Iraqi
terrorist turned politician told U.S. interrogators he worked with Iran to kill
Americans
Qais al-Khazali, the leader of AsaibAhl
al-Haq, is shown during an interview at his office in Najaf, Iraq, on July 17,
2014. A bodyguard stands beside him. (Max Becherer for The Washington Post)
By Josh Rogin
August 30 at 11:00 AM
A decade ago, a captive Iraqi terrorist
leader told his U.S. interrogators all about how Shiite militias worked with
Iran, Hezbollah and each other to attack American soldiers in Iraq. Now, as
that terrorist is set to wield significant political power in Iraq, the details
of his interrogations are being released for the first time.
It has long been known that Qais
al-Khazali, the leader of the AsaibAhl al-Haq (AAH) militia, had close ties to
Iran and Hezbollah as he waged his long fight against U.S. troops in Iraq. But
the extent to which he worked with the Americans who detained him in 2007 and
sold out his Iranian paymasters and turned on his Shiite militia allies is
shocking.
U.S. Central Command recently declassified
dozens of Khazali’s interrogation reports as part of a project to document the
history of the Iraq War, and the American Enterprise Institute has
now published all of them on its website.
“You read these reports and you see what a
vicious terrorist Qais al-Khazali is, how deeply entwined he is in Iran’s
anti-American covert network, how much American blood he has on his own hands,
and then you turn around and realize that this guy is probably about to be a
minister in the Iraqi government,” said Kenneth Pollack, resident scholar at
AEI. “It makes you realize how far Iraq has fallen, and how badly we have
handled Iraq in recent years.”
Khazali’s past crimes are newly relevant
because he has emerged as a critical player in the ongoing formation of the new
Iraqi government. Somehow, his AAH militia group gained control of 15
seats in the Iraqi parliament after May elections that many observers saw as
rife with rigging, bribery and intimidation. Khazali will now sit in Iraq’s
parliament, and he could even take a leadership position in the government
soon.
Khazali’s cooperation with Iran and
Hezbollah is also ongoing. A video emerged in December showing that he had
traveled to the Lebanese-Israeli border and threatened attacks on
Israel. He threatened violence against U.S. troops in Iraq as recently as
February. In May, the House of Representatives passed
legislation authorizing President Trump to sanction AAH. But the Trump
administration hasn’t made use of its sanctions power, part of its overall
failure to confront Shiite militias and their malign influence in Iraq.
“President Trump’s officials have insisted
that they are going to push back on Iran throughout the Middle East, so that
the Iranians can’t threaten America’s allies or its citizens—something these
reports make clear that they have been doing with impunity for years,” Pollack
said. “Yet one of their main proxies is now a kingmaker, and possibly soon a
cabinet minister, in the Iraqi government.”
Just days after being captured by U.S.
forces in 2007, Khalazi started spilling information about Iran’s activities in
Iraq, his fallout with his former boss Moqtada al-Sadr, and the details of how
the other Shiite militias in Iraq at the time organized, financed and
coordinated their attacks on Americans. Khalazi was a key conduit between the
Sadr organization and Iranian leaders, until he had a dispute with Sadr and
struck out on his own.
Almost immediately after being detained,
Khazali began giving up information about the armed groups he controlled and
the people he worked with. He named his lieutenant and told interrogators where
he lived. He identified many more Shiite militia leaders and commanders
from photographs supplied by the Americans. He even offered information on his
driver.
Khazali provided extensive information on
Iran’s financing of Shiite militias and their violence in Iraq, including
Iran’s production and distribution of explosively formed penetrator (EFP)
bombs, which killed hundreds of Americans. He described multiple trips to
Tehran after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 to set up secret funding and
training schemes. He detailed his meetings with then-Iranian
President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Maj. Gen.
QasemSuleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Iraq Revolutionary Guard
Corps.
Khazali also admitted to killing
Americans. Five U.S. soldiers were kidnapped and then murdered when
Iraqi militiamen dressed in U.S. military uniforms attacked a
U.S.-Iraqi coordination center in the southern Shiite city of Karbala in
January 2007. U.S. spy satellites later discovered a mock-up of the
building inside Iran that was used for training purposes.
Khazali admitted authorizing the attack
and named the commander under him who carried it out. He claimed the original
goal of the attack was to capture American hostages and force a trade. He also
admitted to AAH’s role in many other deadly attacks on coalition forces.
Much of the intelligence Khazali provided
was on Sadr and his organization. But he also gave
interrogators juicy information on other militias supported by Iran,
including Jaish al-Mahdi and the Badr Organization. He also named
several operatives of Lebanese Hezbollah and Iraqi “Special Groups” to show
interrogators how much he was cooperating with them.
“In some ways, it is surprising that
Khazali is still alive given the amount of information he provided the
coalition,” said Pollack. “This information no doubt led to numerous arrests
and deaths of other Shia terrorists.”
U.S. forces released Khazali in
2009 in a prisoner swap. President Barack Obama pulled U.S. troops out of Iraq
in 2011. In 2014, the Islamic State took over huge swaths of Iraq and
threatened to march on Baghdad. Without American troops to support them, the
Iraqi government turned to the Iranian-supported militias, including AAH. Now,
four years later, those militias and their leaders are primed to capitalize
politically.
What can the United States do about it
now? In Iraq, perhaps not much. But Khazali’s return to prominence is not just
an Iraqi issue. He is a key player in the Iranian scheme to subjugate Syria,
threaten Israel and thwart the United States. It’s well past time for the
United States to confront Iran’s use of proxies — including Khazali — to spread
misery throughout the Middle East.
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