The Hindu : New masters, old spies?

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jul 23, 2003

Opinion

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New masters, old spies?

By Neela Banerjee & Douglas Jehl

Has the U.S. moved to resurrect parts of the former Iraqi intelligence service, with the branch that monitors Iran among the top priorities?

RELYING ON the help of an Iraqi political party, the United States has moved to resurrect parts of the former Iraqi intelligence service, with the branch that monitors Iran among the top priorities, former Iraqi agents and politicians say. The Iraqi National Congress, which is led by Ahmad Chalabi, the long-time exile who is now a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, says its senior officials have met with senior members of the `Iran' and `Turkey' branch of the Mukhabarat, or Iraqi intelligence, over the last several weeks. The party has received documents from the intelligence officers and recruited them into a reconstituted version of the unit, said Abdulaziz Kubaisi, the Iraqi National Congress official responsible for the recruiting effort.

American officials had been fully informed about what the party was doing. Iraqi intelligence officers who have been asked to rejoin the branch contend that the U.S. is orchestrating the effort. " We are sending back information to the Pentagon, to people who are responsible," Mr. Kubaisi said. ``They know the nature of what we're doing. There is coordination. We have representatives of (Donald) Rumsfeld at the INC."

But some Middle East experts feel trying to revive the branch before a sovereign government is in place and working through a political party can backfire. "This sets a bad precedent because you don't have a government in place, and because Chalabi's party is a minority and doesn't represent the majority of Iraqis," said Edward S. Walker Jr., former Ambassador to Egypt and Israel under the first President Bush and now president of the Middle East Institute, a Washington research group. A senior American official said concern about Iran was driving some of the discussion about moving quickly to re-establish an intelligence service. The U.S. had recognised that Iraq had a good intelligence apparatus focussed on Iran. People close to the Iran branch said the Americans had also expressed interest in reviving the intelligence service's Syria branch. American officials in Washington and Baghdad maintained that reviving the Iran branch was only being discussed now. Senior U.S. officials in Washington said the question of when and how to re-establish Iraq's intelligence service was under active consideration at the highest levels. It had been discussed recently by the Deputies Committee, which represents the second-ranking official at national security agencies, and the CIA had been designated the lead agency in the process.

"There's been a lot of discussion, but I haven't seen anything that has developed into concrete thinking," an official said. Asked whether the Defence Department was working through the Iraqi National Congress to recruit former Iraqi intelligence officers, the official declined to comment.

But people close to the Iraqi members of the Iran branch say recruitment efforts began two months ago, when the crisis over Iran's nuclear programme flared, and continue. Sabi al-Hamed, a former Iran branch member in Zubayr, in southern Iraq, said two of his former colleagues made contact with him two weeks ago and told him that they had been working with Americans. Mr. Hamed, a Mukhabarat officer since 1976, said he refused to join the revived unit when former co-workers told him that it would be cooperating with the Mujahedeen Khalq, or People's Mujahedeen, an Iranian Opposition group that is on the U.S. State Department's list of foreign terrorist organisations. Mr. Hamed said he had worked with the group during the Iran-Iraq war and called them butchers, adding that he had seen bodies of people they had executed.

The People's Mujahedeen, which seeks the overthrow of the Government in Teheran, found refuge in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, playing an important role during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s and later in 1991, in crushing the uprising of the Shiites in the south and the Kurds in northern Iraq. In April, the U.S. signed a ceasefire with the group's troops in Iraq and in early May, began to disarm them. A sizeable contingent of senior members of Congress now advocates removal of the group from the terrorist list, arguing that its members' knowledge should be mined for use against Iran.

A person close to the Iran branch members says that the currently coalescing intelligence service has been in touch not only with former Iran branch officers in Iraq, but also with those in Iran and with former People's Mujahedeen members.

Mr. Kubaisi denied that a future intelligence arm in Iraq would work with the People's Mujahedeen, and a spokesman in Paris for the group did not return e-mail messages seeking comment. Mr. Kubaisi said the Iran unit would begin working once the Governing Council settled in and the ministries were fully functioning. But the former Iraqi agents who had discussions with the Iraqi National Congress and with members of the Iran branch say the unit is already working in a building in central Baghdad.

The Iran branch members were being vetted before being signed up. Mr. Kubaisi and others close to the branch said none of the officers had been paid yet. The officials said it was unclear to whom a new Iraqi intelligence service would report. But they said the CIA now had a sizeable operation in Iraq, with at least several dozen officers on the ground. — New York Times

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