Many of those who try to decipher Ahmed Chalabi’s personality or analyze his political behavior, often neglect his most essential personal traits. Unlike the other Iraqi Opposition leaders who dream of power and its luxurious seat after Saddam’s collapse, Ahmed Chalabi enjoys a kind of pragmatism that has instilled in him a skill to establish relationships with the most contradictory extremes.

His spirit of adventure - or even of gambling - has tainted his political career. Having begun his adventures with robbing a bank, he does not feel awkward kidnapping a whole nation.

Chalabi’s relations with political and economic entities enabled him to found the private Bank of Batra’a in 1977, which became the second largest private bank in Jordan. It collapsed in 1989 in one of the most shameful scandals of economic corruption, which cost Jordan about $300 million. Being accused of abuse and theft, Chalabi made off to Syria in the trunk of a car, then to Britain, where he founded the Iraqi National Congress. He shifted from the world of business to the world of politics, playing the role of a dissenter opposing the dictatorial regime in Iraq.

The Jordanian judiciary charged Chalabi with fraud and embezzlement and sentenced him in absentia to 22 years in prison with hard labor. Ever since, Chalabi has been one of the most wanted by the Jordanian authorities. Although he tried to defend and prove himself innocent, expressing that the accusations and sentence are but a plot woven by the Iraqi regime, the American State Department - probably unintentionally - confirmed them when it brought up the issue of the suit in 2001. In reviewing the amount of money devoted to finance and support the Iraqi National Congress, the American State Department noticed that most of the INC’s spending - several million dollars - was reported under the item Office Decorations and Gymnasium Expenses.

Although Chalabi immigrated to the US to study mathematics, which continued to be his focus of interest and academic work, his relations and strong connections went into a totally different direction that had nothing to do with the usual interests of an academic professor. His wide network of contacts and relations chiefly consisted of politicians and intelligence men of all disciplines, especially those known for their extremist attitudes towards Iraq and all Arab countries. Chalabi successfully established firm, great relations with the hawks in the US Administration. He established relations with influential personalities in the Pentagon and the CIA such as Richard Pearl, former assistant to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and former CIA director James Woolsey. Chalabi fortified connections with a number of Congressmen, both Republican and Democratic.

He effectively employed all these relations to found the Iraqi National Congress with the direct support of the American Administration in 1992, soon after the Gulf War. In 1995, he managed to convince the Clinton Administration of the possibility of ousting Saddam Hussein via the Kurdish opposition. He accordingly returned to Iraq to lead the Kurds’ upheaval in Northern Iraq, but the coup was suppressed, resulting in the killing of hundreds of Kurds and the destruction of the National Congress’ headquarters in the city of Arbil by the Iraqi forces. The American Administration consequently turned Chalabi down for some time after that incident, but he managed to win the sympathy of those who upheld war on Iraq and gathered support inside Congress to issue the Iraqi Liberation Act in 1998. The Act approved of a plan to devote some $100 million in aid to the Iraqi Opposition protagonists, on top of which was the Iraqi National Congress, headed by Chalabi.

In 2002, the pace of events quickened and the American Administration was assured that a military offensive would take place against Iraq. Chalabi’s name reappeared as the main opposition leader nominated to take over Saddam's regime.

Ahmed Chalabi excels in playing all cards and pursuing any path, even if it leads to Israel. In order to sell himself as an alternative to Saddam, he always expresses his desire to establish friendly relations with Israel by visiting it. He never hesitates to gloat over his unique relations with the Jewish Institute in Washington, which influences issues of American national security. He also has tried many times to exploit the Shiite card - the Shiites are about 65% of the Iraqi population - by introducing himself as the embodied hope that will regain his old Shiite family’s glories and also play a representative political role for the whole Shiite sect, which has been deprived of such a role for so long.

He, therefore, very enthusiastically made arrangements with several independent religious Shiite personalities living in London but who advocated attitudes very different from his. He did the same thing with secular and liberal personalities. By the time he made membership of the Iraqi National Congress available to the Northern Kurds, he was establishing strong relations with their traditional enemy, the Turkmans. He met and made arrangements with Sanan Ahmed Agha, head of the Iraqi Turkman Front, as well as with the Turkish government. Chalabi was the first Iraqi opposition polar publicly received by Ankara where he met, before the American aggression on Iraq, with Muhammad Ali Shahin, Vice Prime Minister, with Ali Towijan, Foreign Minister's Assisstant, and with a number of high-ranking Turkish military persons. He was probably the only Iraqi dissenter who approved the Turkish participation in the American aggression on Iraq, viewing it as a guarantee to quickly achieve peace.

Being one of the most outstanding persons who called for the American attack against his home country, seeing it as “rescuing Iraq,” Chalabi always exaggerated his utter faith in, and loyalty to, America in every respect, even in the conception of the new Iraqi state. He declared more than once that he visualizes a “new federation, diversity, a parliamentary skeleton, and a new pattern similar to the one in the US and Germany, but not like that in Yugoslavia.”

It seems, however, that all the man’s hopes have come to naught. Although the US occupation of Iraq should have brought Chalabi closer to power, things have turned out to be the exact opposite. After Saddam's fall, the friendly Americans of yesterday have denied their promises, explicitly refused Chalabi’s request to form an Iraqi interim government, and threatened to immediately stop their financial aid if Chalabi declared the formation of such a government.

The plans stated by the American Administration for post-Saddam Iraq make no mention of an influential role for Chalabi in the new government. Probably he is seen as only an adviser for it. Some American officials hold Chalabi an impostor, as he had led the American Administration to believe that an Iraqi military coup would take place on the Iraqi borders as soon as the US began its war on Iraq. Of course, his predictions turned out to be nonsensical after the fierce resistance that the US forces faced on the first days of the aggression, especially in the anti-Saddam Shiite south. Other officials see that the reason behind the American rejection of Chalabi lies in his being despised by the other opposition groups and political entities inside Iraq, where he is considered to be unqualified for government. Some have already gone to the extreme by describing him and his movement as a “failure, incapable of managing a small supermarket.”

It seems that Ahmed Chalabi, who has become addicted to maneuvering, still tries to play games in order to gain something. At the beginning, he responded fiercely to the American Administration’s attitude towards him, accusing the US in a CNN interview of hesitating to provide aid and security to his country. He wondered why Jay Garner had not worked towards maintaining security and providing the masses with water and electricity. Soon afterwards, Chalabi softened his pitch and declared that he would not assume a fundamental role in any future government in Iraq. He announced, “I don't seek to become president of Iraq; I don't look for official positions, and my mission comes to an end when Iraq is freed from Saddam Hussein’s regime.” Soon thereafter, he was on board an American aircraft heading for Al-Nasyria, south of Iraq, to participate in the conference held to discuss the political future of the country. The demonstrations that broke out against the conference and against any “agent” US-sponsored government discouraged him from attending, especially after the news that the Iraqi National Front was attempting to assassinate him. He sent a representative on his behalf to attend the conference, which produced no result.

Dreaming of power, which has almost turned into a mirage, Ahmed Chalabi still maneuvers, unmindful of the fact that he has already become unwanted by everybody, including his American friends. Perhaps he wishes that luck might some day be on his side and things turn out to his advantage, he being a gambler in a country whose future should follow the rules of the American game.