Follow the money: A ruthless guide for Mark Savaya, America’s envoy to Iraq

There is a whispered line within the corners of American history, which was delivered inside a parking garage to The Washington Post journalist duo Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein from Deep Throat, Deputy FBI Director Mark Felt:

“Follow the money.”

It was more than investigative advice. It was a revelation. It was a roadmap to power, to corruption, and to the foul core of political institutions that clothe themselves in flags while feeding on rot.

If there is any advice that the new United States Special Envoy to Iraq, Mark Savaya, must hold onto if he is to survive this theatre of illusions that is Baghdad, it is: look at who is making the money.

Savaya is a 1985-born diplomat bred neither by conflict nor hardened by the cold mathematics of Middle Eastern might. He is an award for politics. A reward for campaign loyalty. A man who is sent into a den of wolves armed with a smile, an outstretched hand, and an insubstantial defence of shallow experience. His mandate? To dismantle the Popular Mobilisation Forces, to sever the steel cord of allegiance linking Baghdad to Tehran, to wrest Iraq back into the sunlight out of Iran’s darkness.

He walks into a maze of deceit where the walls of truth lie, the floor of honesty deceives, and each door is a trap. The leaders he will deal with have weathered dictatorships, invasions, coups, sanctions, revolutions, and wars. They have buried their enemies. They have bartered their souls and bought empires. They will speak in circles until his head reels. They will drown him in inconsequential details. They will promise unity as they hone their blades under the table. Their magnetism is a disguise. Their manners are a decoy. Their politeness is a sword clothed in silk.

They will run circles around him – unless he can recognise and understand the twin forces behind their actions.

These are not patriots. They are the courtiers of greed. They do not worship ideology. They worship power. They do not hold on to faith. They hold on to wealth. They are not ministers and parliamentarians; they are syndicate bosses dressed up in government attire. They command militia groups. They order kidnappings. They muzzle journalists. They shake hands on contracts with one hand, and with the other, they write death warrants. They have looted Iraq since 2003, feeding on a wounded lion like hyenas.

They are billionaires.

And like all felons, they have made one key mistake: they have left a money trail.

Their fortunes do not sleep in Baghdad. Their money is concealed in vaults in Switzerland, in Iranian banks, in dark companies, in offshore accounts, in real property in Europe and North America, and, yes, within the United States. Their money is interwoven in the worldwide financial system like veins ready for the scalpel. It was the Panama Papers that lifted the curtain. It is the scalpel with the steady hand that is the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets.

If he wants leverage, righteousness will not help him. Diplomacy will not shield him. Promises will never convince them. He needs to hold the power of fear—fear, not of troops, but of poverty. Fear, not of bombs, but of bankruptcy. Fear, not of rhetoric, but of ruin.

Sit across from them, smile diplomatically, and offer them a document that grants the entire US government complete legal power to investigate, trace, and seize any asset, account, or investment in their names, their children’s names, or their circle’s names. Tell them that this document means nothing if they are genuinely so innocent. Watch their hands shake. Watch their mouths malfunction. Watch their masks break. Those who are honest will sign. But those who are corrupt will dance, will stall, will unleash their anger at the sudden infringement on their sovereignty over their ill-gotten gains.

These men are not driven by dignity or belief. Terror drives them — the terror of losing all that they stole.

That is the artery. Press hard.

However, money is only one of their weapons. Their second weapon is “deception.” They are expert smile-and-scheme, hug-and-scheme, promise-and-betray folks. They are practitioners of “taqiyya” or “dissemblance.” This is neither theology nor science but rather a “holy art of lying.” Every “conversation” is an “act.” Every “promise” is a “commitment” with an expiration date. The “handshake” is empty.

They will hold him back. They will suffocate him with their delays. They will stretch time on his back until he gets tired of waiting and yields defeat. He must not blink. He must outlast men who have survived for decades by pitting his endurance against the weakness of his adversaries.

But he can’t fight this war by himself. To reveal a glimmer of light in this darkness in Iraq, he has to find illumination in conversations not with US officials in Washington alone but with Iraqis who have continued to love this country — men and women who had not drunk at the fountain of corruption but had kept their hands spotless while thieves had looted their homelands. These men and women exist. These men and women are few. The corrupt leaders detest these men and women.

It must be remembered that the Iraqi tragedy did not originate solely in chaos. It originated in cooperation: between foreign cynics and internal opportunists, between foreign power and internal treachery. An Iraqi Christian government official diverted funds that were meant to fix churches, and the smell of hypocrisy was his perfumed cloak. That is the template. That is the plague. It has spread to all levels and all facets of Iraqi institutions.

Savaya was not assigned to a democracy. He was assigned to a market, a market in which loyalty is a commodity, in which an alliance can be auctioned off, and in which patriotism can be faked. If Savaya desires the dissolution of the Popular Mobilisation Forces, if he wishes to shatter Tehran’s grip, then he must harness the only thing that these men fear.

Not the truth.

Not principles.

Not justice.

Money.

Follow it. Seize it. Threaten it. Use it.

Only then will they bend. Only then will they yield. Only then will the empire of thieves tremble.

Deep Throat was right. He was always right.

If Mark Savaya remembers nothing else, let him recall the whisper that brought down a president, and that could shatter a corrupt system of his own: Follow the money—and never stop until their world has collapsed.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.