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The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition --International

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January 19, 1999

International Commentary

Saddam vs. His Neighbors

By Benjamin C. Works, executive director of the Strategic Issues Research Institute of the United States, and a consultant on defense and diplomatic affairs for CBS News and FoxNews.

If you strike at the king, you must kill him.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Saturday marked the eighth anniversary of Operation Desert Storm, and, if anything, the Bush and Clinton administrations and the U.N. have given posterity a case study in how not to finish a job. U.S. President George Bush was timid and erred, but with six years on the job, it is Bill Clinton's team that must take the responsibility for why Saddam Hussein is still around. Last month's Desert Fox strikes and the subsequent skirmishes in the no-fly zones threatened to give the world more of the same, but the failure in policy has led to a fundamental change in Arab thinking. Middle Eastern leaders now recognize they must topple Saddam.

For weeks now, Arab journals in London and other Middle East media have chronicled this tectonic shift. The first indications were that leaders in U.S.-backed Middle Eastern regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Kuwait have agreed to use both covert and overt means to overthrow Saddam. They're not alone. Apparently, Iran and Syria have also agreed to cooperate with each other to oust Saddam, while some Iraqi Kurdish groups in the northern no-fly zone have also accepted going along with Turkey in U.S. Central Intelligence Agency-backed operations.

But what distinguishes the policy thrust by the Gulf Arabs and Egypt is that these former Desert Storm allies now appear to have decided on their own course. A policy dispute between them and Washington has grown to the point where the Arabs would rather accomplish Saddam's downfall under their own plan, and by themselves, than accept a U.S.-inked approach. Tactically and operationally, the Tampa-based U.S. Central Command--which oversees Mideast operations--and its combat forces remain highly respected. But at the strategic level, the U.S. "National Command Authority," that is, the president and his top national security advisors and his whole foreign policy team appear, from recent indications in the Arab press, to have squandered their respectability.

It's not difficult to see why the U.S. military still commands respect, but the foreign-policy team doesn't. Operation Desert Fox did deal Saddam's forces a hard blow by attacking the bases of each of the Republican Guard's six field divisions, destroying armories, munitions dumps and field equipment while killing some 1,200 personnel, according to a detailed report from the opposition group Iraqi National Congress. This account from an admittedly biased source conforms with statements made by U.S. Gen. Anthony Zinni of Centcom and Gen. Hugh Shelton, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.

But though the Republican Guard's divisions, which are positioned between the regular army and Baghdad to prevent revolts, were damaged, they're still mobile and more lethal than Iraq's regular army divisions. They will have to be damaged much more severely if Saddam's regime is to be toppled by a combination of domestic insurrection and foreign intervention. And there are signs that opposition to Saddam both inside Iraq and around the region was bubbling to a head before the U.S.-British strikes, which may have come too late.

There have been three important sets of executions in Iraq since a mid-November attempt to assassinate Saddam's top Shiite deputy, Izzat Ibrahim, according to the U.S. State Department and news reports. Hundreds of Shiites were executed and over 2,000 hostages were taken by Gen. Ali al-Majid and Saddam's son Qusay Hussein in mopping up the south after the attempt on Izzat Ibrahim. Then, only hours before Desert Fox began, Iraq re-organized its military command structure. The action appears to have nipped an attempted coup in the bud. Some 81 junior officers and noncommissioned officers, including some from the Republican Guard, were also executed in Baghdad around Dec. 13-14. During the bombing, the Iraqi Army's 11th Mechanized Division's commander and four senior officers were executed near Basra on Dec. 18, and other officers of the division's parent 3rd Corps were reportedly executed. Two other colonels, both named al-Jaboori, met the same fate in Baghdad on Dec. 19.

Reports from the London paper Al-Hayat and other sources confirmed that Shiite guerrillas attacked TV and radio buildings in al-Saleheyah district in Baghdad on Thursday, Dec. 17, while others, presumably affiliated with the Iranian-supported Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), attacked other TV-radio towers in the south. In a Jan. 1 article, an unnamed Baath Party official confirmed more details to Al-Hayat.

By the time of Saddam's Armed Forces Day speech of Jan. 5, in which he called on the faithful to rise up and overthrow governments in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, those governments had already reached the conclusion that Saddam must go, though he clearly crossed a line of no return with that speech. Saudi Arabia and Egypt have responded by publicly calling for Iraqis to rise up and overthrow Saddam.

But U.S. policy makers are being kept at arm's length. About Dec. 2, according to the Arab press in London, the U.S. approached Iran about coordinating covert efforts against Saddam, but was turned down. Then, around the eve of Desert Fox, we are further informed by an Israeli radio broadcast on Dec. 19, the U.S. asked Iran not to conduct independent operations, even though Baghdad's execution squads were already working under Saddam's son to squash the Shiite rebels.

As the Lebanese magazine al-Shera reported on Jan. 11, citing Arab sources, the Arab governments associated with Desert Storm had now agreed to accomplish Saddam's downfall, if need be, through "Arab military interference in Iraq" and without U.S. assistance.

It appears that Iraq's Arab neighbors and Iran now put greater stock in Saddam's timely ouster than Washington does. Egypt laid down the condition that any Arab operation not fall under a U.S. umbrella--that is, the U.S. will not be the senior or "indispensable" partner, to use Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's words.

That led, last Wednesday, to an interesting statement by U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen. In Tokyo, responding to speculation that the U.S.-Arab coalition was fomenting a military uprising inside Iraq--a logical consequence of CIA- or Arab-backed clandestine operations--Mr. Cohen said there was no commitment to provide U.S. military support for any uprising. "All we've indicated is that we will work with opposition groups but no such commitment [to provide military support] at this point," he said. "We're going to take it step by step and not going to have a situation where you get a precipitous situation that could turn into a kind of Bay of Pigs."

Sure enough, the U.S. Defense Department runs overt operations, not clandestine projects, which are the province of the CIA. But what may be worrying Mr. Cohen is that he knows that Central Command does not have sufficient tactical air power to do much more than enforce the no-fly zones and prevent a sudden lunge against Kuwait's border. If a large military uprising within Iraq precipitated a counter-attack by the damaged but operational Republican Guard, the U.S. and Britain alone could not provide adequate air cover for a rebel force. It would be crushed.

So the neighbors agree that Saddam must go, and the American people too overwhelmingly wonder why he is even still around. In November, Mr. Clinton, himself, in a paradoxical two-track policy, loudly proclaimed covert operations by the CIA to end Saddam's regime, even as he was negotiating Iraq's cooperation in that last chance resumption of the Unscom inspections.

So it is Mr. Clinton who has painted himself into a box. In the ironic folly of globalism, the "reasonable" U.S.-backed U.N. resolutions help to insure Saddam's survival unless something creative is done. The old U.N. sanctions regime has collapsed, Unscom is not operational, and both the U.S. and Britain appear ready to throw in the towel regarding crude oil exports and the import of oil field equipment and humanitarian relief. Even to its key partners, the U.S. appears to be dithering, vacating its old containment policy and only offering endless rotations of patrol aircraft and naval vessels, an expensive policy that could potentially stretch on for another two decades, since Saddam is only 61.

Now that the situation on the ground appears to have shifted, it may be time for the U.S. to do some rethinking. Supporting an Arab-initiated plan to oust Saddam from within and without would require a resolute administration committed to seeing things through to the end, and ready to use blunt power. Mr. Clinton, however, has given quite the opposite impression to all involved.

--From The Wall Street Journal Europe, January 18, 1999

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