War Diary: Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2002

STRATFOR ^ | Nov 19, 2002 | Staff

[Axion]

War Diary: Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2002
Nov 19, 2002

Monday, Nov. 18, was the day that U.N. inspectors returned to Iraq to begin Security Council-mandated weapons inspections. It was also a day in which extraordinarily different understandings of the inspections process and timeline were expressed by some key parties.

Mohamed el Baradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency and one of the senior inspectors, said, "It will take at least six months to one year before we finish our work on Iraq. I therefore ask the international community to be patient and wait until we finish our work comprehensively." The recent U.N. resolution calls for a report to be sent to the Security Council 60 days after the beginning of inspections.

The resolution does not say anything about what the inspectors will report. If el Baradei is to be taken seriously, that report will say that under ideal circumstances, that the inspection process must be given more time.

Obviously the key here is whether or not Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein will cooperate, since if the inspectors report non-cooperation the door is opened for war. Therefore, in a sense Hussein can control the timeline of the inspection process simply by cooperating sufficiently as to prevent a negative report to the U.N.

In an attempt to prevent this, the United States introduced a very different understanding of the U.N. resolution. According to U.S. officials, the resolution is intended to cover violations of the no-fly zones introduced under much older U.N. resolutions. Therefore, if Hussein were to violate the no-fly zones, either by flying into them or by firing on U.S. or U.K. aircraft patrolling the areas, then he would be in violation of the recent resolution just as if he failed to cooperate with the weapons inspections.

To emphasize this viewpoint, Washington claimed that U.S. aircraft had come under fire from Iraqi anti-aircraft guns near Mosul in northern Iraq. The United States also reported that it dropped 120,000 leaflets Nov. 17 near Ar Rumayath in the south. One of the leaflets warned, "Beware: Do not track or fire on coalition aircraft. The destruction experienced by your colleagues in other air-defense locations is a response to your continuing aggression toward planes of the coalition forces. No tracking or firing on these aircraft will be tolerated. You could be next."

One would think that this would have become evident to Iraqi gunners over the past 10 years. Apparently not.

This is in fact fortunate for the American position. The willingness of Iraqi anti-aircraft positions to attract precision-guided munitions on themselves provides the United States with an opportunity to flank the weapons inspectors. Obviously, a struggle is shaping up over the meaning of the U.N. resolution.

Those who did not want a U.S. attack on Iraq will interpret the resolution as meaning that no attack can take place while the inspectors are engaged in the inspection process, and it is solely up to the inspectors to evaluate the integrity of the process. The United States, seeking a justification for an attack, is establishing the principle that tracking or attacking U.S. aircraft constitutes a violation of the resolution. Since it is Washington and not the U.N. inspectors who can report on this aspect, the U.S. government is given a measure of control over the process and outcome.

Of potentially greater interest is the report by a Kurdish weekly Nov. 17 which stated that eight senior Iraqi officers were executed after they were accused of triggering an explosion at a missile-storage facility in Biji, a town north of Iraq. The executions reportedly took place on Nov. 8, and those were killed included a general and a colonel. Given the source, it is possible that this report is deliberate misinformation. However, the names of those executed were given, increasing the likelihood that the report is accurate.

STRATFOR has been focusing on the political situation within the Iraqi army for some time, looking for indications of any move to overthrow Hussein either now or in the context of an American attack. Apparently, Hussein has been doing the same thing. He has a habit of executing officers he suspects of treachery. He even sometimes executes people he doesn't really suspect, sort of as a type of preventive maintenance for his regime. It is not clear whether these eight officers were suspected of technical negligence, of failing to prevent a covert team from penetrating and destroying the facility or of themselves destroying the facility.

In a practical sense, it doesn't really matter. Hussein will be carrying out executions of anyone near an accident or failure in order to liquidate potential threats and discourage threats from others. This poses a serious challenge to U.S. efforts to craft a coup.

The people that Washington needs to negotiate with will tend to disappear in the midst of talks. Given this weekend's reports that Hussein had given Libya billions of dollars to buy a possible post-war sanctuary -- news that Stratfor takes with more than a grain of salt, as it sounds more like psychological warfare against Hussein -- it would seem to us that negotiations for a orderly exile are as likely to bear fruit as those for an effective coup.

In the end, the most important aspect of the explosion at the missile-storage factory might be that several Iraqi missiles were destroyed. It would be interesting to know what kind were destroyed and how many of those Hussein has left.