‘An Honor I Do Not Claim’

As a leading voice among the Iraqi exiles who opposed Saddam Hussein's regime, Ahmad Chalabi was a channel for high-profile defectors who encouraged the U.S. invasion with their accounts of Saddam's supposed weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Qaeda. Eventually those tales were debunked, but Saddam was finished by then, and Chalabi flew home to help dismantle the dictatorship as head of the De-Baathification Commission, a post he still holds despite much criticism of his tenure. Along the way he has filled numerous other senior government positions, including oil minister and deputy prime minister. He recently spoke to NEWSWEEK's Lennox Samuels at his well-guarded Baghdad offices about his own controversial past and Iraq's post-occupation future. Excerpts:

What's your assessment of Iraq's current situation?
The sectarian situation is much improved. The main reasons are, first, the Sahwa [former Sunni insurgents now helping to fight against Al Qaeda]. General [David] Petraeus was successful in providing them with the focus around which first to shun and then defeat Al Qaeda. He came to the conclusion that it was cheaper to pay people than to shoot them. The second had a great deal to do with Iran, and that is the ceasefire of the Mahdi Army, which came about as a result of Iranian efforts in cooperation with the government of Iraq to persuade Moqtada al-Sadr to declare a ceasefire.

What we want to do is make these security gains lasting and permanent. We have in Iraq now about a million men under arms—that's the Army and police. We must improve our command and control and we must improve our armaments, weapons, and training, and we must improve the level of training of soldiers and officers. Above all, we must improve our intelligence capability. The battle against terrorism is not only a military fight but primarily a battle of information.

There's the issue of performance and competence and the ability to run the non-security side, and this has been less successful. There we are beset by three problems. First, competence; second, the issue of corruption; and third, the issue of party and clan loyalty.

Unfortunately, competence has played less of a role than it should in the choice of key administrators across the board. It was clouded in the American media by the notion that Baathists were excluded and that therefore there was lack of competence. This was patent nonsense, as the bulk of members of the Baath Party were never fired. And among the high-ranking Baathists, almost 90 percent of the people who requested exemptions were given exemptions and returned to their jobs. It became a canard for American congressmen, senators, various others in politics to flog this horse to make some political points.

What about the issue of corruption?
I can tell you with confidence that corruption in Iraq has reached several levels of magnitude higher than under the CPA [Coalition Provisional Authority]. Now we have this issue of corruption in the Ministry of Trade, with the [former] minister arrested. [The former minister, Abdul Falah al-Sudani, has denied any wrongdoing and has been released on bail.] The fight against corruption is not bound to high-profile arrests and high-profile investigations. The fight against corruption is successful if you prevent corruption taking place in the first place.

How would you assess the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki?
On security, very good. On information collection, medium. On services, medium to low. On improving quality of life, medium to low.

Have you been surprised by Maliki's performance? He was supposed to be a transitional figure.
I knew Maliki for a long time. He served as my deputy in the De-Baathification Commission for three years. I knew him to be decisive and brave, so I'm not surprised by his performance on the security issues. And the whole situation was helped by the presence of a man like General Petraeus, who understood the background to the political situation and helped Maliki in confronting the security threat. I'm less impressed by the performance on services, the economy. To handle the economy and services in a country like Iraq requires delegation of authority and the choice of competent people. I think one of the main problems was "jobs for the boys"—jobs for people who are loyal. Loyalty gained precedence over competence.