Posted on 08/01/2002 6:15:59 PM PDT by Conagher
An American war on Iraq looks a good way off. But the shadow-boxing has begun
THE sword suspended over the head of Damocles hung, legend says, by a single horsehair. That hanging over the head of Saddam Hussein is only a little more secure. This is a man on whom the world's pre-eminent power has, in effect, declared war. Indeed, unlike most war declarations, George Bush's fatwa against him is personal. America's stated aim is not only to divest Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) but also to change the regime in Baghdad. If he were a stock, you would sell your shares in Iraq's president now.
This, however, is a confrontation being played out in the slowest of slow motion. Mr Bush has disclosed his intentions, but not his chosen means or timing. There has been no visible sign of an American expeditionary force taking up positions on Iraq's borders. Mr Bush has not yet done much to prepare American opinion, let alone world opinion, for a big new war. All this suggests that such a war is a long way off. Sometime in 2003, safely ahead of America's 2004 presidential election, is a fashionable guess.
Guesswork is all it can be. Though unlikely, a sudden attack, assassination or coup, without any diplomatic build-up at all, cannot be ruled out. America routinely deploys more than 50,000 service personnel within striking distance of Iraq; these units could be quietly reinforced or “rotated” without attracting much attention. Hence the possible attraction of a surprise attack, using, say, 50,000 well-armed western troops who could be deployed from existing garrisons (and aircraft carriers) while drawing on the substantial amounts of matériel America has already pre-positioned in Kuwait and Qatar.
In recent weeks, calculated leaks, mingled probably with deliberate disinformation, have prompted a frenzy of speculation. But all they really show is that at least half a dozen approaches to toppling Mr Hussein have been looked at by military planners in Washington and London.
One plan—mooted in the American press a month ago—would involve a three-pronged attack from the north, south and west by as many as 250,000 American and British troops. Another is said to involve local opponents of the Iraqi regime bearing the brunt of the fighting, backed up by massive American air power and only a few thousand allied troops—mostly special forces—on the ground. In yet another, an American attack would focus first on Baghdad and other command centres, in a bid to “decapitate” the regime and pre-empt any move to counter-attack with non-conventional weapons.
This is fascinating speculation. But the official line is that nothing is decided, and the official line may be true. In Turkey last month, Paul Wolfowitz, America's deputy defence secretary, summed things up this way. Mr Bush believes that a regime like Iraq's, which is hostile to America, supports terrorism, and is intent on adding to its unconventional weapons, is not a danger America can afford to live with indefinitely. “How we solve that problem involves a whole range of decisions which only the president can make—and he hasn't made them yet.”
Perhaps. But Mr Hussein is not a passive observer of American decision-making and preparations. The possibility of an American attack now shapes everything he does, at home and abroad.
At home, he has been shoring up his position by the time-honoured method of rewarding his supporters and subduing the rest of the country. Though Iraq's earnings from oil smuggling have been squeezed, military salaries have been increased and officers have been given new cars. As for foreign policy, Mr Hussein must know that he cannot win once America launches an all-out attack on him. His main aim in diplomacy is therefore to play for time in the hope that some external event will render the whole project moot.
This is by no means a barren hope. Mr Hussein's survival to date owes much to the fact that whereas surviving is the one thing he cares about, removing him is one of many things his enemies care about. And distracting events have a habit of coming along. One is the Palestinian intifada, which has inflamed Muslim passions against Israel's American protector and constrained the superpower's freedom of manoeuvre. At home in America, the travails of big business appear to have shifted the political agenda and could make it hard for Mr Bush to win support for a risky new foreign adventure.
Hearts and minds
Mr Hussein is a master at exploiting such opportunities. As after his invasion of Kuwait in 1990, for example, he is milking his pose as the Palestinians' champion for all its worth. Iraq pays a bounty of $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers and $10,000 to the families of other Palestinian intifada casualties.
He has raised a special force, the al-Quds army, to liberate Jerusalem, and says it would march on the holy city at once if only some other Arab country opened its borders to let it through. Such antics play well on the Arab street, where Mr Hussein is admired for his muscular defiance of America and Zionism. Fear of their own public increases the unwillingness of other Arab regimes to co-operate openly in any American attack on him. Even King Abdullah of Jordan, an American protégé, felt the need to say in London and Washington this week that a war on Iraq could plunge the region into chaos. Most of Jordan's people are Palestinian themselves.
However, Mr Hussein does not only appeal over the heads of other Arab rulers. He has also lately done what he can to mend Iraq's fences with the rulers themselves. Back in 1990, George Bush senior responded to Mr Hussein's invasion of Kuwait by methodically building a regional coalition against Iraq. Mr Hussein is now working busily to thwart the efforts of the present President Bush to do the same.
A notable success has come with Syria. In 1991, Syria's President Hafez Assad joined America's military coalition against Iraq. His son, Bashar, has taken a different tack. Unlike his father, Syria's new president is not encumbered by the personal bitterness left by the ancient schism between the Iraqi and Syrian wings of the Baathist movement. He has brought about a sea change in relations with Iraq.
Syria is earning fat profits by smuggling out Iraqi oil by both lorry and pipeline. The border has been opened to trade, and Iraq has been careful to channel a lot of its government business in Syria's direction. In return, the Syrians have clamped down on the activities of the Iraqi opposition groups headquartered in Damascus. According to a recent Israeli newspaper report, Syria is also allowing arms destined for Iraq to be shipped through its territory.
For most of the 1980s, Iraq was at war with Iran. But relations with this traditional enemy have also shown signs of improvement. Mr Hussein has curtailed the activities of the Mujaheddin al-Khalq, the Iraqi-based dissident army that harasses the regime in Tehran, and moved to clear up outstanding business, such as the fate of prisoners-of-war, left over from the war between the two countries.
The Iranians hardly admire Mr Hussein; one of the main Iraqi opposition groups, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution, is based in Iran, and may take part in a meeting of opposition groups to be held next week in Washington at the invitation of the American government. Iran would not contemplate supporting Iraq, but as a fellow-member of Mr Bush's so-called “axis of evil”, has no obvious interest in seeing the fellowship isolated and picked off one by one.
Even Saudi Arabia, one of America's closest allies, has succumbed a little to Mr Hussein's charm offensive, or at least to some of the business temptations that come with it. The recent opening of the Arar border post is expected to boost trade between the two countries, routed until now through Jordan. The Iraqis are trying to persuade Saudi Arabia to sign a free-trade agreement of the sort Iraq already has with ten other Arab states. Iraq has at last recognised Kuwait, which it once claimed as its 19th province, and has begun to return the national archives it seized during its 1990 occupation.
The significance of these manoeuvres should not be exaggerated. At some point, Mr Hussein's attempts to win friends and influence people he once fought wars against must be weighed against the political and economic leverage Mr Bush can bring to bear when the time is ripe. In this unequal contest, as in the military one, the superpower is bound to win. But Mr Hussein does have one advantage. His desire to fend off an American attack runs with the grain of wider Arab opinion. America's desire to unseat him runs against it.
Quavering allies
It is no doubt true, as the Americans say, that Arab leaders are ruder about Mr Hussein in private than they dare to be in public. But their public caution nonetheless speaks volumes. In 1990 they feared what Mr Hussein might do next if he were allowed to swallow Kuwait. This time they seem more frightened about the possible anti-American reaction on their own streets. They made their opposition to a new war unambiguous at the Arab summit in Beirut last April.
Could the Arabs be talked round? One message the Americans have received loud and clear is that the Arab reaction would be different if an attack on Mr Hussein were preceded by stronger American intervention on the Arab side in the Palestine conflict.
On the face of it, Mr Bush's policy-setting speech on Palestine last June was just the opposite. He called for a Palestinian state. But by calling also for the removal of Yasser Arafat, and giving Israel's government tacit permission to re-occupy the whole of the West Bank, Mr Bush aligned himself closely with Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister and a hate-figure to most Arabs. Yet it is not impossible, once America's own mid-term elections are out of the way in November, that Mr Bush might tilt a little the other way—by convening a regional peace conference, say.
One voice urging Mr Bush in this direction will be Tony Blair's. Unlike most European leaders, Britain's prime minister sounds as worried as Mr Bush does about the perils of a nuclear Iraq. Britain will almost certainly fight at America's side. But Mr Blair keeps telling his Labour Party that no decision has been taken yet. Before doing so, he is liable to press for more political steps to prepare world, Arab, and not least British opinion.
This is not likely to include asking the UN Security Council for approval. Though France's Jacques Chirac and Germany's Gerhard Schröder said this week that such a step was essential, the British and Americans insist that Iraq's violation of the 1991 UN ceasefire terms is all the authority they need for military action. On the other hand, Mr Blair will probably want Mr Hussein to be given one last chance to avoid war by re-admitting the arms inspectors he forced out in 1998.
Sounds fair? It is not certain that Mr Bush will think so. Donald Rumsfeld, America's defence secretary, says that after four years free from scrutiny, Mr Hussein has had ample time to hide his WMD paraphernalia in places where not even the keenest inspectors will now be able to find it. Besides, Mr Bush's declared aim is not only to get inspectors back into Iraq but also to unseat Mr Hussein. The last thing the fiercest hawks in the administration want is to help the dictator wriggle free by accepting the return of the inspectors.
Even if he is not given one last chance to let the inspectors back, this issue presents Mr Hussein with another opportunity to play for time. Since March, Iraqi officials have met Kofi Annan, the UN's secretary-general, and his inspectorate three times to discuss the inspectors' return. The last meeting did not go well. This might mean that Iraq will never allow the inspectors back. More probably, it means that Mr Hussein will offer to co-operate only when he considers an attack imminent. At that point, he will hope for further delay while the Security Council argues about his terms. In extremis, Mr Hussein might muddy the waters even further by offering to “step down” and hand the presidency to his youngest son, Qusay.
Will they fight?
What if, in spite of Mr Hussein's stratagems, it does come to war? On paper, Iraq still has one of the Middle East's biggest armed forces. It fought doggedly for eight years against the Iranians. The regular army has 17 divisions with thousands of tanks, and the supposedly “elite” Republican Guard fields six divisions, of which three are armoured. These are supplemented by the 20-odd divisions of the al-Quds army. But Iraq has no air force to speak of, and the number of men and tanks exaggerates the potency of a land force that is short of spare parts for equipment that was already obsolete when Mr Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990.
When the American-led ground forces went into action then to force the Iraqis out, Mr Hussein's soldiers, dazed and hungry after weeks of bombing, showed precious little fight. Only a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of soldiers America sent to the battlefield saw serious action. Iraq killed hardly any of them. Since then, the technology gap has grown. At the end of December, Mr Hussein ordered some of his forces to move west to show solidarity with the Palestinians. He succeeded mainly in demonstrating the ramshackle condition of his troops; it took more than three weeks to redeploy a single division.
Even if it chose to fight, Iraq's army would clearly be no match against an invading American one. In any straight contest between conventional forces, a relatively small American-led expeditionary force should be able to wreck the Iraqi military quite swiftly, perhaps in a few weeks. The 100,000 or so battle-ready troops of Republican Guard and other elite units may stand and fight, rather than flee or surrender, but they will expose themselves to devastating air attacks.
Besides, many Iraqis may choose not to fight. You would expect the ordinary soldier to be fiercer in defence of his homeland than he was in defence of Kuwait. But would he lay down his life to stave off the inevitable defeat of an unloved dictator? Even the Republican Guard, whose loyalty is now unquestioned, knows what happened in Afghanistan, and might waver if it concluded that the Americans were intent on removing Mr Hussein. The strongest resistance will come from those implicated in the internal repression, such as the “special” Republican Guard, commanded by Qusay, and a new force of toughs known as Saddam's fedayeen, with reason to fear for their lives in the subsequent settling of scores.
Conjecture about the low morale of the Iraqi army is comforting. But it is also, to some degree, beside the point. For the big danger in attacking Iraq is not that America will be defeated on the conventional battlefield, nor that it will be bogged down in a Vietnam. It is that once Mr Hussein decides that he has nothing to lose, he will opt for a Wagnerian exit by striking out with his weapons of mass destruction.
Though he had them, Mr Hussein did not use these weapons in Kuwait, presumably because he reasoned, correctly, that he could lose a war there and still cling to power in Baghdad. But in the Iran-Iraq war, he showed no compunction about using chemical weapons once the Iranians crossed into Iraqi territory. And if he used them against American troops, what could the Americans do? Replying in kind would hardly endear them to an Iraq which the United States would be claiming to “liberate”. As in 1991, he might also strike at Israel, this time putting chemical or biological weapons on top of his remaining Scud missiles, or smuggling a “dirty bomb” across the border.
And afterwards?
In a war intended to change a regime, America has to plan not just for military victory but also for a post-war order. A long-stated fear among Iraq's Arab neighbours is that without Mr Hussein's iron fist to hold it together, Iraq might fly apart into separate Kurdish, Shia and Sunni fiefs. This is undeniably a possibility. Mr Hussein has eviscerated his internal opposition, and the opposition in exile is fractious.
For a while, the Americans have therefore been hosting opposition meetings and conferences to plot the future of Iraq. The feuding opposition groups have been invited to an inter-agency meeting in Washington next week, intended to quell some of the squabbles that have split the Kurds from the rest of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), and the INC from the Iraqi National Accord, the group that has been behind several failed coup attempts.
For their part, the opposition organisations say that the Bush administration is riven by plenty of feuds of its own. The State Department, it is alleged, takes an excessively “realist” view of a post-war Iraq, envisaging the removal of the dictator but his replacement by a traditional authoritarian leadership of the kind that exists all over the Arab world. The Defence Department is said to entertain grander visions about the possibility of establishing a western-style democracy to serve as an example for the rest of the region.
It is hard to say which outcome—disintegration, or the creation of a real democracy—frightens the neighbours most. But the former danger is often overstated. One reason to expect Iraq to stay together is precisely that most of its neighbours want it to. Turkey, Syria and Iran, fearing the precedent, will resist the emergence of an independent Kurdistan. Saudi Arabia, for similar reasons, will not want Iraq's Shias to realign themselves with Iran.
Besides, if it is the Americans who remove Mr Hussein from power, they can be expected to remain on the scene for a while to hold the country together, just as they have, so far with fair results, in post-Taliban Afghanistan. In Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, reconciliation will be lubricated by a gusher of petrodollars. But first Mr Hussein will have to go.
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