What if the government became the Mafia? It already has

OPINION:

In the United States, the Mafia, also commonly known as the Mob, is involved in a wide variety of criminal enterprises including protection rackets, cargo theft, fraud, robbery, kidnapping for ransom and more. The little guy is expected to pay the Mob and to play along with whatever corrupt practices it wishes to engage in. If some fail to cooperate, their businesses, their families and their very lives may be in danger. The boss of each family, commonly known as the Don, has the final word on virtually every decision. His “yes” or “no” is not up for interpretation or appeal.

In America in recent years, we’ve seen certain elements of the government used much the way the Mob exercises its authority.

In the early 2020s, the Justice Department and Special Counsel under President Biden secretly tracked the phone calls of nearly a dozen Republican elected officials including Sens. Lindsey Graham, Marsha Blackburn and Josh Hawley. Subpoenas were issued to 34 individuals and 163 businesses seeking records of communications with Trump White House advisers, statistical data relating to donors and fundraising, and broad financial data of conservative individuals and organizations.

The government was able to gather any and all info it wanted. Oddly, it only sought information on Republican elected officials and conservative organizations, and if anyone failed to cooperate, their business and possibly their freedom, were at risk.

Information has recently become public that shows one other government taking it even a step further. About the same time as the Biden team was using the might of the American government in an attempt to persecute their enemies, former Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi was using his nation’s National Intelligence Service for his own questionable whims.

Before becoming prime minister in May 2020, Mr. Kadhimi served as director of the Iraqi National Intelligence Service, so he knew the agency, the players and the power well. He was credited with reforming the agency to meet international standards. As prime minister however, he appears to have used his old agency as a political and financial tool.

Current high-ranking Iraqi officials explain that constitutionally, the prime minister commands the intelligence apparatus and military units, gets daily written reports and weekly in-person reports. He may choose to communicate his priorities to the intel agency, but normally that would relate to broad strategic direction, not the day-to-day nuts and bolts of the agency.

Evidence suggests Mr. Kadhimi may have gone way beyond strategic direction.

He established the Abu Ragheef Committee in 2020 for the stated purpose of ferreting out corruption in Iraq. 

Instead, evidence shows it mimicked the methods of organized crime in exercising its duties. An investigation ordered years later by current Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani found that those detained and accused by the Khadimi-formed group suffered “abuse and humiliation, more focused on obtaining signatures for pre-written confessions than on accountability for corrupt acts.”

That may not be all.

One current government official with direct access to the subsequent investigation indicated that high-level officials, successful merchants and businessmen, and wealthy investors were among those detained by what became known as Iraq’s Committee 29. Rather than investigate actual corruption, it used brutal torture and violence to coerce signatures on pre-existing confessions and on checks.

It appears the anti-corruption committee may have actually been the ultimate shake-down, using Mafia-like tactics to take whatever it wanted. Some detainees were stripped naked, beaten, electrocuted and systematically tortured until they acquiesced. According to the report issued by the investigative body, members of Committee 29 increased their personal wealth dramatically in the one year they operated.

Was Mr. Kadhimi in on the shakedown? Did he get a piece of the action? Or was he woefully oblivious to what his own intelligence agency was doing, despite giving them detailed instructions on how to operate?

Documents from the investigation indicate reports from Committee 29 were regularly given directly to Mr. Kadhimi before any action was taken.

Maj. Gen. Diaa al-Moussawi, Iraqi Intelligence Service director general at the time, eventually admitted in official testimony before a special investigative committee that Mr. Kadhimi often had the final word in whether suspects were released, their detention extended, or charges formally filed against them.

Adding insult to injury, that Khadimi administration also presided over Iraq at the time of what became known as the heist of the century. Between September 2021 and August 2022, hundreds of checks allegedly issued by the Iraqi government’s tax authority, totaling nearly $2.5 billion, were cashed at branches of a state-owned bank.

It was a case that involved dozens of participants and put the entire Iraqi economy at dire risk. The brazen rip-off was only discovered and made public weeks before Mr. Sudani became prime minister.

Immediately upon taking office Mr. Sudani vowed to tackle corruption and called for the funds stolen from the government to be recovered. He created a committee to investigate the allegations of torture and violence. When he began his term, public trust in the government was nearly non-existent. His efforts halted the blatant corruption in the intelligence agency, rooted out approximately 15 corrupt high-level officers, and sent a message to law enforcement and to the public that such behavior would not be tolerated.

The pattern crosses national boundaries.

Less than a year after he left office, U.S. voters may have forgotten that Mr. Biden gave $36 billion in taxpayer money to refill the Teamsters Union pension fund, where corrupt practices appear to have drained workers’ retirement accounts. Those same taxpayers may not realize that $166 billion in tax money paid off the student loans of people who gladly took the college education but stopped making payments on their own loans. Somehow that staggering sum became the responsibility of working cops, laborers and teachers.

Do voters remember? Memories are short in American politics.

In the Middle East the question is whether memories are short in Iraqi politics. Voters go to the ballot box in about a week. Will they embrace the relative stability their nation is currently enjoying or will they turn back to the not-so-distant darker days of corruption and organized crime?