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SIT REP 1-13-99; Wednesday. January 13, 1999

STRATEGIC ISSUES TODAY

Inside this Issue- Iraq, Turkey and the Arabs --"Seams and Gaps"

Note: Saturday, January 16^th marks the eighth anniversary of Operation Desert Storm and Sunday marks the end of Ramadan.

One thing about recycling newspaper under New York City regulations is that they pile up for a couple of weeks between pickups. I like to stack the newspapers up and, after a few days, go back through a story to its origins and study how it evolves -"archeologizing." This is part of the art of "pattern analysis."

Get a complex story such as the ongoing Iraq crisis and start several stacks for the individual elements and key players; Iraq, Iran, Saudi, Kuwait, the No Fly Zones, UNSCOM, the Security Council, etc. and you see a set of patterns..

One thing enemies try to do to their opponents is to exploit the "seams and gaps" in the opponent's alliance, or battle line --a form of "divide and conquer." Attack at the junction of two different commands, where coordination is weak and the front line troops are farthest from their command and supplies.

Here's a pattern: For three days, the major action between missile batteries and patrol aircraft have been taking place in the Northern No Fly Zone. General Wesley Clark's European Command (EUCOM) operates the patrols out of Incirlik Air Force Base, which is crowded and far from the actual patrol zone --there are currently 45 US and 6 RAF combat aircraft there and the base cannot hold much more. Thus, the US, itself, has a divided command structure regarding Iraq, since the southern zone and Gulf area are the responsibility of General Anthony Zinni's Central Command --CENTCOM.

Saddam, this week, appears to be focusing his energies on the northern front to "entertain" the interim government of Turkey headed by new Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit. This is a care-taker government until national elections in April and Mr. Ecevit is not a great fan of Washington in the best of times. Turkey has lost a lot of economic activity due to the eight-year embargo of Iraq. Saddam's oil flows through Turkey and there is much profitable smuggling, angles Saddam thinks to be at the forefront of Mr. Ecevit's thinking. The following comments are abstracted from a BBC report published overnight (Jan 12, 23:16 GMT):

"While I hope Iraq will be in more accordance with the world, I also hope that the United States will produce peaceful solutions."

Mr Ecevit, wants to verify the US's assertion that its planes fired on Iraqi targets in self defence. "This is the excuse they are using," he said. "I think the United States does not have any decision regarding the kind of solution they want to see in Iraq."

Turkey still has troops inside the Kurdish Zone of northern Iraq, chasing what they hope are the collapsing remnants of the Kurdish Socialist PKK insurrection, whose leader, Mr. Ocalen, is stranded in Italy as he tries to quit his own revolution, while dodging extradition. But Turkey and the northern front are vital only to maintaining the Iraqi Kurdish front, it is not vital to the more important military front in the Gulf; Incirlik played a modest role in Desert Storm.

Over the weekend, State Department efforts led to a rapprochement between the Kurdish factions in northern Iraq, so Saddam appears to be countering by putting pressure on US-Turkish relations.

I have to presume this for now, pending confirmation, but I would expect that some Republican Guard units normally posted in northern Iraq and which were moved south to suppress the Shiite insurrections of November and December, must be returning to their normal blocking positions between the Iraqi Army and Baghdad. Once they do return in force, Saddam could rapidly prepare another blitz of the Kurds, something Clinton has vowed the air forces would punish.

Ongoing Air-Ground Skirmishes

As today's news evolves, it is clear there were multiple events in the northern zone this morning and new events in the south, as well. Again, Iraq is trying to claim it downed an airplane in the north, but that did not happen.

One element of Saddam's evolving tactics is that he is using more aircraft to set up more elaborate and alluring traps. In recent days, pilots report no fly zone violations by combinations of jets and attack helicopters at different altitudes and directions --dividing a pilot's attention. Then, other flights of Iraqi jets try to fly in from other angles to get close enough to fire a missile. These traps have not been working either.

The US estimates it is dealing with some 110 missile batteries of all radar-guided types (SA-2, -3, -6 and Roland). One published report indicates that Saddam has doubled the density of batteries inside the No Fly Zones and that the whereabouts of some 13 batteries are unknown.

Aviation Week, by the way, reported on Monday that Saddam's intelligence gathering profits in strange ways from wireless communications technology. It seems that Bedouins have set up camps just outside the air bases in Saudi and Kuwait and that when US and British aircraft take off, cellular phone traffic into Iraq soars from these camps. This is why Desert Fox began from the ships and carrier-based aircraft, rather from the land-based airforce --this is part of the problem of "operational security" when seeking to maintain some element of surprise in an initial attack.

Secretary of Defense Richard Cohen, on a trip in East Asia, is keeping to his usually taciturn pattern of behavior by not issuing truculent threats. Though a career civilian, he is distinguished in the Clinton Administration for knowing something of how to "speak softly and carry a big stick." Cohen, by the way, is quoted today as downplaying any immediate and melodramatic threat to peace from North Korea, which atop the Iraq Crisis, would present an incredible strain to America's armed forces. That is the nightmare we defense analysts most worry about; a combine of Saddam and Kim Jong-Il attacking in a mini-replay of Hitler and Tojo. It is the opinion of most critics of Clinton's Defense policies, that our ground forces, in particular, lack so many combat personnel, and have been so frequently deployed, that the Army simply isn't ready for a repetition of Desert Storm, much less a two-front war in Iraq and Korea.

As I was preparing to finalize this report, late word came from Mr. Cohen, via Agence France Presse and others and tends to deny that the US and local allies are angling for an immediate military uprising against Saddam:

US Defense Secretary William Cohen said Wednesday there was no commitment now to provide US military support for any uprisings against President Saddam Hussein. "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."

Arab Views:

Published Arab opinion continues a drumbeat against Saddam, and in Kuwait, as one might easily imagine, the rhetoric is particularly strident. Were Saddam to lunge out on the ground again, it would be against Kuwait. --I wonder, perhaps, if those senior officers in the 12^th Mechanized Division were executed for not obeying orders to mount a demonstration movement towards Kuwait. Thus, part of the Kuwaiti Army is on full alert, reinforced by a small force of American armored troops and Marines.

According to an Agence France Presse report this morning, a Kuwaiti paper wrote:

"To prevent a catastrophe bigger than the 1990 invasion, we must be aware that we are racing against time," wrote columnist Sami al-Nassef in the [Kuwaiti] newspaper Al-Anba. He said Saddam was preparing to commit a "great crime" and urged the government in Kuwait, which has been rattled by a verbal onslaught from Baghdad since the Desert Fox air war, to take precautionary measures."

Turkey and many Arab leaders wonder if the United States has a clear policy at this late stage. So does Saddam. Mr. Cohen's "Bay of Pigs" comment today causes me to wonder -the coalition still retains the option if it gets lucky. Tomorrow, ministers from the Gulf States will meet to further consider measures against Saddam in the wake of his defiance of the UN and the Desert Fox operation.

Want a nightmare? Another ground war where the US has to build up its forces in this winter's cool weather, only to have to mount combat operations in the summer's heat. The crisis continues to build up steam and there will be headlines.

© Copyright 1999 by Benjamin C. Works - SIRIUS www.siri-us.com