Iraq's answer to Jeffrey Archer

Andrew Gilligan on the charm of Ahmad Chalabi, the man the Americans want to lead the liberated nation

Baghdad

For a would-be leader of the Iraqi people, Ahmad Chalabi is perhaps at a slight disadvantage. He dares not go out to meet any of the Iraqi people for fear that they will kill him. The Baghdad Hunting Club, Mr Chalabi's new headquarters, also makes it rather difficult for the newly liberated masses to come to him. For one thing, there are no ordinary Iraqis within about two miles of it. The Hunting Club is in Mansour, the swishest part of the capital, surrounded by the heavily guarded luxury villas of ambassadors, ex-Saddam flunkies and sanctions-busting businessmen.

The building's symbolism, too, is a little off-putting for the average Baghdad voter. Until a fortnight ago, the Hunting Club was a favourite haunt of Saddam Hussein's elder son, Uday. Back in the 1960s the club was founded by Saddam himself, and a group of cronies, because none of the establishment Baghdad outfits quite liked the cut of Saddam's jib.

Never mind. The club does have the most essential features: a sturdy perimeter wall, three strategically positioned US tanks, and several dozen special forces soldiers to protect it. All the Saddam pictures have been removed, replaced by new pictures bearing the chubby features of Mr Chalabi. And selected media guests are being offered interviews, so long as they take place at the Hunting Club.

My colleague James Naughtie got one of the first. 'Let's do it in the garden,' said Mr Chalabi's spokesman. Zaab Sethna. They went into the garden. Almost at once there was a heavy burst of small-arms fire in the party's general direction. The interview was hurriedly moved back indoors.

A wealthy banker, Mr Chalabi heads the Iraqi National Congress, an unruly coalition of several groups — Kurds, Shia opponents of the old regime — who do have real and serious followings inside Iraq. But Mr Chalabi. essentially the INC's administrator, has no power base of his own, and his move to Baghdad threatens to bring him into conflict with several of his erstwhile allies.

Until recently, few ordinary Iraqis had heard of him. He left the country as a schoolboy 45 years ago, several regimes before Saddam came on the scene. But, after some astute lobbying in Washington, he has become the Pentagon's favourite candidate for the leadership of Iraq. Earlier this month, he was flown in by the US air force to claim squatter's rights.

In their blazers and tasselled loafers, blinking in the Baghdad sun, he and his advisers look as though they have all just been airlifted straight from Kensington High Street — which, in fact, they have. Mr Sethna has a slight disadvantage for someone intended as Mr Chalabi's voice to the Iraqi people. Although helpful and charming, he is a Pakistani and speaks no Arabic.

Mr Chalabi's first appearance before the Baghdad press corps, last week, was frankly hilarious, and left all the hacks licking their lips for more. 1 am just an ordinary citizen of Iraq,' he purred, 'and not a candidate for election.' He rather spoiled the effect by repeatedly referring to 'my government', offering to write a new constitution, and promising that in the future government of Iraq, I expect to maintain full diplomatic relations with France and Germany', despite their status as 'de facto allies of Saddam'.

The non-candidate has also taken the liberty of designing a new Iraqi flag, hanging on the wall behind him. It's a curious creation: blue and yellow with a green stripe down the middle and strange red blotches plastered over it — in the language of heraldry, as one colleague put it, 'cluster bombs rampant'. What on earth did it all mean? 'I shall not tell you,' parried Mr Chalabi. Was that because he did not know? 'Next question,' said Mr Chalabi.

Unfortunately, the next question was about the Petra Bank. Mr Chalabi, then based in Jordan, was in charge of the bank when, according to the Jordanian authorities, it collapsed as a result of a massive fraud. Mr Chalabi left Jordan rather hurriedly at about the same time. (He said he was going on holiday, but it turned out that he had, in fact, left in the boot of a car. Perhaps it was just an adventure holiday.) He was convicted in absentia by a Jordanian military court and sentenced to 22 years' imprisonment. If Mr Chalabi became president of Iraq, asked one reporter unkindly, when would he be paying his first state visit to Jordan? 'This was an aggression committed against me by the Jordanians at the behest of SaddamS regime,' he said. So he denied it, then? 1 will clarify my position in the next few days.'

It all reminded one irresistibly of our own dear Jeffrey Archer. Yet, however bad Lord Archer got, he never acquired his own private army. Conscious of his lack of firepower in the violent world of Iraqi politics, Mr Chalabi is expanding his 'Free Iraqi Fighters', otherwise known as the 'paid-for Iraqi fighters', dressed in US-issue camouflage fatigues. Was the US also paying their wages? Mr Chalabi wouldn't say.

The real leaders of Iraq do not speak English, are not so comprehensible to Western audiences, and are to be found some distance from the Hunting Club. In the al-Hiluna mosque in the giant slum of Sadr (formerly Saddam) City, the Shia majority have already set up what is in effect a shadow government of their area: policing the streets, running the hospital, and all centrally co-ordinated from their headquarters in Najaf. The imam in charge, Mohammed al-Fartusi, is, after the US military commanders, probably now the single most powerful man in Baghdad. This may be why, according to his supporters, the Americans arrested him earlier this week. The Americans refuse to confirm or deny this.

After years of second-class citizenship, the truly staggering size of this year's Shia pilgrimage to the holy city of Karbala shows how the majority community is already flexing its religious and political muscle. Just before he was detained. Mr al-Fartusi told me (or at least my translator — he wouldn't speak directly to an infidel) that he and his Shia masters in Najaf wanted to see a democratic, but Islamic, republic in Iraq. One, he added ominously, where there were `no shorts or flimsy clothes'.

It is, of course, easy, indeed irresistible, to scoff at Mr Chalabi. But despite his manifest flaws, his lack of credibility, he might well be the most liberal, even perhaps the most efficient, option available. That, of course, is the view of a Westerner. But there are also many, many Iraqis who do not wish to go down the Tehran road.

The situation is still fluid enough for everything to be possible, nothing to be inevitable. Even the potential hardliners like Mr alFartusi aren't really quite hard-liners yet; all are still feeling their way. Before positions harden, the Americans now have the opportunity to build up the credibility of the forces they support, while refraining from building up the credibility of those they oppose. But it must be done subtly. Mr Chalabi is seriously harmed by the perception that he is a US puppet. The probable American arrest of Mr al-Fartusi, on the other hand, will have done him and his cause no harm at all.

Andrew Gilligan is defence and diplomatic correspondent of BBC Radio Four's Today programme.