Allawi and Terrorism
We keep hearing about this guy Ayad Allawi, Iraq's new "Prime Minister who has been installed and approved by the Bush Administration. Guess what? This guy is a terrorist, and had been involved with funding numerous car bombings in which innocent bystanders, including cinema-goers and kids on a school bus were killed and injured.
http://www.borrull.org/e/noticia.php?id=34391
Here's another article:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exer...15C59F1978.htm
in which here's what an Allawi spokesperson said about the claim, which was widely reported in the US media without question or analysis, that Saddam could launch WMD within 45 minutes:
The Bush Administration does keep some strange bedfellows: In Iraq, first there was Ahmad Chalabi, a convicted bank fraudster, now suspected of smuggling state secrets to Iran. Now they've approved a thug for Iraq....and as for all their close friends and associates involved in terrorist activities in Central and S.America for decades....well thats a topic for a separate post. The point: BushCorp has modeled its election hopes on its "stance" "against" terrorism and his real support is derived from public ignorance via a cowardly, wimpish media (CNN et al) that only wears government-issue kneepads.
And another article:
The war against terror, or a campaign to help them? Or both?
Quote:
The Iraqi government at the time claimed that the bombs, including one it said exploded in a movie theater, resulted in many civilian casualties. But whether the bombings actually killed any civilians could not be confirmed because, as a former C.I.A. official said, the United States had no significant intelligence sources in Iraq then.
One former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was based in the region, Robert Baer, recalled that a bombing during that period "blew up a school bus; schoolchildren were killed." Mr. Baer, a critic of the Iraq war, said he did not recall which resistance group might have set off that bomb.
The Iraqi government at the time claimed that the bombs, including one it said exploded in a movie theater, resulted in many civilian casualties. But whether the bombings actually killed any civilians could not be confirmed because, as a former C.I.A. official said, the United States had no significant intelligence sources in Iraq then.
One former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was based in the region, Robert Baer, recalled that a bombing during that period "blew up a school bus; schoolchildren were killed." Mr. Baer, a critic of the Iraq war, said he did not recall which resistance group might have set off that bomb.
http://www.borrull.org/e/noticia.php?id=34391
Here's another article:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exer...15C59F1978.htm
in which here's what an Allawi spokesperson said about the claim, which was widely reported in the US media without question or analysis, that Saddam could launch WMD within 45 minutes:
Quote:
But the INA will likely be most remembered_in Britain for passing on to MI6 a report from an Iraqi officer who made the now-infamous claim that Saddam could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes.
The_London-based The Times quoted an Allawi spokesperson in New York who asserted in January 2004 that the 45-minute claim was essentially a "crock of s**t" indicating that the claim was indeed defunct and baseless.
But the INA will likely be most remembered_in Britain for passing on to MI6 a report from an Iraqi officer who made the now-infamous claim that Saddam could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes.
The_London-based The Times quoted an Allawi spokesperson in New York who asserted in January 2004 that the 45-minute claim was essentially a "crock of s**t" indicating that the claim was indeed defunct and baseless.
The Bush Administration does keep some strange bedfellows: In Iraq, first there was Ahmad Chalabi, a convicted bank fraudster, now suspected of smuggling state secrets to Iran. Now they've approved a thug for Iraq....and as for all their close friends and associates involved in terrorist activities in Central and S.America for decades....well thats a topic for a separate post. The point: BushCorp has modeled its election hopes on its "stance" "against" terrorism and his real support is derived from public ignorance via a cowardly, wimpish media (CNN et al) that only wears government-issue kneepads.
And another article:
Quote:
An article in the New York Times last week about Iraq?s new prime minister, Ayad Allawi, has once again highlighted the hypocrisy of the Bush administration?s ?war on terrorism? and its claims to be bringing democracy to Iraq.
Allawi has a particularly sordid past. The son of a wealthy Shiite family, Allawi was an enthusiastic member of the Baath Party for a decade in Baghdad. He resigned from the party in 1975 while in Britain, became an opponent of the Saddam Hussein regime and began a lengthy collaboration with various intelligence agencies, including MI6 and the CIA. In 1990, as Washington turned on its former ally Hussein and launched the first Gulf War, Allawi established the Iraqi National Accord (INA), composed largely of dissident Baathists, including military and intelligence officers, to take advantage of new opportunities opening up.
All this is openly acknowledged by the INA and Allawi, who recently declared that he was not ashamed of his connections to the CIA and other intelligence services. What the New York Times article revealed, however, was that Allawi and the INA, at the behest of the CIA, carried out various activities inside Iraq in the early 1990s to destabilise the Hussein regime. These included car bombings and attacks of the type that Allawi and the US now denounce as ?terrorist?.
Most of the sources for the article are unnamed US intelligence officials. While their statements remain unconfirmed, neither the Bush administration nor Allawi has denied the report?s accuracy. The INA bombings took place between 1992 and 1995 using explosives that were smuggled into the country via the US-imposed ?no-fly? zone in northern Iraq, which was a hotbed for CIA intrigue in the 1990s.
US intelligence officials played down the number of civilian casualties. Former CIA operative Robert Baer, who worked with Iraqi exile groups, recalled that one bomb ?blew up a school bus; schoolchildren were killed?. He was not sure if it was the INA?s work, but other intelligence officials told the New York Times that the INA was the only group involved in such activities at the time.
The New York Times report refers to a 1997 article in the British-based Independent newspaper, which was based on a videotape with Abu Amneh al-Khadami, who described himself as the INA?s chief bomb maker. Details of the video, subsequently provided in a book by Patrick and Andrew Cockburn entitled ?Saddam: An American Obsession,? add to the evidence of the INA?s involvement:
?No one had ever claimed responsibility for the bomb blasts that echoed around Baghdad in 1994 and 1995. One explosion had gone off in a cinema, another in a mosque. A car bomb outside the offices of al-Jourmoriah, the Baath Party newspaper, had wounded a large number of passers-by and killed a child. Altogether, the bombs had killed as many as a hundred civilians.?
The book explains how an INA leader, Adnan Nuri, a former Iraqi general, had Khadami released from a Kurdish jail and mapped out the bombing campaign. According to Khadami, who had a team of at least a dozen men, the campaign?s purpose ?was to impress Nuri?s sponsors in the CIA with the operational reach of the organisation they were funding.? The account explains that Khadami made the video after he began to suspect Nuri. On camera, he complained that his sponsor had failed to provide sufficient money and explosives.
While there is no means for verifying the detail, there appears to be little doubt that the INA, with the blessing of the CIA, carried out these terrorist attacks. One US official, who worked with Allawi in the early 1990s, commented to the New York Times: ?No one had any problem with sabotage in Baghdad back then... I don?t think anyone could have known how things would turn out today.?
Allawi and the INA went on to attempt a coup against Hussein in 1996, which failed miserably. Iraqi intelligence had penetrated the INA network, learned of the plan and rounded up over 100 of the plotters. The CIA, however, maintained close contacts with Allawi. He also retained ties with MI6 and Saudi Arabian intelligence, and in Jordan where the INA set up an office and a radio station.
Like the rest of the newly selected puppet regime in Baghdad, Allawi has a long record of support for Washington and championed the US-led invasion of Iraq. But his particular qualifications for being prime minister include his involvement in the bombings of the early 1990s. Under conditions where the US occupation faces relentless daily attack, Washington regards Allawi?s proven record of ruthlessness as essential to stamping out the continuing armed resistance. As a former CIA analyst Kenneth Pollack cynically commented to the New York Times: ?Send a thief to catch a thief.?
Allawi has made ?security? one of his priorities. His only criticism of the US occupation has been that Washington?s proconsul in Baghdad, Paul Bremer III, dismantled the repressive apparatus of Saddam Hussein. Allawi is now busily seeking to incorporate elements of the Baathist regime in the Iraqi army, police and intelligence services as the means for cracking down on widespread popular opposition to the US and its local puppets.
At an official gathering last week, Allawi outlined plans to rebuild the Iraqi security forces and to bring back the death penalty. ?We need to reconstitute or build an internal security apparatus similar to the MI5 or the FBI, which has the power of interrogation and detention,? he told reporters.
The process has already begun. Last December, Allawi and Ibrahim al-Janabi, another senior INA member, flew to the CIA headquarters in the US to meet with CIA director George Tenet and other top officials about plans to reconstitute an internal intelligence service. Janabi told the New York Times that the new body would include former members of Hussein?s notorious secret police?the Mukhabarat. While Janabi played down the numbers involved, he insisted that Mukhabarat members had invaluable connections, knowledge and experience.
At the same function, Allawi told a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer: ?I am a tough guy?. He explained that he would like to reestablish at least five divisions of the old Iraqi army each of 10,000 men. ?Entire units won?t be coming back,? he declared. ?But 40 to 50 percent of the army would be available, the mid- to lower ranks and warrant officers.?
All of this makes a mockery of the Bush administration?s claims to be establishing democracy to Iraq. Washington has installed a man known for his loyalty to the US and his ruthlessness. His brief is to intimidate and terrorise a hostile population into submission, using any available means. It is no accident that he seeking to recruit the torturers, hangmen and thugs of the old Baathist regime.
An article in the New York Times last week about Iraq?s new prime minister, Ayad Allawi, has once again highlighted the hypocrisy of the Bush administration?s ?war on terrorism? and its claims to be bringing democracy to Iraq.
Allawi has a particularly sordid past. The son of a wealthy Shiite family, Allawi was an enthusiastic member of the Baath Party for a decade in Baghdad. He resigned from the party in 1975 while in Britain, became an opponent of the Saddam Hussein regime and began a lengthy collaboration with various intelligence agencies, including MI6 and the CIA. In 1990, as Washington turned on its former ally Hussein and launched the first Gulf War, Allawi established the Iraqi National Accord (INA), composed largely of dissident Baathists, including military and intelligence officers, to take advantage of new opportunities opening up.
All this is openly acknowledged by the INA and Allawi, who recently declared that he was not ashamed of his connections to the CIA and other intelligence services. What the New York Times article revealed, however, was that Allawi and the INA, at the behest of the CIA, carried out various activities inside Iraq in the early 1990s to destabilise the Hussein regime. These included car bombings and attacks of the type that Allawi and the US now denounce as ?terrorist?.
Most of the sources for the article are unnamed US intelligence officials. While their statements remain unconfirmed, neither the Bush administration nor Allawi has denied the report?s accuracy. The INA bombings took place between 1992 and 1995 using explosives that were smuggled into the country via the US-imposed ?no-fly? zone in northern Iraq, which was a hotbed for CIA intrigue in the 1990s.
US intelligence officials played down the number of civilian casualties. Former CIA operative Robert Baer, who worked with Iraqi exile groups, recalled that one bomb ?blew up a school bus; schoolchildren were killed?. He was not sure if it was the INA?s work, but other intelligence officials told the New York Times that the INA was the only group involved in such activities at the time.
The New York Times report refers to a 1997 article in the British-based Independent newspaper, which was based on a videotape with Abu Amneh al-Khadami, who described himself as the INA?s chief bomb maker. Details of the video, subsequently provided in a book by Patrick and Andrew Cockburn entitled ?Saddam: An American Obsession,? add to the evidence of the INA?s involvement:
?No one had ever claimed responsibility for the bomb blasts that echoed around Baghdad in 1994 and 1995. One explosion had gone off in a cinema, another in a mosque. A car bomb outside the offices of al-Jourmoriah, the Baath Party newspaper, had wounded a large number of passers-by and killed a child. Altogether, the bombs had killed as many as a hundred civilians.?
The book explains how an INA leader, Adnan Nuri, a former Iraqi general, had Khadami released from a Kurdish jail and mapped out the bombing campaign. According to Khadami, who had a team of at least a dozen men, the campaign?s purpose ?was to impress Nuri?s sponsors in the CIA with the operational reach of the organisation they were funding.? The account explains that Khadami made the video after he began to suspect Nuri. On camera, he complained that his sponsor had failed to provide sufficient money and explosives.
While there is no means for verifying the detail, there appears to be little doubt that the INA, with the blessing of the CIA, carried out these terrorist attacks. One US official, who worked with Allawi in the early 1990s, commented to the New York Times: ?No one had any problem with sabotage in Baghdad back then... I don?t think anyone could have known how things would turn out today.?
Allawi and the INA went on to attempt a coup against Hussein in 1996, which failed miserably. Iraqi intelligence had penetrated the INA network, learned of the plan and rounded up over 100 of the plotters. The CIA, however, maintained close contacts with Allawi. He also retained ties with MI6 and Saudi Arabian intelligence, and in Jordan where the INA set up an office and a radio station.
Like the rest of the newly selected puppet regime in Baghdad, Allawi has a long record of support for Washington and championed the US-led invasion of Iraq. But his particular qualifications for being prime minister include his involvement in the bombings of the early 1990s. Under conditions where the US occupation faces relentless daily attack, Washington regards Allawi?s proven record of ruthlessness as essential to stamping out the continuing armed resistance. As a former CIA analyst Kenneth Pollack cynically commented to the New York Times: ?Send a thief to catch a thief.?
Allawi has made ?security? one of his priorities. His only criticism of the US occupation has been that Washington?s proconsul in Baghdad, Paul Bremer III, dismantled the repressive apparatus of Saddam Hussein. Allawi is now busily seeking to incorporate elements of the Baathist regime in the Iraqi army, police and intelligence services as the means for cracking down on widespread popular opposition to the US and its local puppets.
At an official gathering last week, Allawi outlined plans to rebuild the Iraqi security forces and to bring back the death penalty. ?We need to reconstitute or build an internal security apparatus similar to the MI5 or the FBI, which has the power of interrogation and detention,? he told reporters.
The process has already begun. Last December, Allawi and Ibrahim al-Janabi, another senior INA member, flew to the CIA headquarters in the US to meet with CIA director George Tenet and other top officials about plans to reconstitute an internal intelligence service. Janabi told the New York Times that the new body would include former members of Hussein?s notorious secret police?the Mukhabarat. While Janabi played down the numbers involved, he insisted that Mukhabarat members had invaluable connections, knowledge and experience.
At the same function, Allawi told a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer: ?I am a tough guy?. He explained that he would like to reestablish at least five divisions of the old Iraqi army each of 10,000 men. ?Entire units won?t be coming back,? he declared. ?But 40 to 50 percent of the army would be available, the mid- to lower ranks and warrant officers.?
All of this makes a mockery of the Bush administration?s claims to be establishing democracy to Iraq. Washington has installed a man known for his loyalty to the US and his ruthlessness. His brief is to intimidate and terrorise a hostile population into submission, using any available means. It is no accident that he seeking to recruit the torturers, hangmen and thugs of the old Baathist regime.
The war against terror, or a campaign to help them? Or both?
Comments
Originally posted by sammi jo
...
The Bush Administration does keep some strange bedfellows: In Iraq, first there was Ahmad Chalabi, a convicted bank fraudster, ....
It's all so easy for you huh SJO? Take the word of anti-Semitic dictator and slander someone that never had a day in court. Brownshirt!
The Petra Bank Scandal
Jordan slandered my father at Saddam's behest.
BY TAMARA CHALABI
Thursday, August 7, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT
BAGHDAD--Ahmad Chalabi, my father, is here in Iraq, sitting on the Governing Council of Iraqi nationals that will help ours become a free country. Iraqis from all regions and religions line up daily to meet him at his home. They know his lifelong cause is democracy for all Iraqis, not just a chosen few. To them he is a good man, and an attractive leader.
Yet many in the Western media seem unable to mention my father's name without regurgitating a 14-year-old Jordanian libel that he wrongfully diverted assets of his own Petra Bank. The real story couldn't be more different. Petra Bank was seized and destroyed by those in the Jordanian establishment who'd become willing to do Saddam Hussein's bidding. That Jordan has branded my father as an "asset diverter" would be comic, were it not for what it says about that kingdom's servile complicity with Saddam.
In 1978, Ahmad Chalabi formed Petra Bank in Amman. It prospered, growing to be the second largest bank in Jordan. In the '80s, as a pillar of Jordan's banking system, he fought to obstruct Saddam's ability to finance his war with Iran, as well as his weapons programs. He warned about a grain-sales financing scheme, whereby Iraq obtained funds from the Atlanta branch of an Italian bank to finance arms purchases. He challenged the ways in which Jordan profited from arms sales to Iraq and angered Saddam by pressuring Jordan's Central Bank not to issue Iraq letters of credit on Saddam's terms.
In early 1989, Petra submitted its annual financial statement to the Central Bank, showing continuing asset growth--and nothing that would justify singling it out for military seizure. The authorities approved the financial accounts, just as they had in the past. Petra Bank, if left alone, would be prospering today. Instead, here is the sequence of events:
? In April 1989, a shuffle in the Jordanian government brought to power a group of officials with intimate ties to Saddam. On Aug. 3, 1989, out of nowhere, they declared that my father had diverted assets of Petra Bank, so much so that it was a risk to the nation of Jordan. Invoking a wildly inapplicable 22-year-old martial-law decree, issued to stave off economic crisis triggered by Israel's occupation of the West Bank, Jordan literally attacked Petra Bank. Armed soldiers, backed by tanks, stormed its Amman offices, then being operated by unarmed civilian bank employees.
? My father left Jordan, driving himself to Syria after being warned by a sympathetic member of the government that the plan was to arrest him and deliver him to Saddam. His family was told by a former U.S. diplomat that he was smart to leave as his life was at risk.
? After leaving Jordan, he continued to speak out against Saddam, predicting that he would invade Kuwait. Almost immediately after my father sounded this warning, Jordan swept down again. Using Arthur Andersen's Geneva branch, it issued a new audit that rewrote the financial condition of Petra Bank to make it appear insolvent on the date it was seized. Assets of 476 million Jordanian dinars ($541 million) were "revalued" downward to 297 million dinars ($337 million). Later, the bank's liquidators reported a collection rate of over 150% on the bulk of the devalued assets--a recovery rate that in itself shows the revaluation was a ruse.
? The true asset picture approved just months before the takeover made this new audit a lie. If it could have dared to challenge the authorities, the public needed to ask but one question: Why did Jordan denounce Petra Bank in 1989, a year when the bank had met all its overseas obligations while Jordan itself was so financially troubled that it had declared a moratorium on all its own payments?
? Not coincidentally, the same Jordanian military that had taken over Petra Bank took Saddam's side when he invaded Kuwait.
? The military occupation of Petra Bank was enough to destroy public confidence in the bank. The actions of those who took over assured its ruin. They failed to honor commitments made by the bank, accelerated business loans that were not in default and not due, foreclosed on assets securing those loans, and then sold the assets at bargain prices to individuals closely tied to the Jordanian government. Employees in three countries, including the U.S., lost their jobs, and the Chalabi family lost tens of millions of dollars.
? In December 1991, my father went on U.S. television and described how Jordan was helping Iraq violate sanctions on weapons procurement, producing documents to back up his claims. He spoke of Iraq's many accounts with the Central Bank of Jordan to finance these purchases. The head of that bank denied this, while admitting that "mysteriously" some $55 million of Iraqi money had shown up in his bank after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. My father also revealed that Jordan turned that money over to Saddam, even though Iraq owed impoverished Jordan hundreds of millions of dollars.
? A few months later, Jordan set up a State Security Court to try my father in absentia. The court was established on April 1, 1992, met only once--on April 8--and the next day issued a 223-page decision finding my father guilty. If any more than this "efficiency" is needed to show that the trial was illegitimate, consider this: The month before the trial started, the martial law on which the court's decision was based had been abolished!
Jordan did all this for Saddam Hussein.
But things are different now. My father has demanded the records from this military tribunal and the basis for the lengthy decision--one written, Jordan claims, in just one day. He may well invoke a more balanced forum to recover his losses and good name if Jordan does not make a clean break with its quisling past and publicly declare that it has no evidence of wrongdoing by Ahmad Chalabi.
Ms. Chalabi recently completed a Ph.D in history and Middle East studies at Harvard. She works with her father in Iraq.
Of course, if you prefer to take the opinion of his daughter over the audit that found the banks assets to have been overstated by $200 million, that's entirely up to you. But you might want to consider the possibility that she was one of the family members who benifitted from the $130 in loans to related parties.
You might also want to note that it cost the Jordinian government an estimated $500 million to guarantee investors money after the bank collapsed. It would have been much cheaper just to disappear Chalabi and have someone else run the bank. Also noteworthy is the fact that Hassan Abdul Aziz (a former associate of Chalabi and former director of Petra) has gone on record stating that Saddam's Iraq benefitted from letters of credit from Petra in the early eighties.