that oil is going to finance all of the needs of the country," said Ms Crocker. "There's just not enough money to go around. Reconstruction alone is going to require between $20 billion and $25 billion a year. Oil revenue is about $16 billion, over 70 per cent of which already goes on humanitarian aid. Iraq already owes $300 billion in reparation claims from the first Gulf war. Whatever it is saying now, the administration is going to need financial help from its international allies to sort all this out."
At the State Department, officials briefed furiously against Mr Chalabi, who they believe lacks meaningful support inside Iraq. "We're on the verge of further alienating allies," said one official. "And it looks like we're going to do exactly what we promised we wouldn't - take small groups of exiles with limited influence in Iraq and bring them in as the bulk of a transition government."
By last Friday, as vitriolic criticism continued to pass back and forth between the State Department and the Pentagon, the White House felt obliged to intervene.
"Nothing's being decided by fiat," said a White House official. "There are no coronations going on."
Condoleezza Rice, the US National Security Adviser, said that Iraqi exiles such as Mr Chalabi would only be one part of a solution to post-war Iraq.
The Iraqi Interim authority, which will eventually replace Gen Garner's administration, "should also have membership from within the country," said Ms Rice, "where there are people being liberated every day."
The role of the UN, she stated, may not be simply a humanitarian one, but: "We are not in a position, with the liberation of Iraq still going on, to know what is going to be needed."
"You could say that the peace looks pretty foggy at the moment," said one government official. "The White House intervened to try to calm things down. Perhaps the Pentagon overplayed its hand this week. But it still holds the better cards."
The influence wielded on Gen Garner's shadow team by Mr Wolfowitz - who has earned the nickname Wolfowitz of Arabia - is being muttered through gritted teeth in the corridors of the State Department.
The Deputy Defence Secretary's closest allies on Iraq - known in the Kuwait villas as "Wolfie's people" or the "true believers" - have already been earmarked for key positions in Iraq's first postwar administration. James Woolsey, the former CIA director, and a strong supporter of Mr Chalabi, is certain to have a senior role.
Michael Mobbs, a Pentagon lawyer and arms control specialist who made his name as a hardline hawk during the Cold War, may oversee as many as 11 of Iraq's 23 existing government ministries. Both men envision a rapid transition to a pro-American Iraqi democracy, probably led by Mr Chalabi. The UN is rarely mentioned.
As if to further underline who is in charge, eight State Department nominations to Gen Garner have been vetoed by Donald Rumsfeld. According to a Pentagon official, the candidates - mostly former ambassadors and diplomats with experience in the Middle East - were "run of the mill figures with an old-style bureaucratic mindset".
The outmanoeuvered officials of the State Department, who expected to play the leading role in the reconstruction of Iraq, can barely contain their fury. "Is there anything in this administration that Donald Rumsfeld doesn't want to control?" asked one despairing State Department analyst.
When Mr Blair welcomes President Bush to the summit in Belfast on Tuesday, he may find himself asking the same question.
Telegraph
This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Milton Frihetsson, 01:40
