Iraqi Officials Wage Political War in U.S.

While ordinary Iraqis argue in dusty streets over the shape of their country’s new order, leaders of their provisional government are battling for power where it already exists -- in Washington.

Led by Ahmad Chalabi, one of the best-connected and most controversial Iraqi officials here, members of the Iraqi Governing Council are using lobbyists, political advisors and public relations firms to strengthen their ties with U.S. policymakers and reach the broader American and international audience.

The idea is to get Americans to help create the Iraq these leaders want, to help position them for leadership roles and to outflank their equally ambitious rivals.

Some say the politicking has gone too far. Almost from the day they were appointed, members of the Governing Council had drawn complaints from U.S. officials that they were spending too much time abroad and not enough on duties in Baghdad.

“They’re all campaigning to be president,” one U.S. official groused last fall.

The campaigns offer an important insight into where power resides as Iraq struggles toward a new government. At least until elections are held in Iraq, the United States will have influence over who will serve in any interim government -- and over the process of creating such a government.

And even after the official return of sovereignty, support from the Americans -- with their billions in aid and thousands of troops -- will remain crucial.

Yet it is a delicate two-front campaign. While currying favor in Washington, no future Iraqi leader can afford to be seen in Baghdad as a lackey of the Americans.

This balancing act was on full view in recent days when Chalabi visited Washington as part of an official delegation.

At the invitation of the White House, he and two other Governing Council members sat proudly with First Lady Laura Bush as the president delivered the State of the Union address last month. But three days later, in a speech at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, Chalabi gave U.S. officials heartburn by criticizing the Bush administration’s plan for returning power to Iraqis as “a sure-fire way to have instability.”

Francis Brooke, Chalabi’s U.S. political advisor, insisted that “our first message was to associate ourselves with the United States.... I mean, we sat with the president’s wife.”

Chalabi, a Pentagon favorite, is a well-known figure in Washington. An expatriate Iraqi financier and leader of the former opposition group Iraqi National Congress, he built support from conservatives over more than a decade by campaigning for the U.S. ouster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Chalabi was accused before the war of using money from U.S. taxpayers to lobby for power.

But Chalabi is by no means alone in prowling Washington’s corridors of power, nor is he the only one with money and friends.

Iyad Allawi, another longtime Hussein opponent, is head of the exile group Iraqi National Accord and has had ties with the CIA even before the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

A third player who seems to have increasing support from U.S. officials is former Iraqi Foreign Minister Adnan Pachachi, a vigorous 80-year-old who until Saturday served as president of the Governing Council.

“If you have a strong profile in Washington, it’s a plus for you, always,” said Farhad Barzani, who is director of the Kurdish Democratic Party office in Washington and a nephew of Governing Council member Massoud Barzani.

These leaders’ desire to reach the influential U.S. audience may be most evident in the recent activities of Allawi, whose group, primarily Sunni Muslim, was founded largely by defectors from Hussein’s Baath Party, military and security services.

Allawi has hired former U.S. diplomat Patrick Theros, Washington law firm Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds, and New York public relations concern Brown Lloyd James. The tab, about $150,000 a month, is picked up by Mashal Nawab, an Iraqi-born physician who is part of a network of well-off Iraqi families who support Allawi.

Allawi and Chalabi, whose groups have clashed intermittently for years, have carried on a war of words in U.S. newspapers.

Chalabi has written opinion articles in the Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer and USA Today urging the United States to increase the power of the Governing Council, to speed the transfer of power to Iraqis and to intensify the hunt for remnants of Hussein’s Baath Party.

Allawi, in contrast, has argued in opinion articles in the Washington Post and New York Times that the “de-Baathification” of Iraq has gone too far, hurting the innocent as well as the complicit. By excluding people who can make an important contribution, it is slowing Iraq’s recovery, he has argued.

Allawi, who has riled U.S. officials with some of his candid remarks about Iraq, had his wings clipped in December.

During a trip to the U.S. intended primarily so he could work at CIA headquarters, the agency disappointed Allawi by insisting that he cancel meetings with journalists and newspaper editorial boards.

Chalabi, meanwhile, has always been skilled at finding the limelight -- sometimes to the exasperation of rivals.

On Dec. 14, the day after Hussein’s capture, Chalabi was among four opposition leaders who won U.S. permission to confront the fallen dictator inside his cell. It was a public relations master stroke that cast Chalabi as Hussein’s rival and conqueror.

“This was a coup,” said an aide to a Chalabi rival. “We couldn’t get our guy within 100 miles of Saddam.”

But Chalabi may be getting too much exposure in the United States and appear too dependent on the Bush administration. “Chalabi took the wrong approach by wanting it too much, “ said Rachel Bronson, director of Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

During his Washington trips, Chalabi has been assisted by political consultant Brooke and K. Riva Levinson of the Washington public relations firm BKSH & Associates. Brooke insists that neither he nor Levinson is paid, and that they are helping as “friends” of the wealthy businessman.

Levinson, whose firm is headed by longtime Republican insider Charles Black, is described on her firm’s website as the Iraqi National Congress representative in Washington since 1999. She has worked with the INC in Baghdad since Hussein’s ouster, according to the website, and is using her Iraqi contacts to open an office for her firm in Iraq.

Brooke, 42, who got his start in politics working with Jimmy Carter aide Hamilton Jordan, acknowledges that he lives in a Georgetown, Va., home that is owned “by some part of the Chalabi family business empire.” Brooke said he began working with Chalabi after meeting him in 1990 in London and becoming convinced that Hussein should be overthrown.

He said Levinson’s firm was paid $25,000 a month under a State Department contract, which lapsed in July, to support the INC. But he insisted that Chalabi had no need to finance a public relations or lobbying effort in the United States, because of his large circle of friends and official contacts.

Lobbying in Washington is a sensitive topic for Chalabi, and the source of his funds has been in some dispute. Supporters say he pays his own way, the beneficiary of a family financial empire. But Chalabi’s critics charge that his money is not all from legitimate sources.

In 1992, a Jordanian court convicted him in absentia of embezzling tens of millions of dollars from Petra Bank, the country’s largest, which he founded and ran for 12 years before its collapse. Chalabi disputes the charges.

More recently, the Iraqi National Congress was suspected of using U.S. aid for lobbying and other unapproved purposes. After an inspector general’s report, the State Department at one point cut off the funding. It was resumed in 2002.

Despite his advanced age, Pachachi has been showing increasing signs of ambition.

A Sunni Muslim who was Iraq’s foreign minister in the 1960s, Pachachi has been favored by some in the State Department, while opposed by others in the Pentagon. He is considered the most widely respected member of the council, although some doubt that he has the energy for a top post.

These days, U.S. advisors are working closely with Iraqis in shaping a proposal for a new transitional government. The U.S.-backed Governing Council will have a big role in the debate, and its members may end up well positioned in whatever permanent government emerges.

Chalabi, Allawi and Pachachi have admitted to only modest ambitions to play some role in creating a new Iraq. But it is widely assumed that they will prefer that role to be large.

Asking council members if they want to lead the new Iraq is like asking U.S. senators if they want to be president, said Bronson of the Council on Foreign Relations: “You can probably assume they would all want to do it.”