BAGHDAD, Iraq - Baghdad got a new leader Thursday, but no one seems to know who he is.
Stepping out of nowhere into the power vacuum left by the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, Mohammed Mohsen al-Zubaidi, 50, a Shiite dissident who has spent the past 24 years in exile, declared himself the leader of Baghdad and began setting up an administration in the corner of an unused coffee shop at the back of the Palestine Hotel.
Baghdadis said they hadn't heard of him, and American officials disclaimed any involvement in his self-styled Executive Council for the Reconstruction of Baghdad. But Zubaidi, who returned to Baghdad from London last week, is already acting as if he runs the city.
He spent the day sweeping in and out of the lobby of the hotel surrounded by a presidential-style throng of advisers, bodyguards and hangers-on. He visited a hospital where he pressed flesh with doctors and patients. He played host to a gathering of Baghdad's tribal leaders at his temporary headquarters in the coffee shop, where he pledged to work to restore electricity, water and security to Baghdad - the three biggest complaints of residents right now.
He issued a proclamation declaring himself in charge of the city and urged all tribal leaders to disarm their followers and cooperate with U.S. forces. "The Americans have given us freedom, and anyone who shoots an American soldier must be punished," he told the gathering of tribal leaders from around Baghdad.
Such is the confusion in Baghdad right now that virtually anyone could declare himself a leader and get away with it. Clerics from Shiite neighborhoods have already moved to fill the power vacuum by setting up street committees of armed young men to guard against looters. Zubaidi's claim to authority appears to have some substance, however. He has launched his own radio station, Information Radio, the first Iraqi station to go on the air since the collapse of the Saddam regime's propaganda apparatus. On Thursday it began broadcasting a mixture of Arabic music and anti-Saddam propaganda, including repeated appeals to Iraqi citizens to report any information on the whereabouts of members of the former regime to U.S. Marines.
Zubaidi is staying in a suite of rooms marked "private" at the Palestine Hotel. Ordinary Iraqis are barred from entering the closely guarded hotel, which is home to most of the foreign press contingent in Baghdad and a sizeable number of U.S. Marine officers. Zubaidi says he derives his authority from elections that have taken place over the past five days among "important personalities."
"I was elected by the tribes, the religious leaders, Sunni and Shiite, the engineers, the doctors and the military officers. All of them elected me chief of the executive council of Baghdad," he said.
Many Baghdadis, who have broadly welcomed President Bush's promises of democracy, were skeptical.
"We didn't vote for him and we don't know him. We should know his history, his qualifications," said Hussein Abd el Ridha, a former employee of the Education Ministry. "Everything is mysterious for the people now. It's as though you can become a leader by accident."
Others said they would not accept any returned exile as leader.
"He had good times, happy times, outside Iraq, and now he comes back and declares himself a leader? I don't think he will be accepted," said Dr. Raed al Khazraji, a doctor at Iraq's Kindi Hospital. "In weeks he will fall down. Only those inside Iraq, who suffered what we are suffering, will be accepted."
U.S. military spokesmen also discounted Zubaidi's claims. "The only person that maybe could be considered the mayor of Baghdad right now is the commander general of the 3rd Infantry Division," said Marine spokesman Cpl. John Hoellwarth.
The quest for new Iraqi leaders is nonetheless an urgent one. Such was the control of Saddam's Baath Party over Iraq's political life that there are no opposition figures inside Iraq who could move into positions of leadership. All were either forced into exile or died at the hands of the regime.
Although Baghdad is calmer than it was a week ago, the looting and burning of former government institutions continues, and all Iraqis complain about the general feeling of insecurity and the failure of the U.S. military to install a replacement government.
U.S. officials have repeatedly said that Iraqis must choose their own leaders, but still there has been little in the way of progress toward the formation of a new government. A U.S.-sponsored conference of Iraqi opposition leaders in the southern town of Nasiriyah this week achieved only an agreement that the leaders should meet again in 10 days.
Zubaidi's announcement coincided with the arrival in Baghdad of Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the opposition Iraqi National Congress (INC), which has close ties to the United States. He has taken up residence at the premises of the Iraq Hunting Club, a former hangout of Saddam and his relatives, which is now being closely guarded by U.S. Special Forces.
Although he is well known in Western circles, Chalabi has no support base inside Iraq and is perhaps best known here for his indictment on corruption charges in Jordan.
Zubaidi's relationship with Chalabi's INC was unclear. He denied any association and said he belonged to no political party. An INC official at Chalabi's headquarters said that he had not heard of Zubaidi and that Chalabi was not involved in the new effort to build a Baghdad government. But a U.S. Marine officer who briefly dropped in at the coffee shop said he was sure Zubaidi belonged to the INC.
Zubaidi's chief credential may be his Shiite origins. Shiites account for nearly two-thirds of Iraq's population, and they are agitating for a major role in any future government. In Najaf, powerful Shiite clerics are pushing for an Iranian-style Islamic government, and one of the biggest fears of U.S. officials is that their efforts to bring democracy to Iraq will result in a fundamentalist regime.
Zubaidi, who says he fled into exile in 1979 under threat of execution by Saddam's regime, insists he is a religious moderate who supports America's presence in Iraq. Although U.S. officials denied any association with his efforts to lead a new administration, Zubaidi says he talks frequently with U.S. officials about ways to restore order and public services in Baghdad.
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