1.

WASHINGTON'S TROJAN HORSE IN THE NEW IRAQI GOVERNMENT: VICE PRESIDENT ABDEL MAHDI
Interview with Antonia Juhasz

** Outgoing finance minister Adel Abdel Mahdi was named by the Iraqi parliament to be one of the country's two vice presidents. We speak with author and activist Antonia Juhasz about Abdel Mahdi's ties to neo-liberal institutions and his plans to privatize Iraq's oil. **

Democracy Now!
April 7, 2005

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/07/1343230

AMY GOODMAN: We're joined by analyst, Dilip Hiro, from Britain. We are also joined now by activist and author Antonia Juhasz. For years, she was Project Director at the International Forum on Globalization, currently working on a book about corporate globalization and Iraq. We're also joined by author Larry Everest, who’s the author of Oil, Power and Empire: Iraq and the US Global Agenda. Antonia Juhasz, let's go you to. You write about the former Iraqi Finance Minister, now one of the deputy presidents, Abdel Mahdi. Can you talk about him?

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Sure. Thanks for having me this morning. Basically Abdel Mahdi is an economist and a politician who currently serves as the finance minister of Iraq and also served on the Iraqi Governing Council. He was the leader of the United Iraqi Alliance ticket, the Shiite Party pegged to be the prime minister of Iraq. Then through the negotiations that happened after January 30, he, as you said, has become one of the vice presidents and part of the Presidency Council. He can be considered the Bush administration's economic man on the ground in Iraq. After Paul Bremer, who was the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority of the US Government of occupied Iraq, left, Abdel Mahdi essentially took over to implement the economic transformations that Paul Bremer had set into place in his 100 Bremer orders which fundamentally restructured the Iraqi economy. Mahdi essentially implemented those ideas and moved them forward. He has taken two trips to DC. He took two trips prior to the January 30th elections, one in October and one in December. Both times he met, or at least one of the two visits, with both President Bush and Vice President Cheney. And he announced, in a press conference while in D.C., negotiations on a new oil law for Iraq that he said would be very good for U.S. Oil companies that would look at privatization of the oil. And he also talked about all of the economic reforms that he had put into place to fundamentally shift Iraq from a state controlled economy to an economy completely open to foreign investment, free trade, and the like. He wasn't elected president, and won't be prime minister, however remaining in a key leadership post makes it very likely at a minimum that he will continue to work, try to work to push all of those economic reforms. Just to also be clear, he is in the position to keep doing that for one simple reason which is that the Bremer orders, those economic changes, stay in effect unless they are specifically overturned by the new national assembly, meaning they did continue. They continue on unless they're specifically overturned. And Mahdi will be in a position to see those move forward. He is definitely somebody who is very much supported by the Bush administration, and has continually expressed his commitment to U.S. corporations.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Antonia Juhasz, author and activist. You right write in your latest piece, “Of Oil and Elections,” "Remember when we used to talk about how the war in Iraq was about oil? Remember the banners that read ‘No Blood for Oil!’? Oil has fallen out of the discussion, but it's time to bring it back in light of the Iraqi elections.” This was a little while ago, but you specifically, even then before Adel Mahdi was known by most people, talk about this meeting that he had in December of 2004. Can you describe it?

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Yes. This was a press conference. It was part of a couple of days' meetings of the U.S.-Iraq Economic Commission which has met twice. That was the second time. Basically, a U.S. government corporate Iraqi government body that came together for the second meeting to discuss, it seems, largely oil. The proceedings, of course, are not public. I have only seen press releases that the State Department put out. The entire focus was on Iraq's economy and its transformation of oil. So, at this press conference, Mahdi described what he was thinking about in terms of oil, and again this is prior to the election, so it's definitely setting himself up as the person who the Americans should feel comfortable with. At that meeting, he said that Iraq's oil law was being completely reconsidered, and of course, Iraq's oil was fully nationalized in 1972. It has been off-limits to U.S. companies. The only company that has continued to do well is ChevronTexaco which has been marketing Iraqi oil, selling it both during the Oil-for-Food period, and also currently has a contract to market Iraqi oil. The rest of the oil of Iraq has been completely shut off to U.S. companies, and obviously, they have been very eager to get back in. Mahdi discussed several changes, one of which would be privatization, full privatization of the oil sector, but the other is, you know, a slow process of opening up of the sector, either at a contract by contract basis, or things like simply allowing foreign companies to come in and build oil infrastructure, pump oil out of the ground, do joint excavation policies with the Iraqi government. There's a whole slew of ways that the U.S. government -- the U.S. corporations can enter the Iraqi oil sector without full privatization needing to go forward. But he said full privatization. And again, he said, you know, basically this would be very good for U.S. companies, and the reason why he said that was because it is French and Russian companies that had contracts that were pending with Iraq, waiting for the sanctions to end and basically most members of the Iraqi -- current Iraqi government have said we are not going to honor those contracts. So Mahdi was saying, the French and Russian contracts are out. The door is open to U.S. companies. You know, I'm going to open it as far as it can go. Let's move forward these elections and get me into office, is how I read that process. And it has already been going forward. ChevronTexaco, Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell, they're all already offering free services in Iraq, training Iraqi oil workers, helping rewrite laws to open their access, bidding on oilfields in Kirkuk and elsewhere across Iraq, and they're poised and ready to go.

--Antonia Juhasz, author and activist. She is currently working on a book about corporate globalization and Iraq. Her articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Cambridge University Review of International Relations Journal, and the LA Times. For years, she was Project Director at the International Forum on Globalization.

2.

IRAQ'S NEW PRESIDENT JALAL TALABANI: ALLY OF CIA, IRANIAN INTELLIGENCE AND SADDAM HUSSEIN
Interview with Dilip Hiro

** Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani is named president of Iraq, becoming the first non-Arab president of an Arab country. Veteran Middle East journalist Dilip Hiro talks about Talabani's ties to the CIA, Iranian intelligence and Saddam Hussein. **

Democracy Now!
April 7, 2005

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/07/1343226

Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani is due to be sworn in today as Iraq's new president. The national assembly ended two months of deadlock Wednesday when it elected Talabani to the largely ceremonial post. He becomes the first non-Arab president of an Arab country.

Talabani told reporters his presidency "means that there is no discrimination, that all Arabs, Kurds and other nationalities have the same rights."

Ousted leader Saddam Hussein watched Talabani"s election from his prison cell on a TV set up by his jailers.

The Iraqi parliament also named outgoing finance minister Adel Abdel Mahdi and outgoing interim president Ghazi Yawar as the country's two vice presidents. The three men will serve together on the presidency council. They are expected to name Shiite politician Ibrahim Jaafari to the powerful post of prime minister. Cabinet ministers are expected to be named by next week.

The transitional government's main task will be to oversee the drafting of a permanent Iraqi constitution and pave the way for elections in December.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice announced that Zalmay Khalilzad has officially been nominated to replace John Negroponte as ambassador to Iraq. Khalilzad has been serving as the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. He was a leading backer of overthrowing Saddam Hussein and has close ties to neo-conservatives in Washington. In 1998 he co-signed a letter to President Clinton sent by the Project for the New American Century calling for regime change in Iraq.

Today we will take a an in-depth look at the new members of Iraq"s government.

AMY GOODMAN: We are joined on the line from London by veteran Middle East journalist, Dilip Hiro. His trilogy of books on Iraq and Iran are considered some of the most definitive histories of the wars in the Persian Gulf. His latest book is called Secrets and Lies: Operation Iraqi Freedom and After. We welcome you to Democracy Now!, Dilip Hiro.

DILIP HIRO: Good morning to you.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you join us. Can you talk about the new government of Iraq?

DILIP HIRO: Yes, certainly. I can give you a very quick biographical sketch of Jalal Talabani. He was born in 1934 in a place in Kurdistan called Kelkan, and he trained as a lawyer. He went to Baghdad University, joined the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which was then run by Mustafa Barzani, a tribal Islamic leader, and then fell out with him, with Barzani, Sr., and actually went over to work with the government in Baghdad. Then after quite a few twists and turns, in 1975 he again, he briefly joined the Kurdistan Democratic Party, then left to go and live in Beirut, and when he was in Beirut in the mid-1970s, he came under the influence of George Habash, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Front, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, P.F.L.P., who was a Marxist leader. And he then in 1976 set up along with others Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the P.U.K., which actually described itself as a Marxist-Leninist organization. And that is the organization of which he had been a leader. He has changed sides so often that I think it would be very boring for me to go through each twist and turn. There's a very long entry on him in my book, The Essential Middle East: A Comprehensive Guide.

Finally, I notice that he is being described as a greater leader who fought Saddam Hussein. I can tell you, Amy, that after this 1991 Gulf War, when there were uprising of Kurds which was suppressed by Saddam's regime, he then later on went to head a Kurdish delegation, and in June 1991, actually, they made a deal with Saddam Hussein, and I have a picture of him, Jalal Talabani, kissing the cheeks of Saddam Hussein. That picture appears in my book, Desert Shield, Desert Storm. Anybody can check it out. So, he is being described as a greater leader. Basically, he is, to put it simply, an opportunist.

And of course, he has his support in Kurdistan, and again, we talk of Kurdistan, two things to remember: One is that the formation of what is called Kurdistan Autonomous Region, K.A.R., happened in 1974 under the regime of Saddam Hussein, and these three provinces in the north, which are Kurdish majority, they are basically divided into two parts. The southeastern part is under the control of the P.U.K., the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, of which he, Talabani, is the leader, which is next door to Iran, and therefore, Jalal Talabani has a very long tradition of good relations with Iran, though, of course, he wouldn't want to talk about them now. And in the northwestern part of Kurdistan there the Barzani is, who is the son of the senior Barzani. By the way, the senior Barzani died in a hospital in Virginia. He was very close to the Americans in the 1970s.

So, we have the situation where basically these two Kurdish parties, the K.D.P., the Kurdistan Democratic Party, and the P.U.K., the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, came together and formed the Kurdistan Alliance and contested these elections on January 30, and they won 75 seats out of 275. Now, the Kurds are no more than 15 to 16% of the population. They are entitled to maybe about 40 seats. They won 75. The 25 seats they have won have come at the expense of the Sunni-Arabs. So, by the way, all I can say that Sunni-Arabs are definitely not happy. In fact, they're very upset at what has happened, that he has become president.

That's not the only point. The other thing is that you have to remember Turkey is next door. And Turkey is, by the way, of course, we have to remind ourselves the member of NATO, is very close to America, and they have their Kurdish population, which is 20% of the national population. They are next door to the Iraqi Kurdistan. They are very unhappy at this rising influence in power of Iraqi Kurds who now want to make the regional capital of Kirkuk, which is oil-rich city, which will give them a very powerful economic base and prepare them for declaring independence of Kurdistan. So, it is something which is going to have severe repercussions as time goes by.

AMY GOODMAN: Will the northern Iraqi Kurds fight as hard for independence if Jalal Talabani is the Kurdish president of Iraq?

DILIP HIRO: Well, I think it's not that they will go for it now. See, basically, of course, we are told it's a ceremonial job. Yes, in fact, it is. But, you see, also, of course, he has two deputy vice presidents, one of them is Sunni and the other is Shiite, and they must always take joint -- what you call unanimous decisions. So, unanimously they have to decide who to choose as a potential prime minister, who is actually the executive prime minister. So no decision can be taken unless all three of them agree. That's one. Secondly, as you rightly pointed out in your introduction, one of the main tasks of this government will to be have a permanent constitution, and from the way things have gone so far, the Kurds are going to press very hard to get maximum autonomy, and that is not going to go on very well with the rest of the Iraqi population, especially the Shiites. The Shiites are mostly, you know, what you call, very religious. According to them, in Islam, there is no ethnic difference. At the same time, the Kurds will insist on having more power. Next thing to remember is that since 1991, because of the Anglo-American air umbrella of Kurdistan, Kurdistan has been functioning basically as a semi-independent country. They have their own educational system. They have their own police. They have their own militia, which is now turned into an army, which is not a part of the central command in Baghdad. They have refused to allow other units of the Iraqi army to enter Kurdistan, and so all of this actually is a preparation for at some point to declare independent Kurdistan. That is the fear of Turkey.

AMY GOODMAN: Dilip Hiro, what about Jalal Talabani's relationship with the C.I.A.?

DILIP HIRO: Well, of course, I have to say not only he has a relationship with the C.I.A., but also he has a relationship with the intelligence agency of Iran. You know, this is one of the amazing things, if you really go into this whole intelligence world, you will be dumbstruck to find these overlappings and so on and so forth.

AMY GOODMAN: Sounds a little like Ahmed Chalabi.

DILIP HIRO: Absolutely. Except that Chalabi was never actually living -- never lived in Iraq, and when his parents left when he was only 12 or 13, and unlike them, of course, Talabani, as well as Barzani, they have been living in not what you may call proper Iraq, but in Iraqi Kurdistan, so in that sense they have more ground support, a proper constituency. At the same time given this kind of location they have, as I said, you have to look at the map to see the southeastern Kurdistan is next to Iran. There's no way you can operate in this part of the world without having some good relationship with Iran. And the other thing to remember, of course, all these guys now, of course, claim secularism, and they're so much against Iranian mullahs, but remember in the 1980 to 1988 Iran-Iraq war, the Kurdistan -- the Kurdish militia run both by Talabani and Barzani fought alongside the Iranians and against the Iraqi soldiers. So, in a way you could say that they committed, in quote, “treason” to be fighting their own national army, while -- and working with the enemy. So I think they have such a long and checkered and opportunistic background to -- therefore others point out he was a guerrilla leader, I mean, I find really hard to take in. Of course, the relationship with the intelligence agencies is all over the place. And of course, the one man who really comes out on top in that business who is right now technically the prime minister of Iraq is Iyad Allawi. He publicly said, I have saved money from twelve intelligence agencies. I think he should go down in the Guinness Book of Records.

AMY GOODMAN: We are talking to Dilip Hiro. His latest book is Secrets and Lies: Operation Iraqi Freedom and After. We'll break. We’ll come back to Dilip Hiro and other guests to talk about the new Iraqi government.

--Dilip Hiro, a veteran journalist on the Middle East. His trilogy of books on Iraq and Iran are considered some of the most definitive histories of the wars in the Persian Gulf. His latest book is called Secrets and Lies: Operation "Iraqi Freedom" and After.

3.

WASHINGTON'S NEOCON IN BAGHDAD? ZALMAY KHALILZAD NOMINATED AS U.S. AMBASSADOR
Interview with Larry Everest

** Zalmay Khalilzad, the current U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan prepares to head to Iraq. We look at his history from supporting the mujahadeen in the 1980s, his relationship to big oil and his role in the Project for the New American Century. **

Democracy Now!
April 7, 2005

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/07/1343234

AMY GOODMAN: Antonia Juhasz with us from California, Larry Everest, as well, author of Oil, Power and Empire: Iraq and the US Global Agenda. Larry, you have been writing about Zalmay Khalilzad. Can you talk about the new U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, formerly of Afghanistan?

LARRY EVEREST: Hi, Amy. Yeah, Zalmay Khalilzad has been a key player in both the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and even more importantly and in some ways interestingly, of the global strategy that's really shaped those wars and U.S. actions since September 11, a global strategy of radically restructuring relations in service of greater U.S. dominance around the world, so I feel his nomination as ambassador to Iraq really tells us two things. First, that the U.S., despite the resistance, despite the upheaval, the U.S. remains bent on reshaping Iraq to serve its interests, not Iraqi interests. This is some of what Antonia was just referring to. Also, that creating this pro-U.S. regime, a pro-U.S. neo-colony, really, in Iraq remains central to broader U.S. objectives in the region, and in the world, including restructuring the Middle East, opening it up to greater U.S. investment, gaining greater control over world energy supplies, and let's not forget militarily dominating potential rivals like Russia and China. It's really fascinating to look at his career, because it opens a window onto the development of this whole grand strategy that's become enshrined as the Bush Doctrine.

Khalilzad was born in Afghanistan, immigrated to the United States and first began working in the government in 1984, the State Department, under Paul Wolfowitz. He moved over to Defense under Dick Cheney and again Wolfowitz under the George H. W. Bush administration in 1988. And in 1992, he was the author of the first articulation of the strategy now in effect that the United States should prevent the rise of any rival powers. This was the so-called Defense Planning Guidance. This was a paper that also paid particular attention to making sure that the US controlled the Persian Gulf and its oil supplies there. So, we can see the genesis of the 2003 invasion over a decade earlier when he and the other neoconservatives in the Bush government were out of office, when Clinton took over, they spent the decades of the 1990s elaborating this vision of U.S. global hegemony, of vociferously demanding more aggressive action around the world, as well as in Iraq and including the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, as you mentioned in your run-up. And one of the interesting things, he wrote a book in 1995, titled From Containment to Global Leadership, and this was really a brief for U.S. global power to be extended all around the world. Very interesting, because he noted that in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse, the United States faced both opportunities and also potential dangers, including the rise of new rivals, the shifting of world economic strength toward Asia, and so on, and he called for decisive action to lock in U.S. domination and argued this was an opportunity that the United States may never see again. And the other thing that's interesting about the book is it makes clear that the Bush strategy is not simply directed against the states like Iran and Iraq and North Korea, but it's also ultimately directed against other world powers, including Europe, Russia and China. So, this is really key to understanding the unfolding events, not just the two wars and occupations that we have seen, but also the growing tensions with Russia and China, Europe’s unhappiness with the 2003 war, and so on.

I should also add that in the 1990s Khalilzad was a consultant to Unocal, one of the oil giants at a time when Unocal was negotiating with the then Taliban government for rights to conduct a pipeline across that country. Of course, when George W. Bush took over in 2000, Khalilzad became quite prominent as a National Security Council member. He was a special assistant for Near East, Southwest Asia and North African Affairs. He was involved in planning the occupation and reshaping of Iraq well before the war. Right before that war, he became the emissary to the Iraqi exiles that the U.S. hoped would eventually rule in Iraq. Plans have not turned out as they thought they would. He oversaw the first meeting of those exiles in April, 2003, in Iraq. Later that year, he was named ambassador to Afghanistan, where again he presided over U.S. efforts to try to solidify control over this very strategically located country. If you take the Middle East where Iraq lies and Central Asia where Afghanistan lies, that's home to 80% of the world's energy supplies, and of course, a militarily strategic area. And we're just learning, the Financial Times just reported yesterday that it seems very likely that the U.S. will be constructing a long term military base in Afghanistan, and we know that they have been considering similar bases in Iraq. So Khalilzad has been at the very center of the efforts to dominate and control the future of the Afghani and the Iraqi people, as well as this broader global agenda that these actions were part of.

AMY GOODMAN: Larry Everest, it's interesting you mention he was a consultant for Unocal, and now ChevronTexaco in Iraq, and ChevronTexaco taking over Unocal.

LARRY EVEREST: Well, it is interesting, because one of the arguments for the takeover was that oil is in short supply, and the majors are having difficulty in finding enough oil reserves. In my book, I go into this at great length, but essentially one of the reasons for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq was part of a multifaceted plan to gain more control over world oil supplies, which are not simply about fueling SUVs in the United States. Oil is a tremendous weapon of control and hegemony. He who controls oil controls both the world economy and those who depend on oil. So, these wars were an effort to both prevent rivals like Russia and China from gaining control over those supplies and also part of a long term strategy of opening these areas up to greater U.S. investment in order to try to meet this growing gap between rising world oil demand and stagnating supply. So, oil, as you were mentioning, should be very much brought back into the conversation about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

AMY GOODMAN: Larry Everest, I was just speaking with some Afghans last night who knew Zalmay Khalilzad and talked about going way back his also role in U.S. policy around supporting the mujahadin in Afghanistan, the mujahadin who were fighting the Soviets and when the Soviet Union was out, set their sites on the United States.

LARRY EVEREST: That's right. In the late 1980s he was part of a working group at the State Department that were the point people for building relations with the mujahadin, and of course, we know that that U.S. and Soviet clash left a million Afghanis dead and the country devastated. And, of course, that was the period of time that the CIA did have contacts and cultivated Osama bin Laden. It's also interesting what Khalilzad has done in Afghanistan during his tenure as ambassador. I mentioned laying the groundwork for having a permanent U.S. military base there, but we should also note that opium production has soared in the country, that the country is still basically a coalition of various warlords, and that one of Khalilzad's last acts in Afghanistan was to recommend that Abdul Rashid Dostum be recommended for a position in the government. Of course, it was Dostum’s militia that murdered hundreds of suspected Taliban fighters by locking them in shipping containers shortly after the U.S. invasion there in 2001, an act of incredible brutality. There have also been reports that his forces have been driving ethnic Pashtuns from their villages and razing the villages and so on. So, this gives a sense of the kind of brutality that Khalilzad and the other members of the Bush administration are willing to bring to bear to advance these objectives we have been discussing this morning.

AMY GOODMAN: Larry Everest, the PNAC recommendations, Project for a New American Century, back under President Clinton, and Zalmay Khalilzad's role in that?

LARRY EVEREST: Well, he signed the letter that you mentioned that called for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. This was an open letter to Bill Clinton in 1998, and while the foreign policy dispute was not the leading edge of the Clinton impeachment, it was certainly an element in this vociferous right-wing campaign to get rid of Clinton. The right wing felt that Clinton was not acting aggressively enough around the world, was not seizing the moment to assert U.S. hegemony as forcefully as it should. One of the interesting things about the letter that Khalilzad signed with a number of the other luminaries of the right wing was that it made no mention of the threat of terror whatsoever and only passing reference to the danger of weapons of mass destruction. The focus of the letter was that Saddam Hussein's continued existence, his continued rule, was threatening U.S. dominance in the Middle East, and that action was needed in order to strengthen Israel, to strengthen U.S.-Arab allies and to insure U.S. control of Persian Gulf oil supply. So, these were the real motives of the 2003 invasion. Studying Khalilzad and getting into this whole global agenda that he has been such a key part of articulating and developing really, really points to the true motives for that 2003 war, a war as I mentioned that was a decade in the making.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Larry Everest, you talked about Paul Wolfowitz. Now he heads up the World Bank, Zalmay Khalilzad nominated to be the ambassador to Iraq. What about Wolfowitz, and the significance of this new position?

LARRY EVEREST: Well, I feel that you can look at Khalilzad's nomination, Wolfowitz's nomination and Bolton's nomination all as a piece. They represent, I feel, the desire by the Bush government not to be restrained in its second term, but to more aggressively push forward this effort to really, and particularly with Wolfowitz and Bolton, it's an effort to really lower the status of Europe, Japan, Russia and other potential competitors to a more second tier subordinate status. I think the U.S. was, of course, very upset that France and Russia didn't rubberstamp the war in Iraq. There’s concerns about the World Bank and its role in -- for example, one thing that could be an outcome of Wolfowitz's nomination is approving a U.S.-driven privatization and funding of U.S. projects in Iraq. So again, I see these as steps, all of a piece in the sense of very aggressively pushing forward this agenda. We have got to be clear that these actions are very likely to lead to further conflict and suffering in many parts of the world, as well as the potential for tremendous upheaval and resistance as these plans unfold.

AMY GOODMAN: Larry Everest, I want to thank you for being with us, author of Oil, Power and Empire: Iraq and the US Global Agenda, writes for the Revolutionary Worker. Antonia Juhasz, author and activist speaking to us from California, and Dilip Hiro, author of Secrets and Lies: Operation Iraqi Freedom and After.

--Larry Everest, author of the book Oil, Power & Empire: Iraq and the U.S. Global Agenda. His website is: http://www.larryeverest.com. He writes frequently for the Revolutionary Worker newspaper. His latest article is titled "Zalmay Khalilzad: Empire Builder Moves to Iraq."