Word: chalabi
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...Ahmad Chalabi is nothing if not indefatigable. The dapper Iraqi multimillionaire who was instrumental in pressing the U.S. to invade Iraq - and viewed by many in Washington as the presumptive leader of a future Iraqi government - failed to win a seat in his country's parliament in 2005, and came under suspicion in Washington of passing secrets to Iran (although no charges were ever filed in this respect). Still, he bounced back, and was tapped last November to run a committee tasked with improving the delivery of basic services such as water and electricity in Baghdad. The post required coordinating...
...Washington has any say in the matter: This week, according to two U.S. officials, America's diplomats and military liaisons were told to cut off ties with Chalabi. One official said the instruction came in anticipation of Chalabi being taken off the Baghdad Services Committee, adding that if the Iraqi government is removing him from his position, then there is no need to contact him or provide support. NBC News first reported the rebuke on its website, citing American concern over Chalabi's contacts with Iran. A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad would not elaborate on the order...
...Allegations about Chalabi's ties to Iran are not new. His Baghdad compound was raided in 2004 when U.S. officials suspected he had warned Iranian intelligence that the U.S. had broken its communications codes. A subsequent FBI investigation led to no charges, and Chalabi was never questioned in the matter, even when he traveled to the U.S. in 2005 as a deputy prime minister of Iraq. Since then, U.S. contact with Chalabi has been mostly limited to his efforts to bring power generators and water trucks to the most neglected neighborhoods of Baghdad...
...position had provided Chalabi with some political capital, and a little publicity. His political organization, the Iraqi National Congress, recently launched a weekly newspaper dedicated to citizens' complaints about the lack of services around Baghdad. An op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal on April 12 wrote that "arguably [Chalabi] has, more than anyone in the country, evolved a detailed sense of what ails Baghdad and how to fix things...
...Over the past six months, Chalabi has focused a lot of attention on delivering services to Sadr City, the northeast Baghdad Shi'ite slum that is a major stronghold of the firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. To do this required close coordination with al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, which has over the past month been locked in fierce battles with U.S. and Iraqi government forces. The U.S. alleges that elements of the Mahdi Army have received training and weapons from Iran. "We talk to the Madhi Army," says Chalabi spokesman Mohammad Hassan al-Moussawi, "because the Madhi Army...