Reports: CIA candidate to lead Iraq assassinated

Nizar Khazraji, a prominent Iraqi general who defected to the West, was assassinated Monday on his way to attend a U.S.-called meeting of opposition groups in the southern city of Nassiriya.

Khazraji was sometimes mentioned as a possible successor to Saddam Hussein. In February last year, London-based Arabic daily Al-Hayat quoted opposition sources in Syria as saying the US had chosen Khazraji to run Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam.

The CIA was reported to have helped him escape to Kuwait from house arrest in Denmark, where prosecutors were investigating his alleged role in gas attacks on the Iraqi Kurds.

A former Iraqi military chief-of-staff, who turned against Saddam in 1996, he has publicly declared that he was prepared to lead a rebel army into Iraq. "All real Iraqis want to overthrow this regime and I am one of them," he declared from his home in Denmark.

General Khazraji first came to prominence during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, and by the end of that decade had been made head of the country's armed forces. He claimed to have warned Saddam during the Gulf War that the invasion of Kuwait had been a mistake.

He subsequently fell from favour and in 1995 fled to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, travelling on from there to Jordan. In 1998, he applied for political asylum in Denmark and since the late 1990s he has lived there.

In late 2001, Danish police launched an investigation into allegations that General Khazraji had been involved in the poison gas attack on the Kurdish town of Halabjah in March 1988.

The general has rejected these allegations, dismissing them as black propaganda spread by Baghdad in order to discredit him. (Albawaba.com)

Contenders:

Ahmad Chalabi is one of the best-known figures. He leads the Iraqi National Congress (INC), which has been backed by the US and Britain ever since it was created in the aftermath of the last war against Iraq, in 1991. He has the support of the Washington hawks, who believe he is the man to set Iraq on a democratic path. His critics, however, point out that he left Iraq in the 1950s and has been accused of corrupt business dealings. As a (secular) Shia he arouses the mistrust of the Arab world's Sunni ruling class.
Ayatollah Muhammad Baqr al-Hakim, who is from a prominent Iraqi Shia family, runs the Tehran-based Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). He has supporters in Iraq, but the Iranian connection makes the US - and some Iraqis - wary of him.
Adnan Pachachi, a former Iraqi foreign minister, is an 80-year-old Sunni who has been courted by the Americans and is well connected in the Gulf sheikhdoms. He is a nationalist with a secular liberal outlook. Some see him, because of his age, as a possible caretaker leader.
Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani, the leaders of the two Kurdish factions in northern Iraq, have a firm base among their own people but would be unlikely contenders for national power.
Nizar Khazraji, a prominent Iraqi general who defected to the West, is sometimes mentioned as a possible successor to Saddam. The CIA is reported to have helped him escape to the Gulf from house arrest in Denmark, where prosecutors were investigating his alleged role in gas attacks on the Iraqi Kurds.

Washington infighting

In the absence of a candidate with impeccable credentials, the US may try to build up a collective leadership - one which would represent Iraq's mosaic of different communities and command enough confidence to return the country to some sort of normality.

But it is not only within Iraq that fierce differences over the post-war future are being played out.

In Washington, the State Department and the CIA suspect the Pentagon of actively promoting its protege, Ahmad Chalabi, who was recently flown into southern Iraq by the US military with a group of his followers.

They fear that imposing Mr Chalabi would alienate other Iraqis.

The White House has tried to damp down the infighting. But the dispute is unresolved.

It looks like this was first reported on Friday by Arab News. You can judge the story for yourself, but I think this is very suspect at this point.

Descent Into Anarchy
Essam Al-Ghalib, Arab News War Correspondent

NAJAF/BAGHDAD, 11 April 2003 — Entering Baghdad by road from the south yesterday, Arab News came upon countless destroyed Iraqi tanks with charred bodies of Iraqi fighters still inside them, their body parts littering the roadside. Inside the capital, amid the anarchy that has clearly descended on the city, we saw a small demonstration being held. The dozens of Iraqis were chanting: “The people of Iraq did not lose this war. It was the political party, the Baath that lost it.”
There was looting on a massive scale, mostly concentrated on government buildings. The US Marines outside, passively observing events, said when asked by Arab News whether they should be intervening: “These guys are stealing stuff from government buildings. The government has been stealing from these people for the last 35 years. It’s about time they got their own back.”
Late afternoon, a human bomber detonated explosives at a US checkpoint, killing at least one US Marine and leaving many wounded, some seriously.
And in a four-hour battle with Saddam loyalists firing from the Imam Al-Adham Mosque on the east bank of the Tigris River, another Marine was killed and more than 20 were injured.
French journalists who witnessed the battles told Arab News that a number of Fedayeen opened fire on the Americans in the square below. They returned fire with tanks, shelling the mosque which was soon destroyed.
In another indication of the apparent near-anarchy that has descended on this city of five million people, a number of Portuguese journalists were attacked by a mob of armed Fedayeen, who beat them about the body and head with the butts of their rifles.
There is virtually no security here anymore, although US soldiers are everywhere. But there are clear signs that the Iraqi people are welcoming the US troops.
A car with Iraqi license plates being driven by a local was transporting boxes of water to each Marine checkpoint and army post. He personally handed them bottles of water. Also, the soldiers stationed around the Palestine Hotel all have flowers pinned to their battledress.
Until the human bombing in the area, people could still be seen going up to them to hand them flowers.
By nightfall, more aerial bombardments had begun. Fighter jets flew overhead, followed by explosions on the outskirts of the city. Machine-gun fire burst out periodically in the distance.
The streets were totally deserted after dark, except for a few people walking between the Palestine and Sheraton hotels who had armed guards. The US Marines appear to have imposed some kind of martial law, and a curfew. The buildings of five ministries were ablaze in the distance.
Earlier in the day in the southern city of Najaf, this correspondent happened on a crowd of Iraqis who had been at the Ali Mosque, one of Shiite Islam’s holiest shrines, just half an hour earlier. They said that former Iraqi Gen. Nizar Al-Khazraji and Islamic scholar Abdul Majid Al-Khoei had both been executed by Iraqi residents of Najaf.
Another independent Iraqi witness to the incident who spoke to Arab News said that the two potential Iraqi leaders of the city, who were supported by the US, “were chopped into pieces with swords and knives inside the Ali Mosque by Iraqis who accused them of being American stooges.”
Another witness said that a US Special Forces soldier, who had been acting as their bodyguard, was also killed in the incident.
Al-Khoei’s death has since been confirmed by his family in London, as was the death of one of his aides.
However, there has been no confirmation of Al-Khazraji’s death.

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