Ahmed Chalabi: Iraqi Politician and Controversial INC Founder
Ahmed Chalabi (30 October 1945 – 3 November 2015) was an Iraqi politician and founder of the Iraqi National Congress (INC). He served as President of the Governing Council of Iraq and Deputy Prime Minister under Ibrahim al-Jaafari, holding the position of interim Minister of Oil in 2005 and early 2006.
Early Life and Education
Chalabi was born in Kadhimiya into a prominent Arab Shia Muslim family belonging to Baghdad’s wealthy elite. The Chalabi family traced its roots to the ancient Arab Tayy tribe and had run Iraq’s oldest commercial bank under the British-backed Kingdom of Iraq. His father, Abdel Hadi Chalabi, was a wealthy grain merchant and member of the Iraqi parliament who became head of the senate following King Abdullah I of Jordan’s assassination.
After the 14 July Revolution in 1958, Chalabi left Iraq with his family. He was educated at Baghdad College and Seaford College in Sussex, England. In the mid-1960s, he studied mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under cryptographer Whitfield Diffie, earning a Bachelor of Science degree. He received a PhD in mathematics from the University of Chicago in 1969 under George Glauberman, focusing on semisimplicity of group rings. He later took a position in the mathematics department at the American University of Beirut and published three mathematics papers between 1973 and 1980.
In 1971, Chalabi married Leila Osseiran, daughter of Lebanese politician Adel Osseiran. They had four children: Tamara, Mariam, Hashem, and Hadi. When civil war broke out in Lebanon in 1975, he moved to Jordan and worked as an interpreter.
Business Career and the Petra Bank Scandal
Chalabi became a bold and shrewd investor, amassing a fortune of $100 million. In 1977, he founded the Petra Bank in Jordan with Crown Prince Hassan. In May 1989, when the Central Bank of Jordan required all banks to deposit 35 percent of their reserves, Petra Bank was unable to comply. An investigation revealed accusations of embezzlement and false accounting. The bank failed, resulting in a $350 million bailout by the Central Bank. Chalabi fled the country, reportedly locked in the trunk of a car owned by Prince Hassan. A Jordanian military tribunal convicted him in absentia and sentenced him to 22 years in prison for bank fraud. Chalabi maintained that his prosecution was politically motivated and sponsored by Saddam Hussein.
Founding the Iraqi National Congress
By 1992, living in London and unable to return to Iraq, Chalabi established the Iraqi National Congress with an agenda of regime change. The organization was open to all ethnic and religious groups of Iraq, including Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen, Sunni, and Shia Muslims. In 1995, after lobbying efforts, he persuaded President Bill Clinton to fund an expedition into northern Iraq to start an insurgency. The operation failed, lacking promised ground troops, and 100 insurgents were killed. Chalabi was subsequently banned from visits to CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia.
In 1998, Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act, enshrining regime change in Iraq as American law and earmarking $97 million to support Iraqi opposition groups. The CIA funneled an estimated $100 million to the INC, which helped finance a failed 1996 coup attempt by Kurdish forces. From March 2000 to September 2003, the U.S. State Department paid nearly $33 million to the INC, according to a 2004 General Accounting Office report.
Role in the 2003 Invasion and Aftermath
Before the Iraq War, Chalabi enjoyed close relationships with prominent neoconservatives within the Pentagon, including Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, and was a special guest of First Lady Laura Bush at the 2004 State of the Union Address. He was flown back to Iraq after the invasion with 700 US-trained militia and received over $300,000 monthly from the U.S. government, with direct support from Vice President Dick Cheney and Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.
The Iraqi National Congress, with assistance from lobbying firm BKSH & Associates, provided major portions of information used by the Office of Special Plans to condemn Saddam Hussein, including reports of weapons of mass destruction and alleged ties to al-Qaeda. Most of this information proved false. Information allegedly from Chalabi’s group, including from a defector codenamed “Curveball” (Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi), made its way into intelligence dossiers used by President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to justify the invasion. Chalabi later boasted in an interview with the British Sunday Telegraph about the impact of their faulty intelligence on American policy.
Chalabi failed to win a seat in parliament in the December 2005 elections and received no post when the new Iraqi cabinet was announced in May 2006. U.S. Special Forces raided his private residence in Baghdad only one year after the invasion. He came under investigation by several U.S. government agencies after switching allegiances to become an instrument of pro-Iranian influence in Iraqi politics. In 2008, Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance Director Jay Garner stated he believed Chalabi was an Iranian agent. In January 2012, a French intelligence official stated he believed Chalabi to be “acting on behalf of Iran.”
Additional Resources
For more detailed information about Ahmed Chalabi’s life, political career, and involvement in pre-invasion Iraq policy, consult Wikipedia’s comprehensive biography and related articles on the Iraqi National Congress, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the intelligence surrounding weapons of mass destruction claims.
