BAGHDAD, 1 August 2004 — Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi, the former exile once better connected in Washington’s corridors of power than the backstreets of Baghdad, is building new, unexpected alliances. The US administration may have spurned its one-time ally, but Chalabi has found a new voice defending Iraq’s downtrodden Shiites and speaks in respectful terms about one of Washington’s fiercest critics - Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr.
“(Sadr) is a man who has a strong influence on a very large number of the people in Iraq who are dispossessed and he certainly has a role to play in the process that will be coming,” Chalabi told Reuters in an interview late on Friday.
He said Sadr supporters were among those who had joined the Shiite Political Council, a grouping Chalabi helped set up to fight for the rights of Shiites, who were persecuted by Saddam Hussein and who are still among the poorest in Iraqi society.
Apart from a common faith, the US-educated former banker seems to share little else with Sadr, whose Mehdi Army fought a rebellion against US forces earlier this year.
But Iraqi analysts say Chalabi is again proving to be a wily political operator. Skills once used to win over the White House have now been turned to building a new Iraqi support base. “Chalabi is a good political maneuver,” said Sadoun Dulame, head of the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies. “(Sadr) has a lot of public support, so maybe Chalabi can use that support.”
But Chalabi denies these are his tactics with the Shiite council and says he has no plans for political office. “The Shiite Political Council has come together to give a voice to the dispossessed majority... It is not a political party,” he said. Nor was it seeking “supremacy” for Shiites, who make up about 60 percent of Iraq’s population, he said.
But he said the consequences of Saddam’s oppression had to be addressed — such as improving services in Sadr City, a largely Shiite slum on the outskirts of Baghdad and from where Sadr draws many of his recruits.
“I am not a candidate for political office... The political constituency I seek to develop is the Iraqi National Congress, which is committed to a non-sectarian, democratic, federal Iraq,” he said, referring to the political group he has headed since his days in exile.
Chalabi has long denied ambitions for office. Yet, until he fell out with Washington over accusations he provided faulty intelligence over Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, he was widely tipped to have US-backing for a top Iraqi post.
But by the time posts were handed out in the interim Iraqi government that took over on June 28, Chalabi was already at odds with the US administration and the INC was left out. “We certainly do not feel that we have been deprived... It is good for the government to have a strong political group supporting it from the outside,” Chalabi said.
Meanwhile, he said he was keen to see more transparency in the interim government’s affairs, including more clarity on the role of US and British advisers at Iraqi ministries and details about the role Iraq’s new intelligence service.
“One of the things the Shiite Political Council has taken up is the very low percentage of Shiites in the leadership of this intelligence service, less than 12 percent,” he said. Chalabi said a two-week delay in a major Iraqi conference that was to choose a new 100-member National Council to oversee the government was a setback that did not bode well for holding elections in January on time.
