http://www.sundayherald.com/27877
CORRUPT, feckless and downright dangerous. Some say they make the Butcher of Baghdad himself look good. Who are they? The contenders for Saddam Hussein’s throne.
If Afghanistan’s nightmarish internal politics proved problematic after the toppling of the Taliban, Bush should be under no illusion that Iraq’s would be any less so. The Northern Alliance might not have seemed a very palatable alternative to the Taliban, but it has a certain rough credibility. There is no equivalent in Iraq.
‘He may be a son-of-a-bitch,’ President Franklin D Roosevelt is said to have commented of the brutal Nicaraguan dictator, Anastasio Somoza, ‘but he’s our son-of-a-bitch’. Saddam was Washington’s SOB throughout most of the Reagan administration, a valuable foil against the US’s nemesis, Iran. Somewhere along the line, possibly in 1990, he lost the ‘our’.
General Nizar Al-Khazraji
ACCORDING to many human rights groups, he is the field commander who led the 48-hour chemical weapons attack which poisoned and burned 5000 Kurdish civilians in the northern town of Halabja in March 1988. He also, alleges one credible eyewitness who testified in video-taped evidence earlier this year, kicked a little Kurdish child to death after his forces entered a village during the height of the Iraqi repression in 1988.
But, says Ambassador David Mack, a senior official in the US State Department who co-ordinates meetings of Iraqi opposition groups in Washington DC, General Nizar al-Khazraji has ‘a good military reputation’ and ‘the right ingredients’ as a future leader in Iraq.
Brigadier-General Najib Al-Salihi
IN meetings at the British Foreign Office in March this year, Brigadier-General Najib al-Salihi acquired the sobriquet of ‘the rapidly rising star’ of the Iraqi opposition. When a popular website of Iraqi exiles held an online poll to find who would be their preferred future leader, al-Salihi raced ahead – until the poll had to be suspended amid suspicions it was being rigged. In any case, it wouldn’t have been the first Iraqi election to produce a victor with 99.9% of the vote.
Commander of an armored division of Iraq’s elite Republican Guard in the Gulf war, Salihi played a significant military role in Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. He was also engaged in putting down the uprising against Saddam 's rule that followed the defeat at the hands of the US-led forces. The repressive way in which this particular episode was handled caused 1.5 million people to flee their homes, while Salihi went on to write a book about his crushing of the popular uprising, entitled Al-Zilzal, ‘The Earthquake’.
Ahmad Al-Chalabi
Ahmad al-Chalabi came to international attention not for his politics, but for fleeing to London from Jordan in 1989 amid allegations he had embezzled millions from the bank he used to own. Although he denies any wrongdoing, the collapse of the Petra Bank left thousands of its customers in penury and earned him comparisons with Robert Maxwell. He didn’t return to Jordan to defend himself at his trial in 1992, which took place in his absence, and will begin his 32 years in prison only if he returns to Jordan, which he shows no sign of doing at present.
The long-time face of the Iraqi opposition in Washington, Chalabi took the reins of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an umbrella organization created in 1992 with the assistance of the CIA. Although he was officially demoted in 1999 to be a member of the INC’s executive council rather than its leader, he is widely accepted as the first among equals and is spoken of by INC officials as the future president of Iraq. This despite the fact that the US State Department recently found that about half of the $4m it had given to the INC was not properly accounted for. They clearly expected better from a former maths professor and banker, and cut off funding. Chalabi, however, galvanized his US supporters, and the Pentagon and the White House again started picking up the tab.
Chalabi is, if nothing else, an operator. One delegate at a New York meeting of the INC said of him: ‘He takes more than his share, much more than his share, and I get nothing. Just look at the way he dresses. They say Saddam has 300 suits; well, this guy has 400.’
Convicted embezzlers, accused war criminals and CIA stooges to a man, few if any of those who would dethrone Saddam match up to the proverbial man on a white horse, a respected military officer who can ride in, take control and unite Iraq’s fractious tribes and religious groups. Serious questions remain as to the readiness, willingness and fitness to lead of those in main contention.
comment: crooks, war criminals, and cia stooges perfect candidates for the British and american imperialists and you thought northern alliance was bad!