|
CounterPunch
December
3, 2002
The Arrest of
General Khazraji
Are the Chickenhawks Crowing?
by GARY LEUPP
Poor General Nizar al-Khazraji. Just when his
prospects seemed so promising, he finds himself under house arrest
in his suburban Copenhagen apartment, victim of a zealous public
prosecutor of international crimes named Birgitte Vestberg----and
perhaps others who find him not so much loathsome as merely inconvenient.
The London Times (November 20) reports "dismay"
in Washington and London over Ms. Vestberg's action; but I wonder
if it doesn't actually produce smug satisfaction in some Washington
quarters.
Gen. Khazraji (64) is Saddam Hussein's
former chief of staff. He commanded the Iraqi Army during the
Iran-Iraq War from 1980 to 1988, and served as a military advisor
during the 1990 invasion of Kuwait (which he says he opposed).
He organized defenses against a possible U.S. invasion at the
end of the Persian Gulf War. According to his account, he fled
to Jordan in 1996 at the invitation of CIA-backed exiles connected
with the Iraqi National Accord, one of the INC's rival organizations,
but told them that he "had left Iraq to work for the Iraqi
army and people and not to be part of any movement outside the
country."
Khazraji lived in Spain, and then since
1999 in Denmark. In that year, Frank Ricciardone, Clinton State
Department's "coordinator for an Iraqi transition,"
contacted his through third parties to discuss his possible role
in the overthrow of Saddam's regime (UPI, December 19, 2001).
While maintaining contact with U.S. officials, Khazraji sought
asylum in Denmark while confronting accusations from human rights
groups assailing his military record. Specifically, he has been
accused of responsibility for the use of nerve and mustard gas
against Kurdish civilians in Iraq, as well as Iranian soldiers;
5,000 Kurds in the town of Halabja in March 1988 were probably
gassed to death by his orders. The Washington Post (November
20) notes, "He [has been] formally accused of murder, pillage
and wanton destruction of property in violation of the Geneva
Conventions."
But never mind all that (yet). The point
of interest is that for many months now Khazraji has been one
of two prominent Iraqi exiles championed by different factions
in the Bush administration to serve as its post-Saddam satrap
in Baghdad, the other being the civilian leader of the Iraqi
National Congress (INC), Ahmad Chalabi, formerly a professor
of mathematics and founder of a successful London software company.
(The INC was established by the CIA after the Gulf War as the
embryo of a future Baghdad regime, and has been funded by Congress
since 1998.) Counter-intuitive though it may seem, Khazraji has
been backed for over a year by "moderate" Colin Powell's
State Department and the CIA, while the Defense Department and
Pentagon have favored Chalabi. (Former CIA head James Woolsey
speaks well of Chalabi, but currently he commands little respect
within the Agency. The most recent U.S. News & World Report
indicates that it sees him as "self-serving and unreliable,"
adding that a "State Department official derides [the INC]
as the 'Mercedes-Benz-riding, fine-hotel-staying opposition.'"
It doesn't help that in the early '90s Chalabi was convicted
of money-laundering in Jordan, and more recently, according to
the BBC, was unable to account for four million dollars in U.S.
aid to the INC.)
So (just thinking aloud here) I wonder
if maybe Khazraji's fate in Denmark, a NATO country fully on
board the "war on terrorism" (if ambivalent about war
on Iraq), may have something to do with the infighting between
these two U.S. government factions. According to the London-based
Arabic-language newspaper Al-Hayat (February 11), Khazraji
was "the favored candidate" in Washington at that time
to be cultivated as post-Saddam Iraqi leader. (Around that time
a German interviewer asked him, "Are you, as an Iraqi, seriously
calling upon U.S. bomb attacks on your country?" and Khazraji
replied, "By God, I think yes. The time is ripe." See
National Review Online, February 18.)
Seymour Hersh interviewed CIA officials
who told him that Khazraji was their "brightest prospect"
(New Yorker, March 11). AP on March 13 reported "one
potential military leader being touted in Iraqi-opposition circles
is Gen. Nizar Khazraji, a former chief of staff and a hero of
the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war who is now seeking asylum in Denmark."
Anthony Shabib reported that the "two generals that have
drawn the most interest from the State Department are Najib al-Salhi,
a former Republican Guard commander now in Washington, and Nizar
Khazraji, a former Iraqi chief of staff in exile in Denmark.
'We've stepped up our contacts, and we've heard some interesting
ideas,' a State Department official said" (Boston Globe,
March 16). David Mack, a senior official at the State Department,
declared that Khazraji "enjoys a good military reputation"
and has "the right ingredients" to be future leader
in Iraq. (Among such "ingredients" is his known preference
for a military government.) As for the war crimes, the State
Department concurred with the view of certain leaders of the
Washington contingent of the "Patriotic Union of Kurdistan"
which, despite Halabja, has supported the general. "We don't
want to take any action against the defected military people
who worked in the Iraqi army," they aver, "because
if you do, it will help Saddam Hussein" (UPI, December 19,
2001). Khazraji looked like a shoo-in for the Baghdad job.
But something was afoot in the pro-Chalabi
camp. According to Hersh's March article:
Chalabi and his allies [emph.
added] have, in recent months, endorsed what amounts to a public-relations
campaign against Khazraji, alleging that he was involved in a
war crime-the 1988 Iraqi gassing of a Kurdish town, a claim Khazraji
denies-and suggesting that he may be a double agent. 'There's
a huge firestorm over Chalabi that's preventing us from reaching
out to the Iraqi military,' a former C.I.A. operative told me.
'It's mind-boggling for an outsider to understand the impasse.'
In other words, the CIA "outsider"
found it frustrating that the prospects of his man Khazraji were
being hobbled by all this fuss about his war crimes, raised by
Chalabi, the INC and their Washington friends. But not so mind-boggling
if seen in the context of the ongoing struggle between Powell
and his rivals. According to Hersh, Vice President Cheney, Deputy
Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Bush advisor Richard
Perle are all among this camp of Chalabi friends (see also Max
Singer in National Review, June 20). Surely they backed
the anti-Khazraji public-relations campaign (and perhaps placed
some calls to Copenhagen). I doubt very much whether squeamishness
about that mustard gas & all factors significantly in their
position; maybe they think a longtime civilian CIA operative
would be easier to manage and manipulate than a general with
widespread links among the Iraqi officer corps, who may not be
entirely appreciative of the U.S. "liberation" and
occupation of their country. (A 101-page report prepared by Iraqi
"opposition leaders" under U.S. sponsorship, recently
presented to Condoleeza Rice, "calls for the Iraqi Army
to have little to do with guaranteeing postwar security,"
since "most officers are compromised by their ties to Hussein."
and instead indicates that "U.S. troops and newly trained
émigrés" should fill that role. See Boston
Globe, November 27.)
So once again, it's been Powell vs. the
chickenhawks, and the latter have won out, for better or worse,
dooming war criminal Gen. Khazraji's aspirations to Karzai-like
greatness.
* *
*
But perhaps the question of Iraqi leadership
has become irrelevant. U.S. government officials (who have apparently
toyed with the idea of a Hashemite monarchy in Iraq, specifically,
Prince Hassan, the uncle of the current Jordanian monarch, Abdullah
II) now deny that they're even "going to be in the business
of choosing" which Iraqi who should lead Iraq. Rather, White
House sources presently describe a "postwar planbeginning
with a period of military rule, most likely by an American general"
(U.S. News, Dec. 2). The idea has been bandied about publicly
(and then denied) since mid-October. But apparently this administration,
initially very loath to undertake "state-building,"
has finally become so frustrated with the inadequacies and historical
baggage of those whom it had earlier fingered as potential puppets,
and the inability of the various Iraqi opposition forces to bury
their differences to better execute U.S. objectives, that it
must opt for the (highly risky) solution of outright occupation.
A MacArthur, rather than a Karzai, must be officially at the
helm.
But if there's a war, and a U.S. victory,
I doubt it will actually make a whole lot of difference to the
Iraqi people whether they're governed afterwards by General Tommy
Franks (with Chalabi maybe in a supporting role) or a quisling
General Khazraji or Salhi. Just as there's no difference, fundamentally,
between Powell and Rumsfeld, the Tweedledy Dee and Twiddledy
Dum of U.S. imperialism, as that system runs totally amuck.
Gary Leupp
is an an associate professor, Department of History, Tufts University
and coordinator, Asian Studies Program.
He can be reached at: gleupp@tufts.edu
Yesterday's
Features
Robert Fisk
Sharon Is
Trapped...and So Are We
Michael Dahan
A Glimmer
of Hope?
Jeremy Brecher
A Nightmare
to Love:
How the Peace Movement Can Use Bush's "Almost Desperate
Attempts" to "Destroy the Arms Inspection
Walt Brasch
Stupid
Decisions:
Self-Censorship in America
Ron Jacobs
Support
the Troops:
Bring Them Home
Jason Leopold
Wag the
Bush
Anthony Gancarski
Fighting
Patriotism & Losing
CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- CounterPunch Special:
The Persecution of Gershon Legman by Susan Davis: Smut, the Post Office, Commies
and the FBI;
- Reeling Democrats: Is Pelosi the Answer?
- Gandhi v. Hitler: the Secret Race for the Nobel
Prize;
- Sullying Mario Savio's
Memory;
- Lynching Then and Now;
- Earn While You Learn: Chris Whittle and Child Labor;
The Case of the Pompous
Professor;
- The Class Struggle in
Boston: All that
Effort, But What Did They Get?
Remember, the CounterPunch website is
supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide
web audience is soaring , with about seven million hits a month
now. This is inspiring, but the work involved also compels us
to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make
a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe
Now!
Or Call Toll Free 1 800 840 3683
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|
December 1,
2002
Alexander
Cockburn
American
Journal
Gabriel Kolko
Another
Century of War?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Rockets,
Napalm, Torpedoes & Lies: The Attack on the Liberty Revisited
Steve Perry
Spank
the Democrats
M. Shahid
Alam
A Predatory
Orientalism
Kurt Nimmo
The Murder
of Iain Hook
Ali Abunimah
Death
& Lies in Palestine
Anthony Gancarski
The
Return of Al Gore?
Joanne Mariner
In Defense
of the Filibuster
Ahmad Faruqui
The Apocalyptic
Vision of the Neo-Con Ideologues
Dave Marsh
Eminem's
Body & Soul
David Vest
On the Lam
from Uncle Sam
Julian Samuel
Bowling
for Columbine
Adam Engel
Piss Off,
NSA!
Behzad Yaghmaian
The Grassroots
Challenge to Iran's Theocracy
Wayne Saunders
This
Mad, Limitless War
Dan Brook
Celebrate
Genocide!
Uri Avnery
"Likud
Has Failed"
Philip Farruggio
Turkeys
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By
Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
|