After three years as head of the Commission on Public Integrity, Iraq's anti-corruption body, Judge Radhi al-Radhi finds himself seeking political asylum in the US.
In Iraq, al-Radhi was for a while everyone's hero, especially when he went after the massive financial improprieties of ex-officials. Armed with a five-year mandate and secure in the knowledge that only a two-thirds majority in parliament could remove him from his post, al-Radhi led his 1,700 employees in striking terror across Iraq's civil service and business communities. His style was non-confrontational, but many of his young foot soldiers were overzealous, which led to the prosecution of minor offences that may well have been merely a reflection of a bureaucracy finding its feet, rather than wilful fraud. The result was paralysis in many sectors of government.
But once al-Rahdi began to step on the toes of those in power, he found himself bereft of friends; not even the Americans—who had appointed him during the coalition provisional authority era and secured his independence when handing over sovereignty—would help, lest they annoy the Iraqi government.
As al-Radhi began to go after ministers in Nouri al-Maliki's cabinet, he found himself up against a 35-year-old law that stipulates that only the heads of the executive branch can mandate the prosecution of ministers. With his aura of invincibility broken and resentment mounting, al-Radhi had to contend with a new nemesis: Sabah al-Saeidi, head of the parliamentary commission on public integrity and a member of the Shia Islamic Virtue party.
Al-Saeidi, turbaned and trim, began to accuse al-Radhi of being corrupt himself, and launched hearings. The reason? Al-Radhi had tried to fire al-Saeidi's brother, who heads the public integrity commission in Basra province, and who, according to al-Radhi, is the kingpin of oil smuggling in Iraq's south.
In early September, al-Radhi left for the US, and was surprised to hear Maliki publicly accuse him of fleeing the country to escape prosecution, when ostensibly he was attending a training seminar. A few weeks later, al-Radhi took his revenge by giving testimony to congress accusing the Maliki government of corruption and of forcing him to quit; he later applied for asylum. This allowed Maliki's government to suggest that al-Radhi was part of an ongoing American campaign to tarnish Iraq's rulers.
Now, contrary to Iraqi law, Maliki has appointed al-Radhi's deputy, Moussa Faraj, to replace him. "Faraj is a clown who was secretly working with al-Saeidi against al-Radhi to get his job," an Iraqi parliamentarian told me. "Faraj has been calling officials and telling them that they have nothing to fear from him."
Faraj put out a statement after al-Radhi's testimony, which he prefaced by saying, "The dignity of the Iraqi… is hurt whenever he sees a foreign soldier or a foreign military vehicle passing in the streets of Iraqi towns"; he promised that he will "never run away, never take a non-Iraqi [as an ally] against another Iraqi, and I will never go to the congress or the [Russian] duma."
Yet this is unlikely to be the last we'll hear of Judge Rahdi al-Radhi, who will be a recurring headache for Maliki come the next election.
A Sunni substitution
Iraq's Sunnis are moderating their politics, and nothing spells moderation better than substituting a young, handsome ex-football star for a Salafist MP.
Sheikh Abdul-Nasser al-Janabi, formerly of the Consensus bloc, sports a beard and a constant scowl. He left Iraq for Jordan back in June, publicly declaring his support for the insurgency. In September he had his parliamentary immunity stripped to face charges of aiding terrorism, notably an alleged role in a series of abductions that left over a hundred Shias dead in Babil province.
So the Sunni elders have drafted in Ahmad Radhi, 43, who captained Iraq's team in the 1986 World Cup and scored their only goal, against Belgium. Radhi's clean-shaven face adorned Consensus posters in the lead-up to the 2005 elections, but he was too far down the list of candidates to win a seat at the time.
Radhi was sworn in on 8th October, fuelling speculation that the Shia United Alliance bloc, not to be outdone, is out scouting for a Shia ex-football star to fill the seat vacated by Abu Mahdi al-Mohandis, a fugitive parliamentarian accused by the Americans of staging terrorist attacks on US and French targets in the Persian Gulf in the early 1980s.
Asia cup settles tribal dispute
Two tribes near Najaf, the Fatla and the al-Ghazalat, have been feuding over land for decades, leaving dozens dead. All past attempts at brokering a truce have failed, but when Najaf's governor asked Iraq's Soccer Federation to brandish the Asia Cup—won this summer by the Iraqi national team—in the face of the stubborn sheikhs to shame them into reconciliation, peace finally prevailed. It had been the custom for tribes to settle conflict by swearing upon the Koran, but Iraq has a new national totem, lending credence to the quip that Islam is Iraq's second religion—behind football.
