IRAQ: Iraq's outgoing Governing Council was peppered with unsavoury elements, Lara Marlowe reports from Baghdad
The most crucial question facing the government that took office on Monday is whether it can win the confidence of the Iraqi people. At the moment Iraqis are so desperate for change that a significant portion of the population is willing to give Prime Minister Iyad Allawi a chance.
But the precedent of the outgoing Governing Council, appointed by the former US administrator, Paul Bremer, in July 2003 lingers like a stain. The top four officials in the new interim government come from the council. About half of the ministers in the new government sat either in the council or were already ministers.
In eleven months the council earned a reputation for impotence, arrogance, corruption and nepotism. One of its members is charged with murder, 17 members of the entourage of another with kidnapping, torture and counterfeiting.
Yet Iraq's new political class, hand-picked by Mr Bremer and his friends in the Pentagon, has become a self-perpetuating clique.
Though President Bush promised that the UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi would name the new Iraqi government, the council in fact chose President Ghazi al-Yawar and Prime Minister Allawi.
The political process set in motion by Mr Bremer ensures that his proteges will continue to enjoy the same privileges. The 21 members of the council who were not given jobs in the new government were automatically appointed to a 60-strong preparatory committee which is to convoke an assembly of 1,000 Iraqi notables next month.
The goal of creating the committee was to bring in opposition leaders like the Shia sheikh, Moqtada Sadr, and the Sunni leader, Sheikh Muthanna al-Dhari, but most have refused.
Council members were awarded $5,000 monthly salaries, US mobile phones, eight cars each and a retinue of bodyguards. A US source in the now dissolved Coalition Provisional Authority says each council member received a large parcel of land in central Baghdad as a bonus.
"They hired all their relatives," says a frustrated Iraqi official. "People wait in line for hours in petrol queues and they see eight cars whizzing by for one person - sometimes for one child, because even their kids moved around with eight cars.
"Imagine how Iraqis feel when there are thousands of PhDs in this country who cannot find jobs."
Iraqis who stayed and suffered under Saddam harbour deep resentment against those who fled to Europe and the US for safety and to get rich. Most members of Iraq's new political class chosen by Mr Bremer were educated in Europe or America, lived abroad until last year and have no grassroots support here. Some moved into the palaces abandoned by former members of Saddam's regime.
"Who brought these people?" says the same Iraqi official. "They are not Iraqis. They have foreign passports in their back pockets. Their families are not here. Some of them can't even speak Arabic."
The transitional constitution drawn up last spring reads beautifully in English, he notes. "But ask an Iraqi person to read it to you in Arabic; it's a mess. Only people who can speak and read English would understand the Arabic translation."
Though Mr Bremer gave it no real power, the council showed its ignorance of Iraqi society in the few decisions it did take. On assuming office in July 2003, its first decision was to declare April 9th a national holiday.
"For them it was the fall of Saddam, but for the population, it marked the defeat of the national army," notes a diplomat.
In the end, the first anniversary was not celebrated at all. Last month, the council chose a new Iraqi flag, which was burned in the streets. Protesters said it looked like an Israeli flag.
"It wouldn't have mattered what it looked like," the diplomat continues. "These people have not understood how unpopular they are."
When a convoy carrying private contractors for General Electric was bombed on Tahrir Square in central Baghdad two weeks ago, five westerners and 11 Iraqis were killed. After rescuing survivors from houses that collapsed in the blast, a crowd began throwing stones at the burned-out vehicles, screaming, "Down with America, Down with the Governing Council."
As chief investigating judge in charge of administrative corruption, Zuheir al-Maliky might be said to have a short life expectancy. Thirteen Iraqi judges have been assassinated since April 2003, including two of Maliky's friends who had just been appointed to the Court of Cassation.
On May 27th, Maliky stopped on his way home from work to talk to friends in the street. Seven gunmen tried to kidnap him. "One was only two metres away, with a pistol aimed at me. One of my bodyguards jumped in the way to protect me. The gunman said, 'Step aside. It's him we want, not you'." Three of Maliky's bodyguards were seriously wounded, but he was saved because a police patrol happened by.
When the attack started, Maliky pulled out both of his telephones - one a US mobile like those given to council members and their hangers-on, the other an 'Iraqna' mobile phone.
The gunmen tried to grab the US phone - the line of contact to US and top-ranking officials - and ignored the 'Iraqna' phone. It was a clue that Maliky's attackers frequent a milieu where there are US mobiles.
For Maliky has enemies in high places. He stresses that he has no case against Ahmad Chalabi, the now disgraced former council member who was favoured by the Pentagon to lead post-war Iraq. But he has charged 17 people working with Chalabi with kidnapping, torture, stealing government property and counterfeiting. All are members of Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress and the Free Iraq Forces who entered the country with US troops.
The 17 remain free, with some rumoured to be in Iran. One gave an interview to a newspaper in the US. Maliky says they kidnapped more than ten people for ransom, including a physician. They tortured their victims to make them say where they hid money, gold and jewellery.
Maliky thought the US administration would intervene. "On the day of the raid [on the former home of the chief of Saddam's secret police which Chalabi had taken over] I half expected a phone call saying 'stop'," he says.
But in the meantime, Chalabi had become a convenient fall guy for the US administration's unproven assertions about weapons of mass destruction. Only Richard Perle, the US neo-conservative advisor to the Pentagon, who is a close friend of Chalabi and Bremer, criticised Maliky."I still don't understand why a high-ranking US official is involved with a kidnapping case in Iraq," Maliky says.
Some observers believe the new Iraqi corruption is an offshoot of American corruption. The Pentagon has launched a criminal investigation into fraud at Halliburton, the US oil company which Vice President Dick Cheney headed before taking office. Halliburton has sole responsibility for rebuilding Iraq's oil industry. Its subisidiary Kellogg Brown & Root is the chief supplier to US troops here.