A week ago, Ha'aretz's Zvi Bar'el published an interesting story about Feith, Zell and L'Affaire Chalabi, that I've just come across in Counterpunch. For many of us curious about the mysterious staying power of Doug Feith, when his office's work has gone so awry in Iraq and elsewhere, this article begins to help answer the question of why; Feith is a connected guy. At his old law firm Feith, Zell, [now Zell Goldberg], Feith was representing Israeli arms manufacturers in the US:

L. Marc Zell, an Israeli citizen, and his partners have offices in Israel--in the Azrieli Towers in Tel Aviv and in Jerusalem--as well as in Moscow, Seattle and Washington. In a telephone conversation he refused to confirm or deny his ties with Salem Chalabi. However, until a few months ago, the home page of the Iraqi International Law Group --the name of Chalabi's consultancy company--listed as its address the offices of Zell, Goldberg in Washington, and according to Arab sources, Salem Chalabi visited Israel a few weeks ago.

Zell, Goldberg represent Israeli defense manufacturing firms in the U.S. and in other countries. Until 2001, Douglas Feith was a senior partner in the law office, which was then known as Feith, Zell. In 2001, Feith was appointed U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy and is thought to be the progenitor of the war strategy against Saddam Hussein.

Another name has to be added to the Feith, Chalabi, Zell parallelogram of forces: businessman Abdul Huda Farouqi, owner of a company called Nour USA. Farouqi's good connections with Ahmed Chalabi date back to 1989, when Chalabi, then the CEO of Petra Bank, helped him finance projects around the world. Farouqi was on the brink of bankruptcy, but succeeded in extricating himself, and a few years later his names cropped up on the list of donors to President Bill Clinton.

At the end of the war in Iraq, Farouqi's firm won a huge tender to supply equipment to the new Iraqi army that the U.S. was about to establish. However, the intervention of an unseen hand, probably U.S. officers in Iraq who weren't satisfied with the services they were getting, brought about the annulment of the tender, with other companies winning the lucrative contracts. Farouqi, though, came out of it well: He won a tender to secure oil facilities and pipelines in Iraq, for which he hired the services of some 6,000 Iraqis, naturally from Chalabi's followers. The attorney who brokered the deal was Salem Chalabi, who still holds the title of president of the tribunal to try Saddam Hussein, but who is himself wanted by the Iraqi authorities.

I don't have a big point to make from this, it's just incredibly interesting. Following the money almost always is. [Recent research I've been doing on another article shows Feith's father Dalck Feith among those who have donated money to the organization behind the Committe on the Present Danger, which has been set up with the tax status of a lobbying organization, a 501(c)4 . . . I'll be having an article on this coming out soon.]

While I'm on the subject of Feith, and my post from a couple days back that put forward Juan Cole's contention that Feith, Wurmser, Perle (who's done his own share of lobbying for Israeli arms manufacturers), etc. believed in the fantasy of the restoration of the Hashemite monarchy in Iraq in remaking the Middle East map . . . my very clever reader BH has written me this:

Here's the relevant section A Clean Break, which I'm sure you've seen:

"King Hussein may have ideas for Israel in bringing its Lebanon problem under control. The predominantly Shia population of southern Lebanon has been tied for centuries to the Shia leadership in Najaf, Iraq rather than Iran. Were the Hashemites to control Iraq, they could use their influence over Najf to help Israel wean the south Lebanese Shia away from Hizballah, Iran, and Syria. Shia retain strong ties to the Hashemites: the Shia venerate foremost the Prophet's family, the direct descendants of which - and in whose veins the blood of the Prophet flows - is King Hussein."

It seems to me that this has more to do with Chalabi's relationship with former Jordanian Crown Prince Hassan than anything related to reality. Chalabi credits
Hassan with saving his tuchus in Jordan.

To wit:

http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/166

Then, of course, there is the inconvenient fact that in the 1920s the Najaf clergy issued a little fatwa forbidding Iraqi Shia from collaborating with the
Hashemite monarchy ...

Here's a relevant passage from Yitzhak Nakash's book on the Iraqi Shia:

The very small number of Shi'is employed in the Iraqi civil service in the 1920s was not only a result of government policies and existing patterns of patronage, but also a reflection of the reluctance of Shi'is to accept government positions. The question of lawfulness of accepting office under an illegitimate ruler was an old problem in the Shi'i legal system.

Shi'i ulama traditionally considered Sunni governments illegitimate, and very few Shi'is were employed by the Ottoman government. As part of their opposition to the British presence in Iraq and the Iraqi government as
it was constituted in the 1920s, the mujtahids declared a ban on accepting government office. Thus, in March 1920 Mirza Muhammad Taqi Shirazi issued a
fatwa pronouncing all service under British rule unlawful. In 1921 Mahdi al-Kahlisi too banned acceptance of government office, considering it as an
act of cooperation with the infidels. The ban issued by the mujtahids, which remained in force until 1927, evoked a heated debate within the Shi'i community
regarding the morality of becoming a government functionary and the implications of holding state office."

There seems to be some discrepancy about the dates, but the point stands: the authors of "A Clean Break" were full of [it.]

History repeats itself.

Oy.

Incredible. It's like the victors of World War I in 1919, drawing up the maps of the old Ottoman empire, etc. free form according to some romantic notions. It hasn't worked out very well.

Posted by Laura at August 24, 2004 09:51 AM