POLITICS-IRAQ/US: Is There a Strategy?

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Analysis Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Feb 19 2001 (IPS) - Four days after US warplanes bombed radar stations and air-defence command centres around Baghdad, Washington’s strategy for dealing with its old nemesis, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, is little clearer than it was before.

Although President George W. Bush insisted that the raids were “routine”, they were the biggest conducted by US and British aircraft since December 1998 when they unleashed a 70-hour-long bombing campaign across Iraq in retaliation for Baghdad’s withdrawal from a UN weapons-inspection programme first implemented after the 1991 Gulf War.

But most analysts here do not see the latest attacks as part of a larger, carefully thought-out strategy either to oust Saddam Hussein, or to compel him to permit UN inspectors back into Iraq. A return of UN inspectors to Iraq will be the subject of talks in New York later this month between Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

At most, the bombing was meant to signal what had already been expected from the new administration – a tougher approach toward Baghdad than that carried out over the past eight years by Bill Clinton, who largely confined US air attacks to air-defence systems located within the “no-fly” zones in northern and southern Iraq that posed an actual threat to specific flights.

At the least, the attacks constituted a favour to the Pentagon which had been complaining for weeks that patrolling the “no-fly zones” had become more dangerous due to the acquisition of SA-6 missile batteries and other improvements in Iraqi air-defence technology.

“It was Saddam Hussein who had stepped up Iraqi air defence activity, and who had tried to create a new kind of trap for American and British aircraft,” Anthony Cordesman, a Mideast military specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a major recruiting ground for senior Bush Pentagon appointments, wrote in the New York Times. “(The administration) will almost certainly have to follow these strikes with strikes in the future.”

Such efforts are a necessary part of a strategy of “military containment” of Iraq which the administration will be driven to adopt over the coming years in the absence of any other viable option, according to Cordesman and other analysts.

“All Bush can do at this point is to maintain a consensus on blocking the sale of war material to Iraq,” Graham Fuller, a regional specialist who served in senior posts at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Rand Corporation, wrote in the Los Angeles Times. More than that, the most Bush can hope for, according to Fuller, is acquiescence in unilateral US attacks against Iraqi weapons of mass destruction or plants which produce them.

But broader options are still being discussed within the administration which, one month after taking power, has still not decided on key policy- making posts in the Middle East or how to translate its tough campaign rhetoric into reality on the ground.

The administration in fact is divided over what course to pursue on Iraq. While all sides are agreed on striking a more forceful military posture, there is little agreement on anything else.

The most sensitive issue is what to do about several factions of Saddam Hussein’s opposition, led by the London-based Iraqi National Congress (INC), to which Congress two years ago allocated some 98 million dollars in military and other assistance.

Due to scepticism about the opposition in the Clinton administration, very little of that money was ever spent. But last month, the new administration approved spending four million dollars on the INC to collect information inside Iraq about human rights abuses, alleged violations of UN Security Council resolutions, and other intelligence.

It was the first time any money had been approved by Washington for actions inside Iraq since 1996 when Saddam Hussein sent his troops into the northern no-fly zone to roll up a large, covert Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operation run from Kurdish territory. Hundreds of recruits fled across the border into Turkey, while scores of others were captured and executed.

The INC, which wants eventually to establish a military presence in areas protected by the no-fly zone in order to challenge the loyalty of Baghdad’s troops, has long been championed by several senior officials in the new administration, particularly Paul Wolfowitz, who has just been named as Deputy Defence Secretary.

Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, who was Defence Secretary during the Gulf War against Saddam Hussein, also reportedly favour giving more support to the opposition.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War, is considered much less enthusiastic, as is much of the military brass in the Pentagon’s Central Command, which covers the Gulf region.

In their view, the opposition, including the INC, is hopelessly divided and incompetent; in any event, no match for Saddam Hussein’s military and intelligence forces, as was shown in 1996.

If anything, the Saddam Hussein faced by the new Bush administration is stronger than he was five years ago, both internally and externally, according to most experts here.

The UN sanctions regime put in place after Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait is almost constantly violated, and pressure to lift all economic sanctions – from countries ranging from Russia and China to US allies Turkey and Egypt – has grown steadily over the past several years. Indeed, the Pentagon let it be known Sunday that it carried out its attack Friday in order not to put Chinese workers at risk. They have been helping to install a new fibre- optic system at one command site that will upgrade Iraq’s air defences.

Last year’s dizzying rise in oil prices replenished much of Saddam Hussein’s depleted coffers, while the co-operation of Iran, Turkey, and, most recently, Syria, which just re-opened a major pipeline from Iraq, in getting the oil to world markets has ensured a steady source of revenue for the Iraqi leader.

All of these developments will figure high on the agenda when Powell travels to the region for meetings with leaders in Saudia Arabia, Syria, Kuwait, and Jordan, at the end of the month. While expected to press for a stiffer line against Baghdad, he will also be sounding out their views on US options for the opposition. He is not expected to receive much encouragement.

“Except for Kuwait, no Gulf state has the stomach for further sanctions, and they are increasingly uncomfortable with US military missions over Iraq,” according to Fuller, who also noted that the collapse of the Palestinian-Israeli peace process also favours Saddam Hussein’s position in the region.

“At a minimum, Bush has to tighten military controls against Iraq,” said Shibley Telhami, a regional specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations here. “In order to do that, he needs major Arab co-operation at a time when Arab popular opinion is going in the opposite direction.”