The Minister of Civil War. . .

[pat_k]

The Minister of Civil War
Harper's Magazine, August 2006 (excerpt)

An investigative report on Bayan Jabr that brings the insanity into stark relief.

Some of Bayan Jabr's career highlights

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1970's -- fled to Iran and joined the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution

"Jabr's tribe was persecuted harshly by Saddam Hussein's regime, and so he (along with thousands of other Shiites) fled to Iran, where he became a member of SCIRI."

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1990's -- "ran SCIRI's local office in Syria, where he coordinated relations with other anti-Saddam exile groups."

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December 2002 -- Iraqi Opposition Coordinating Committee

"Along with Chalabi, Jabr was among a group of sixty-five exiles named to the Iraqi Opposition Coordinating Committee that was founded in London in December of 2002, just three months before the American invasion."

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September 2003 to June 2004 -- Minister of Housing and Reconstruction

"Jabr served as the minister of housing and construction under the Coalition Provisional Authority that was installed by the Bush Administration following the March 2003 invasion, a position he held until mid-2004. Interviews and internal documents show that a number of senior CPA officials, as well as the local CIA station, became convinced that Jabr was unusually corrupt and thuggish, even by the dismal standards of postwar Iraq."

". . .officials were also alarmed by Jabr's ties to the Badr Brigade . . .{A memo from Karem and Clay} reported a 'growing pattern of religious discrimination at the Ministry,' particularly in recruiting Shiites for the 'Facilities Protection Service,' a police force created by Bremer that later was suspected of playing a major role in political murders."

"A few days after sending the memo, Karem and Clay were called to a meeting with Vice Admiral Scott Redd, the CPA's deputy administrator, and several other U.S. officials. 'We were thrilled at the end of the meeting,' Karem recalled. 'Everybody was shaking their head about the corruption. They said that they were going to get rid of the minister.' Days later, he and Clay were asked to return to Redd's office. They walked in expecting to hear that Jabr had been fired. Instead they were told that their services with the CPA were as of that moment terminated; the minister would stay on. 'We were told that we had lost effectiveness because we couldn't work with the minister,' Karem recalled. 'We were in shock.'"

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Between "government" jobs was a "high-ranking member of the Iranian-backed Badr Brigade, the military arm of the fundamentalist Shiite Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) that is now the dominant political force in the country."

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April 2005 to May 2006 -- Interior Minister

"The Interior Ministry, which is something like a combined FBI and Department of Homeland Security, controls billions of dollars and more than 100,000 men in police and paramilitary units."

"The rise of the death squads corresponds almost precisely to the April 2005 appointment of Bayan Jabr as interior minister in Iraq's transitional government."

"After taking over the Interior Ministry, he quickly purged it of Sunnis, and members of the Badr Brigade were widely incorporated into the ministry's police and paramilitary units."

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May 2006 -- Finance Minister

"named finance minister in a new government headed by Nuri al-Maliki"