Posted on 11/08/2002 7:41:25 AM PST by Stand Watch Listen
David Kay, a former United Nations weapons inspector, remembers the day in 1991 when his team showed up at an Iraqi building with solid information that records of secret weapons programs were stashed in a specific office."As we went down the hall, the Iraqis were lined up, smiling," Kay says. "They knew we were coming, and they really sanitized the office. There was a desk and chairs and nothing else."
Kay's information had come from an Iraqi defector, but it had been months between the time the defector left Iraq and the time the information finally got to the inspectors. By then, the Iraqis had realized the scientist was gone, and they had covered their tracks.
Kay says he is amused as he recalls the incident now. But he wasn't amused at the time, and his experiences in Iraq are a pointed warning about the frustrations inspectors will face in trying to ferret out banned weapons when they return to Baghdad for the first time in four years. Back then, they faced persistent, escalating resistance from the Iraqis, and they left the country shortly before U.S. and British forces began a retaliatory bombing campaign.
Friday, the U.N. Security Council is expected to approve a resolution that could send inspectors back to Iraq in the next couple of weeks and begin inspections before Christmas. According to the timetable, inspectors would have to report back to the United Nations by Feb. 21.
With the Bush administration ready to seize on Iraqi obstruction as justification for an invasion to depose leader Saddam Hussein, a key question is just what it would take to provoke a war.
"Our greatest concern is what type of incident would trigger a response, and what is the threshold," says Edwin Lyman, president of the Nuclear Control Institute, a non-proliferation group in Washington. "You have to expect that Iraq will give them the 'dog ate my homework' excuse. What level of obfuscation would be enough to trigger an immediate military response?"
Frustrating inspectors
Kay and other experts say the Iraqis use a variety of techniques to frustrate inspectors: removing evidence, blocking access, even firing at inspectors or holding them prisoner.
Would the Bush administration go to war over the empty office Kay described? Probably not. But if not that, what exactly would it take?
The U.N. resolution has triggers for new Security Council action to authorize military force, including the requirement that Iraq accept the resolution within seven days and produce within 30 days a full declaration of all its weapons programs and dual civilian-military facilities. But the Bush administration has not specified what could trigger military action, in part to avoid giving Iraq cues about how far it can go before being called to account.
U.S. officials say they realize that many nations believe Washington is looking for an excuse to attack Iraq, so the Bush administration will not play "gotcha" on minor infractions. They also want to give chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix some freedom to work with Iraq, because U.S. officials believe Blix's credibility and his support for Washington's views are crucial to U.S. credibility at the United Nations. But U.S. officials warn that if there is a major breach by Iraq, such as turning inspectors away from a site, they could consider that the basis for taking military action under the resolution expected to be adopted today.
If U.S. forces are to invade, the best time would be during the winter, before intense heat would make fighting very difficult in the cumbersome suits designed to protect troops against chemical or biological weapons. That means U.S. strategists could be looking for a provocation by late this year or early next.
In Baghdad, most Iraqis interviewed during a recent visit said they see the inspectors' arrival as their last hope to avoid a devastating war. Having lived through years of conflict — first with Iran during the 1980s and then with a U.S.-led coalition in the Gulf War in 1991— Iraqis have clung to every scrap of news about the U.N. weapons inspectors as a sign that they might avert another disaster. The small Baghdad Stock Exchange rose sharply on days when Iraqi officials were negotiating with Blix's team in Vienna.
Tough job
Inspectors will have a tough job when they return to Baghdad. Making even a cursory inspection will probably take at least the two to three months allowed under the accelerated timetable the Security Council is expected to approve.
"It's pretty clear to us that the (previous U.N.) inspectors did not find all the facilities and stocks of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction in their first go-round," Undersecretary of State John Bolton said recently. "You could have a very robust team go into Iraq and because of Saddam's denial and deception, it might not find anything for quite some time."
U.N. officials and former inspectors say they would need at least two months just to get a new inspection program up and running. Tentative plans call for three teams of 80 to 100 inspectors spending four-month shifts in Iraq.
About 270 U.N. inspectors were being trained to go to Iraq even as the final details of a new inspection resolution were being negotiated. U.N. officials hope to disperse the teams to live around the country to reduce the drive time for snap inspections and to make it harder for the Iraqis to figure out where inspectors are going. Before, all inspectors were based in Baghdad.
But even with those and other changes, no one minimizes the challenge.
"They (the Iraqis) had a whole deception and denial program, and it has gotten better and better," says Trevor Findlay, executive director of the Verification Research, Training and Information Center, a London-based arms control think tank.
Even though inspectors have learned from experience and now have better training and better technology, the Iraqis still have the edge, experts say. Kay led three inspection teams in the months after the Gulf War, conducting about 240 inspections. "I'd guess that only about a half dozen of them were genuine surprises to the Iraqis, and those required elaborate ruses," Kay says.
Obstruction tactics
Former inspectors say Iraq thwarts inspections by:
Slowing down inspectors by creating traffic jams. Bus breakdowns are the most common, followed by epidemics of flat tires. Creating military exclusion zones that force inspectors to take long, roundabout detours to a site. That gives Iraqis time to destroy or remove anything incriminating.
Removing batteries and solar power cells from cameras designed to monitor sites.
Harassing and threatening inspectors. In September 1991, several inspectors were held hostage for three days in a Baghdad parking lot for refusing to surrender incriminating documents they had seized. Inspectors have been shot at, driven through violent mobs, followed and called in the middle of the night. Their hotel rooms are bugged, their luggage is opened and the contents strewn about, and threats have been made against their families.
Requiring inspectors to be accompanied by a military escort on the grounds that parts of Iraq are "not safe." That slows convoys, intimidates Iraqis whom the inspectors want to interview and prevents quick helicopter flights to watch the back doors of buildings being inspected.
Making key officials unavailable. For example, inspectors arrive at a site only to find that the commander is not there, which forces the inspectors to wait. On other occasions, the person with the key to the building is missing and has to be found. "All this as they move the stuff out of the back gate," Kay says.
Kay warns that the Iraqis will try to lure inspectors into places that have no weapons but take a long time to search. "They tend to offer more than you need for access, and that is a good sign nothing is there," he says. "They love you to spend an extra week in a place that has nothing going on."
Contributing: Vivienne Walt
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