Iraqi council mired in cronyism, indecision

By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN, Times Senior Correspondent
Published December 20, 2003

From the start, there were signs the Iraqi Governing Council would be somewhat less than a bold and decisive body.

For one thing, the 25 members couldn't even agree on a president. So they adopted a rotating system that has produced five presidents in as many months.

"How can you accomplish anything with no continuity?" asks Juan R. Cole, a Mideast expert at the University of Michigan. "Whenever there's a hard decision to be made, they can't make it."

Cole reflects a widespread frustration with the council, appointed by Iraq's American occupiers to serve as an interim government and start the country on the path to democracy after 35 years of Saddam Hussein's tyrannical rule.

Since August, the council has chalked up a few accomplishments. It has appointed ministers of oil, health and other government agencies. It created a special tribunal that may try Hussein and other members of his regime for crimes against humanity. And in a rare show of spine, it even stood up to its U.S. creators by refusing to let troops from Turkey - a despised colonial occupier - join coalition forces in Iraq.

But the council has been dogged by allegations of nepotism, cronyism, self-dealing and outright corruption. The Pentagon is investigating alleged improprieties in the awarding of a coveted mobile phone license to a consortium linked to Ahmed Chalabi, the council's best known and most controversial member. Questions have been raised about other contracts amid complaints that council members are more interested in promoting their own agendas than working for the good of the country.

"Here we have some people who see an opportunity to become rich overnight and they see it's a free-for-all," said Sam Kubba, a Virginia architect who heads the American-Iraqi Chamber of Commerce and recently returned from Baghdad.

"It just takes one rotten apple to make the whole basket rot and the unfortunate thing is that the CPA has done nothing to quench it."

Even the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority has grown so disenchanted with the council that it will be replaced in May by a 250-member body that will write a constitution and prepare for popular elections in 2005.

Given the struggle the current council has in getting anything done, experts wonder how much can be expected from a group 10 times as large.

"It's going to be very difficult," says Sharon Otterman of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Council members - most of them former exiles who lived abroad during Hussein's time - have lukewarm support at best among Iraq's long-suffering people. One member was fatally shot in September, and others have narrowly escaped assassination.

Many Iraqis view the council as an American puppet: as evidence, they point to its ban of al-Arabiya, an Arab TV network the Americans accuse of fomenting violence. There also was an uproar when the new finance minister announced that all state industries except oil would be open to 100 percent foreign ownership. The council had to back down after Iraqi business people said the reforms amounted to a giveaway to American and other foreign companies.

But council members say they are doing their best.

"You have to remember we are 24 personalities," Muwafaq Raybiyi, a Shiite doctor, told reporters. "We have never worked together. There is no precedent for what we are doing."

Other members complain the CPA has demanded much while giving them limited authority.

"The problem is the CPA is a monster with many heads," Samir Shakir Mahmoud, a Shiite writer, told Knight-Ridder. "We talk to one head, it's friendly; we talk to another, it's reluctant. We are tackling a lot of problems and we are tackling them all at once."

Publicly at least, the Bush administration held out high hopes for the governing council when it was appointed in July. "This council will have real power and real responsibilities from the very start," said L. Paul Bremer, Iraq's civil administrator.

Bremer chose a group that reflected - at least on paper - Iraq's ethnic and religious diversity. Among the 22 men and 3 women were 13 Shiites, 5 Sunnis, 5 Kurds, a Turkmen and a Christian.

But many Iraqis and outsiders were stunned when Ahmed Chalabi was named to the council as a Shiite member. Founder of the Iraqi National Congress, an opposition group, Chalabi once worked with the CIA in trying to overthrow Hussein's regime. But he fell out of favor with both the agency and State Department because of concern he had hyped the threat of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in an effort to get the United States to invade.

Chalabi, who has spent most of his life outside Iraq, also was convicted in absentia in Jordan on fraud charges stemming from a bank collapse.

"For the United States to go into Iraq and appoint a government and have a member of that government indicted in a neighboring country for embezzling $300-million is outrageous," said Michigan's Cole. "That's a major instance of corruption and what else could flow from that could be enormous."

Chalabi says he is innocent and that the Jordanian charges were politically motivated. But this fall he again became mired in controversy after the new communications minister awarded a license for mobile phone service in southern Iraq to a consortium that included the son of a close Chalabi associate.

Chalabi's supporters say there was no impropriety.

Although there are 24 other council members, observers say the 59-year-old Chalabi, a debonair figure who has a doctorate from the University of Chicago, is the dominant player. Chalabi denies it, but it is widely assumed he wants to be Iraq's first elected president.

But other council members are also jockeying for influence in a permanent government. The council increased the number of ministers to 25 so each member could appoint one; the resulting choices not only mirrored the makeup of the council itself but fueled allegations of nepotism and cronyism.

The new oil minister is the son of a Shiite council member; the new minister of foreign affairs is a former spokesperson for a Kurdish member. The appointments were not terribly surprising in an Arab country where loyality to tribe and family are important parts of the culture. But that's exactly the problem, critics say.

"The argument that this is par for the course won't cut it if the aim here is to get a new Middle East and democracy and all of these things," Cole said. "If all that happened is that the U.S. went in and took out one clique and put in another, I think serious questions would be raised by the American public."

Other than appointing ministers, the council's most substantive action has been establishing a tribunal to try top officials of Hussein's regime for genocide and war crimes. Announced just days before Hussein's capture, the tribunal has been criticized for the secrecy in which it was created and because it could impose the death penalty.

But an American legal expert who helped write the tribunal statute says it is "a very credible document" that incorporates many features of international law.

"It is certainly a good start and I don't think there's anything wrong with the approach they're taking," said Laurel Miller of the United States Institute of Peace, a non-partisan organization funded by Congress.

"It is essentially a national institution but they have written into it provisions for international support, advisers and observers and also the possibility that international judges would be appointed to sit with (Iraqi) judges."

But as with everything the U.S.-appointed council has done, the question remains of what will happen to the special tribunal after power is transferred to an elected Iraqi government. "What is the subsequent sovereign authority going to think of acts taken by its predecessor?" Miller said. "Who knows if it will have a negative attitude?"

The answer could come relatively soon. Last month, the council endorsed a plan to transfer sovereignty by June 30 to a "transitional assembly." That body will write a constitution that must address many difficult issues, including whether Iraq will have an Islamic or a secular government.

But between now and June there are numerous technical details to be worked out, including exactly how members of the transitional assembly will be chosen.

"I think the CPA will find a way to turn power over to some kind of local civilian authority by July - I think they're very committed to that," Cole said. "But I personally don't see how we get from here to there, given the governing council's congenital inability to make a decision."