Iraq's Revenant Sons

Iraqi Jews - a quarter of a million strong - are known in Israel for their haughtiness and broad education, the latter often the cause of the former. They were forced to flee Arab-nationalist Iraq in 1941-1951, following the rise of Nazism and, later, the establishment of the State of Israel.

Yet, though they have left Baghdad physically after 2600 years of continuous presence - many of them are still there emotionally. This holds true for numerous other Iraqi exiles, expatriates and immigrants in the far-flung diaspora. There are 90,000 Iraqis in the USA alone, according to the latest data from the Census Bureau.

But nostalgia may be the only common denominator. Exile groups jostle aggressively for the spoils of war: political leadership, sinecures, economic concessions, commercial monopolies and access to funds. The Washington Times reported yesterday that the Pentagon and the State Department back different cliques. It quoted one Republican congressional aide as saying: "There's a deep and messy war in the administration, and it's in the weeds".

Arab countries are promoting Sunni future leaders. Pro-democracy souls support representatives of the hitherto oppressed Shiite majority. Most exiles oppose a prolonged postwar U.S. presence or even an interim administration. They opt for a government of Iraqi technocrats with a clear United Nations mandate. The fractious Iraqi opposition and the two main Kurdish factions set up an Iraqi Interim Authority, a government-in-waiting with 14 ministries and a military command.

The Brussels-based International Crisis Group warned last Tuesday against a provisional administration composed substantially of exiles and expatriates:

``It would be a mistake to short-circuit the domestic political contest by prematurely picking a winner. Under either of these scenarios, the bulk of Iraqis inside Iraq, Sunni and Shiite, Arab, Kurd and others, who have been brutally disenfranchised for over three decades, would remain voiceless.''

The exile groups are out of touch with local realities and, as the Washington Times notes, compromised in the eyes of the Iraqis by their extensive contacts with the CIA and the USA, their political amateurism and their all-pervasive venality.

The finances of such self-rule could come from the $3.6 billion in Iraqi assets in the United States - about half of which have been recently re-frozen. The coffers of the United Nations administered oil-for-food program bulge with $40 billion in undistributed funds - enough to bankroll the entire reconstruction effort. Saddam and his clan are thought to have stashed at least $6 billion abroad. Everyone, though, tiptoes around the sensitive issue of reimbursing the war expenses of the coalition of the willing.

The Pentagon has other ideas in mind. It has recently formed the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, headed by a retired general, Jay Garner. A few exiles, worried by this "colonial" tendency, have infiltrated Iraq, at great personal risk, to ensure that an Iraqi alternative is in place when Operation Iraqi Freedom achieves its eponymous goal.

Iraqi immigrants are fiercely nationalistic. Though few love Saddam Hussein and his interminable reign of terror - fewer are willing to countenance the occupation of their homeland by invading forces, regardless of their provenance. Many bitterly recall the Shiite rebellion in 1991 when a policy reversal of the United States allowed the dictator to bloodily suppress the uprising.

According to officials in Amman, more than 6500 Iraqis - out of 200 to 300 thousand - left Jordan in Iraqi-arranged free transportation to fight the "aggressors", as suicide bombers if need be. Others are streaming in from Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and North Africa.

Iraqi exiles in Iran - mostly Shiites and invariably mortal foes of the tyrant from Baghdad - have nonetheless denounced the invasion and called it, ominously, a "war on Islam". Aware of this duality, Donald Rumsfeld, the American Defense Secretary, recently warned that Shiite combatants "will be taken as a potential threat to coalition forces. This includes the Badr Corps, the military wing of the Supreme Council on Islamic Revolution in Iraq."

But other Iraqis, Kurds included, are training, in U.S.-sponsored camps in east and central Europe, to liaise with the local population to help non-governmental organizations and the coalition forces deliver humanitarian aid. The program - now suspended - is financed with money allocated from the $97 million 1998 Iraq Liberation Act.

According to the Boston Globe:

"During the four-week course, the volunteers learn battlefield survival skills including navigation, nuclear and biological weapons defense, marksmanship, first aid, and the laws of war and human rights. They also study civil-military operations such as processing refugees, distributing humanitarian aid, and rebuilding infrastructure."

Iraqi professionals abroad with vital skills in administration, agriculture, oil extraction, finance, economics, law, medicine and education are preparing to return. Draft reconstruction plans call for tax incentives and soft loans for homebound entrepreneurs, investors and skilled manpower. There are many of these. Arabs say that Egyptians write, Lebanese publish and Iraqis read.

Aware of this untapped wealth of talent and experience, the American have belatedly started recruiting dozens of expats and immigrants for the future administration of the war-torn country. Some 40 lawyers from Europe and North America will complete tomorrow a fortnight of training provided courtesy of the Justice Department.

The Pentagon and the State Department are running similar programs with 100 and 240 participants, respectively. According to the Knight-Ridder Newspapers, "the ('Future of Iraq') working groups deal with such topics as defense policy, civil society, public health, transitional justice, news media, national security, public finance and anti-corruption efforts."

According to the Washington Post, there is even an Iraqi military contingent of up to 3000 exiles underwritten by the Pentagon and training in Hungary. Some of them are slated to serve as guides and translators for the coalition forces in their homeland. The program is suspended now but the camp in Hungary remains open and it is tipped to be renewed.

And then there is the hoped-for reversal of the last four decades of capital flight. Iraqi merchants, traders, military officers, members of the security services, politicians, bureaucrats and professionals are thought to have secreted away, out of the reach of the rapacious regime, some $20-30 billion. Some of it is bound to come back and inject the dilapidated economy with much needed liquidity and impetus.

Last August, a group of Iraqi-born economists gathered at the Department of State in Washington. One of the participants, Dr. Salah Al-Sheikhly, a former Governor of Iraq's Central Bank, outlined to Washington File his vision of the future contribution of the diaspora to a liberated Iraq:

"People talk of the Iraqi Diaspora as if we have been idle. On the contrary, economists like myself have been working within the agencies of the United Nations and other international institutions. We have been consultants in many Arab countries. And many of us gathered around the table (in Washington) have extensive experience within the kinds of financial institutions that can assist Iraq enter the new world economy."