The Regional Response to the Iraq Crisis
Iraq News, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1998
By Laurie MylroieThe central focus of Iraq News is the tension between the considerable, proscribed WMD capabilities that Iraq is holding on to and its increasing stridency that it has complied with UNSCR 687 and it is time to lift sanctions. If you wish to receive Iraq News by email, a service which includes full-text of news reports not archived here, send your request to Laurie Mylroie .
I. IRAQ'S RETAINED UNCONVENTIONAL CAPABILITIES, BBC, NOV 8
II. KUWAIT INFO OFFICE, SADDAM'S IMMINENT THREAT, WASH TIMES, NOV 6
III. SAUD AL FAYSAL, IN CAIRO, REUTERS, NOV 8
IV. AL AHRAM EDITORIAL SIDES WITH IRAQ, NOV 5
V. EGYPTIAN FOREIGN MINISTER ON IRAQ, MENA, NOV 6
This is the 96th day without weapons inspections in Iraq and the nineth
day without UNSCOM monitoring.
Yesterday, AP reported that Newsweek, today, explained that "In
response to 'a fruitless stance' against Saddam, the Clinton
administration had quietly decided to avoid military action and to
maintain international support for economic sanctions. As a result, a
new strategy was developed last spring by Richard Clarke, a national
security official, in response to a plea from Berger. . . . Clarke
concluded it simply was not feasible to track down all of Iraq's
biological and chemical weapons caches and military strikes could not
force Saddam to let the United Nations in to search for them."
Yesterday, UPI reported that after Pres Clinton met his top nat'l
security aides, including Sec Def Cohen, returned from the Middle East,
and NSC Adviser Berger, returned from Paris, no decision was taken.
Clinton asked his aides "to pursue further diplomatic and military
options and report back in the coming days."
Ken Katzman, of the Congressional Research Service, told CNN World
News yesterday, that the administration was searching "for a new
strategy" that would keep Saddam "at a very low level of weapons of mass
destruction." How is the US going to fine tune that?
In "Searching for Stable Peace in the Persian Gulf," published in Feb
98, by the US Army's Strategic Studies Institute, Katzman wrote that the
US should try to reconcile with both Iraq and Iran. Among his
suggestions, "If a framework consisting of the GCC states, Iran, Iraq
and the United States were adopted, it is easy to envision a working
group, or two separate groups, discussing conventional weapons and
weapons of mass destruction" [p.23]. From his position at CRS, Katzman
has played a very negative role in Congressional efforts to push the
administration into developing a policy to overthrow Saddam. Katzman is
one of a trio of ex-CIA analysts, along with Ken Pollack and Daniel
Byman, who are vehemently opposed to that effort [see Pollack and Byman,
"Supporting the Iraqi Opposition," in Iraq Strategy Review, TWI, Jul
98].
The BBC, yesterday, provided helpful reminder of the unconventional
weapons and material known to be unaccounted for in Iraq. They include
4,000 tons of CW precursor chemicals, some 17 tons of bw growth
material, and some 30,000 litres of bw agents Iraq acknowledged
producing, but claims to have destroyed unilaterally.
Despite widespread reporting that the Arab allies oppose a US strike,
"Iraq News" believes that is not quite the case. The Arabs understand
Saddam's vengefulness and his viciousness and how dangerous the
suspension of UNSCOM activity is. The question for each Arab state is
whether it wants to deal with that threat by trying to appease Saddam or
trying to resist him, a function partly of its judgment about the
efficacy of US policy, partly its assessment of whether it can escape
Saddam's wrath.
For Kuwait, appeasement is not an option. As the Director of the
Kuwaiti Information Office, Shafeeq Ghabra, wrote in the Wash Times, Nov
6, "Iraq has done very little since 1991 to demonstrate that its
policies of aggression have changed. Iraq continues to announce
repeatedly that its brutal invasion of Kuwait was for reasons of self
defense and that its sacking and looting of Kuwait and the setting of
over 700 oil-well fires was a patriotic act of Arab unity. . . . If
Saddam is allowed to stage a comeback, such a development . . . will
result in a policy of long-term confrontation with his former targets.
Those targets could include Kuwait and the United States, the two main
states on Saddam's list for revenge; Saudi Arabia, because of its role
in challenging him since 1990; Jordan, for its betrayal of Saddam; and
the peace process, which weakens his ability to rally Arab public
opinion. This list also includes the Kurds and the Iraqi opposition."
Gharba also noted that "missing in the current US policy towards Iraq is
a renewed commitment to a democratic Iraq. . . . In the pursuit of
pluralism and democracy lies the greatest promise for the Iraqi people."
"Iraq News" has learned that the Saudis told Sec Def Cohen, when he
visited Nov 3, that the US could use Saudi airbases for reconnaissance
and air superiority, but not for bombing Iraq. And for that, Cohen had
to promise the Saudis that the US attack would be the first step in a US
effort to overthrow Saddam, even as Cohen did not specify what that
effort would be.
On Sat, Saudi Foreign Min, Saud al Faysal, met Iranian For Min, Kamal
Kharrazi, in Riyadh. The next day, al Faysal, visited Cairo. As
Reuters reported, after meeting with Pres Mubarak, al Faysal said, "We
prefer a diplomatic solution of the crisis . . . No one wishes evil on
the Iraqi people. . . [But] the responsibility in this issue falls
completely on the Iraqi leadership. . . . We think we express the wish
of all Arab people which is that the Iraqi leadership bear its
responsibilities and go back on its decision." Notably, the Saudi
Minister did not oppose the idea of a strike on Iraq, if Saddam did not
back down.
Also, Syria has said nothing about this crisis. That can be taken as
tacit support; Syria will not get in the way. And Tehran wants better
ties with Riyadh. "Iraq News" anticipates that with the meeting of the
Saudi and Iranian Foreign Ministers, the Iranians will not get in the
way either.
That leaves Egypt. Among the major Arab/Muslim states, Egypt has
been the most vocal in expressing support for Iraq and opposition to a
US strike. An editorial, Nov 5, the day Sec Def Cohen arrived in Cairo,
in Egypt's newspaper of record, Al Ahram, said, "No one can blame Iraq
for halting its cooperation with a biased commission comprising members
who were found to be spying against Iraq. Iraq is making completely
legitimate demands. . . . [The US] should stop making threats to use
force and adopt a fair position towards lifting the sanctions on Iraq."
The next day, as MENA, Nov 6, reported, Egyptian Foreign Minister,
Amr Musa, said "Everyone is trying to stop the escalation in the Arab
Gulf and to resolve the Iraqi crisis. It is important that diplomacy
and political means are used to end the current crisis, Musa said. He
noted that this was the core of the discussion between US Secretary of
Defense Cohen and Egyptian officials yesterday. . . . At the same time,
Iraq is not seeing light at the end of the tunnel and the resolution of
the crisis is revolving in a vicious circle. Iraq, Musa added, is also
wondering whether the inspection in Iraq is not part of a comprehensive
disarmament process in the region. Musa said that the problem is
multi-faceted."
What is wrong with the Egyptians? Nachman Tal, formerly with the
Shin Bet, presently at Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Center for Strategic
Studies, in "Strategic Assessment," Apr 98, in an article entitled,
"Islamic Terrorism in Egypt: Challenge and Response" detailed terrorist
attacks in Egypt from 1992 through 1997. According to Tal, 1,500 people
died as a result of Islamic terrorism in those years, including
civilians, terrorists and police. The most lethal years were 1993-332
dead; 1994-310 dead; and 1995-415 dead, after which the figure dropped
by over 50% for the next two years.
But the statistics regarding terrorist attacks on tourists in Egypt
were quite different. There were 97 tourists killed in the seven years
from 1992 through 1997. Fully 2/3--67--were killed in the last four
months of 1997, with 58 killed Nov 17, at Luxor, in an assault that
dealt a devastating blow to Egyptian tourism that winter.
Why did attacks on tourists in Egypt become most deadly, when
Egypt's overall Islamic terrorism problem had declined? Even more, the
NYT, Jan 11, 98 reported that of the six assailants in the Luxor attack,
all killed by police, only one was identified as a fundamentalist. One
could not be identified. And the four others turned out not to be
Muslim fundamentalists. But if the majority of those involved in the
Luxor attack were not Muslim fundamentalists, why is that attack
attributed to Muslim fundamentalists, or, more precisely, Muslim
fundamentalists alone?
"Iraq News" suspects that that which explains--1) the timing of the
Nov 97 Luxor attack; 2) why such a devastating attack occurred when it
looked like Egypt had succeeding in significantly reducing the
fundamentalist threat; and 3) why the majority of those who carried it
out were not fundamentalists--is that the Luxor attack was not the work
of fundamentalists, or fundamentalists alone.
Most probably, the individuals involved were aided and directed by
another party; operating in neighboring Sudan; and that party was Iraqi
intelligence, which has had a large presence in Khartoum since the
summer of 91. By the time of the second Iraq crisis last Feb, Egyptian
authorities probably figured out what had happened. And that would
explain why Egypt was so strident in opposing a US strike on Iraq in the
second confrontation. Moreover, "Iraq News" believes that was not the
first time Iraq carried out a major terrorist attack against an Egyptian
target and caused it to look like Islamic terrorism. Because the rest
of the world has become so wrapped around an axle regarding Militant
Muslim Fundamentalists, ala Steve Emerson et. al., that is what it sees
and all that it sees. It is left to Egyptian authorities to carefully
sift through the evidence and recognize, probably with some horror, what
happened.
Indeed, it is possible, without much difficulty, to point out the
anomalies in the Luxor attack to Arabs and other Muslims. It is
possible to explain them to Americans. But it is very difficult to
explain them to the Israeli center-left, which is highly resistant to
the idea that that attack was anything more than Muslim Fundamentalists.
Partly, it is the ordinary attachment each has to his own opinion.
Partly, it is a challenge to two aspects of the vision of the Middle
East, upon which the peace process was premised, namely 1) the US
decisively beat Iraq, so secular Arabs had no choice but peace with
Israel; and 2) a sharp divide exists between secular Arabs and religious
fundamentalists. And finally, it is partly complacency, surprising to
find in a country as strategically vulnerable as Israel.
But as Ephraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for
Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University, wrote in today's Jerusalem
Post, "Until recently, Israelis perceived the country's mere existence
to be under an extremely high level of threat. Such collective
existential fears about survival . . . have been replaced with a more
nonchalant view about the national security challenges facing Israel. .
. Precisely because of the improvement in Israel's strategic situation
in the 1990's people expected fewer acts of violence to disrupt their
daily routine. Unfortunately, this did not happen. . . . Terror,
which is the greatest anathema to personal security has remained
strategically only a nuisance. [But] the myopic quest for personal
security diverts attention from the larger picture where threats to the
collective are looming."
And Zeev Schiff, in Haaretz, Oct 2, marking the 25th anniversary of
the 1973 war, wrote, "Obsessively, we keep coming back to the Yom Kippur
War. Why did it happen? No answer will satisfy those who personally
experienced the consequences of the intelligence failure of 1973. An
Arab proverb says that if you have been bitten by a snake you will fear
even a rope. That is certainly true of the Yom Kippur war generation;
but in the meantime, a new generation has grown up for whom the
snakebite of 1973 seems remote and vague-a generation that could make
the mistake of falling into exaggerated self-confidence. . . . It is
also a mistake to think that an intelligence service taken by surprise
once is immune to future surprises. . . . The potential for surprise
is even greater today. The reason: The range of threats nowadays is
greater than it was in 1973. Possible surprises include a surprise
long-range missile attack, the use of non-conventional weapons-including
their potential use by terrorist groups-or a surprise in the sphere of
information warfare."
"Iraq News" has contacted a number of Israeli colleagues who have
written about the terrorism that it considers suspect and attributed it
solely to Islamic Fundamentalists, including the Luxor attack "Iraq
News" has done so, because it believes they are reflecting a mistake
made within the Israeli bureaucracies, part of the strategic
intelligence failure mentioned by "Iraq News," Oct. 26. And because of
the possibility of unconventional terrorism, it is essential to have a
good idea of the source of the present-day terrorist threat, including
which parties are actively engaged in terrorism. If "Iraq News" were
correct, the consequences of this error could be devastating, whether
for Israel, the US, or an Arab party, as such an error would much
increase the chances that Iraq could carry out a bw terrorist attack and
get away with it, as other parties would likely be blamed instead of
Iraq. Thus, it does not seem a great imposition to ask people to take a
second look at their assumptions and opinions and explain on the basis
of what information they reached the conclusions they did. "Iraq News"
will report the results of those exchanges.
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