Iraq's Real Coup:
Did Saddam Snooker Shwarzkopf?
By Laurie Mylroie
The Washington Post
June 28, 1992
When Saddam Hussein's helicopters strafed rebels into submission
after the Persian Gulf war last year, superior US forces did nothing
despite President Bush's appeal to Iraqis to overthrow "the dictator."
US commander Norman Schwarzkopf claimed Iraqi ceasefire negotiators
"suckered" him, winning his permission for transport fights, then using
gunships against Iraqi and Kurdish civilians. But new evidence shows
Schwarzkopf himself set no helicopter limits. Other information raises
questions about whether he acted in the mistaken belief that the
helicopter forces would lead an anti-Saddam coup--and whether such a
fatal miscalculation was planted in the minds of the U.S. high command
by Iraqi agents.
The new evidence begins with the cease-fire talks' transcript,
recently declassified by the Pentagon. Information has also come from
veteran Iraqi watchers deeply experienced in Saddam's devious ways.
Although further investigation is needed, known facts and informed
conjecture suggest that deeper reasons exist than so far known about how
the war left Saddam in power despite his defeat.
The starting point is the declassified transcript of the March 3,
1991 meeting in Safwan between Schwarzkopf, leader of coalition forces,
and Iraqis led by Gen. Sultan Hashim Ahmed. The crucial exchange began
when Ahmad told Schwarzkopf, "Helicopter flights sometimes are needed to
carry some of the officials, government officials or any members....
needed to be transported from one place to another because the roads and
bridges are out."
Schwarzkopf then told Ahmad how to mark helicopters to avoid being
shot at.
Ahmad: This has nothing to do with the front line. This is inside
Iraq.
Schwarzkopf: As long as it is not over the part we are in, that is
absolutely no problem. So we will let the helicopters, and that is a
very important point, and I want to make sure that's recorded, that
military helicopters can fly over Iraq. [Author's italics] Not
fighters, not bombers.
Ahmad: So you mean even the helicopters. . . armed in the Iraqi skies
can fly. But not the fighters? Because the helicopters are the same.
they transfer somebody....
Schwarzkopf: Yeah. I will instruct our Air Force not to shoot at any
helicopters that are flying over the territory of Iraq where we are not
located. If they must fly over the area we are located in, I prefer
that they not be gunships, armed helos, and I would prefer that they
have an orange tag on the side--as an extra safety measure.
Ahmad: Not to have any confusion, these will not come to this
territory.
Schwarzkopf: Good
But in a televised interview with David Frost on March 27, 1991,
with the transcript of the Safwan talks still secret and unavailable to
the American public, Schwarzkopf recounted the exchange very
differently. He said he had been ordered "to dictate rather strong
terms. . . So when [the Iraqis] said to me, you know, we would like to
fly helicopters.' I said not over our forces. 'Oh, no, no; definitely
not over your forces, just over Iraq, because for the transportation of
government officials.' That seemed like a reasonable request."
But the declassified Safwan transcript shows that as the ceasefire
meeting ended, Schwarzkopf emphasized the points he wanted the Iraqis to
remember, beginning: From our side, we will not attack any helicopters
inside Iraq."
Although the transcript and the interchange with Frost make clear
Schwarzkopf was intent upon the terms of Iraqi helicopter operations.
White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater in a press briefing put a very
different character on the exchange. He described it as "a side, oral
discussion, nothing in writing." When a reporter sought some
clarification, Fitzwater responded inaccurately.
Reporter: Schwarzkopf says, okay, you can use [helicopters] for
transportation, but that's it?
Fitzwater: Right.
Was this a White House attempt to mischaracterize the Safwan talks
because Schwarrkopf had been pursuing a secret agenda that failed?
Analysis of the Safwan talks raises these questions:
* When Schwarrkopf said he preferred that gunships not fly over
allied positions, he was also saying that they could fly anywhere else.
Why did he make that concession?
* Why did Schwarzkopf only 'prefer' that gunships not fly over
coalition positions? Why not forbid them to do so to insure that allied
troops were protected, as Schwarzkopf claimed on the Frost show to have
done?
* When Ahmad asked if even armed helicopters could fly, why didn't
Schwarzkopf say no?
But there is a hypothesis that makes sense of these anomalies. If
Shwarzkopf expected a coup from the helo forces, this could explain why
he inserted into the discussion the notion that gunships could fly
inside Iraq, why he waffled on whether Iraqi choppers could overfly
allied positions and why he readily agreed that even armed helicopters
could fly. A possible explanation may lie in the tangled web of
intrigue that surrounds Saddam's regime.
Iraqi opposition sources told me before Desert Storm began, in
January 1991, that Salah Omar Takriti, a London-based Iraqi close to the
Saudi leadership, claimed to have a list of Iraqi military officers
willing to plot a coup. Among them was Salah's cousin, Hakam Takriti,
head of Iraqi Army Aviation--the helicopter squadrons, which include
about 120 gunships among the estimated 350 helicopters, according to the
International Institute for Strategic Studies' annual world military
survey.
Salah, once a super-zealous Iraqi patriot, first broke with Saddam-or
seemed to--in the 197Os, and over the next two decades periodically
reconciled and broke again with Saddam, who like Salah, comes from the
town of Takrit, Saddam's political base. In 1982, Salah served as
Iraq's UN ambassador, going into opposition when Iraq began to lose the
war with Iran.
He remained in America about five years before reconciling with
Saddam again and taking over the London-based international freight
division of Iraqi Airways--subsequently identified by the US Treasury
Department as an Iraqi front company. When Saddam invaded Kuwait in
August 1990, Salah resigned and rejoined the opposition, claiming that
as a Sunni, a Ba'athist and a Takriti, he could overthrow Saddam while
keeping the regime's structure intact and averting chaos in Iraq.
Riyadh embraced and promoted him as the Saudis' main candidate among
the Iraqi opposition. They tried to impose him on the established
opposition, threatening that if he were not taken as an equal partner,
the Iraqi opposition would get no support from the Saudis or Americans.
Saudi intelligence--which cooperates closely with US agencies. could
have passed to the Americans Salah's reports of a possible coup attempt.
If the Americans took such reports seriously, Shwarzkopf would have
been informed and might have taken steps in the cease-fire talks to make
sure that the coup plotters' helicopters were free to assault Baghdad.
But the coup never came, and the helicopters were instead used to crush
the revolt.
Saddam doesn't appear to have doubted Hakam's loyalty. Twice
decorated since the US victory, Hakam still heads the helicopter forces.
And although Saddam usually severely punishes families of opponents,
none of Salah's relatives are known to have been harmed. So if Hakam
remains a Saddam man, it is possible that rumors that reached the Saudis
suggesting that he was ready to mount a coup was misinformation-or
disinformation.
Iraqis who know him describe helicopter leader Hakam as a womanizer
and informer for Saddam. Said one source: "If the West is depending on
people like Hakam, we will have Saddam for the next 1,000 years."
As the rebellion in Iraq swelled, US policy toward Saddam's
helicopters went through curious changes. After Iraqi gunships attacked
the rebels, but not Saddam, the administration eventually tried to
restrain them. A US warning was issued on March 17, 1991, that the use
of Iraqi helicopters in offensive operations posed a threat to allied
forces--formal justification for shshooting them down. But by then
other considerations influenced U.S. policy, including the military's
apprehension about getting "sucked into" an open-ended involvement in a
possible civil war. No explicit US threat was made against the
helicopters. The Iraqis continued to fly, although with no certainty
that they would not be shot down.
Then US policy shifted; on March 26, the White House announced that
Iraqi helicopters would not be shot down. Within 48 hours, this had
precipitated panicked flight over the Turkish border by thousands of
rebellious Iraqi Kurds.
According to Iraqis who were with him in Saudi Arabia during the
immediate post-war period, Salah was the first to make the argument at
this time that Saddam should be allowed to suppress the rebellion
because the revolt was causing the Iraqi army to rally behind Saddam and
thus delay his downfall. There is some evidence that the Bush
administration subscribed to this line at least temporarily.
On March 29, 1991, the Washington Post quoted a senior official as
saying that "Bush believes 'Saddam will crush the rebellions and after
the dust settles, the Ba'ath military... will install a new leadership.'
But this official expressed his own doubts. 'There might not be a
coup... and all these thousands and thousands will be dead while we
looked on.'"
Saddam may be a lousy military strategist, but he is well-practiced
in the art of conspiracy. If all this speculation seems far-fetched,
remember, the previous U.S. administration signed on to something that
sounded equally implausible--selling arms in order to "moderate radical
Iran-ian mullahs, a policy promoted and endorsed by the Israeli
government. The cautionary is inescapable: Smart people sometimes do
dumb things.
While Congress is investigating events leading up to the U.S. war
with Iraq, it might also look into events at the war's end. There are
big questions still to be answered.
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