DATE=11/24/1999
TYPE=ON THE LINE
TITLE=ON THE LINE: CAN SADDAM BE OVERTHROWN?
NUMBER=1-00799
EDITOR=OFFICE OF POLICY - 619-0037
CONTENT=
THEME: UP, HOLD UNDER AND FADE
Anncr: On the Line - a discussion of United
States policy and contemporary issues. This week,
"Can Saddam Be Overthrown?" Here is your host,
Robert Reilly.
Host: Hello and welcome to On the Line.
Earlier this month, President Bill Clinton
authorized the use of funds provided by the U.S.
Congress to support the Iraqi opposition to Saddam
Hussein. What role the various and sometimes
fractious opposition groups can play in toppling
Saddam Hussein remains to be seen, but few expect
the groups to pose any direct military challenge
to Saddam's brutal regime. The United States is
also supporting an international campaign to bring
senior Iraqi officials to justice for war crimes
and crimes against humanity. Meanwhile, U.S. and
British aircraft continue to enforce the no-fly
zones over Iraq.
Joining me today to discuss the efforts to remove
Saddam Hussein are three experts. Joshua Muravchik
is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise
Institute. David Mack is vice president of the
Middle East institute. He is a former U.S.
ambassador to the United Arab Emirates. And Rend
Rahim Francke is the director of the Iraq
Foundation, which advocates democratization and
human rights in Iraq. Welcome to the program.
Host: Joshua Muravchik, how would you appraise
the potential of this support for the Iraqi
opposition in reaching this proclaimed objective
of undermining Saddam Hussein?
Muravchik: We really never know how to appraise
the potential. We had this experience in the 1980s
with the so-called "Reagan Doctrine," which really
was crucial to wining the Cold War. And we
supported insurgencies then in Nicaragua,
Afghanistan, and elsewhere. At the time, no one
thought they had any prospect of success but, in
fact, they had a tremendous amount of success and
helped us to bring down the evil empire. We don't
know in advance what success we can have. Actually
when we started supporting Iraqi oppositionists in
the early 1990s, they made some start. They got
some thousands of men active in intelligence and
military activities in northern Iraq, and they did
pretty much everything that we had hoped they
would do, until we made the decision to pull the
rug out from under them. But if we will put
ourselves behind them, we'll see what they can do.
Host: David Mack, you personally know many of
these opposition groups because of your long work
in the U.S. State Department. How do you assess
this situation?
Mack: Well, I don't think that the United States
can make the opposition effective if the
opposition isn't prepared to buckle down to hard
work, unify its ranks and positions, and take some
independent positions from time to time. The key
role of the United States is not so much to build
up the opposition as it is to provide an underlay
of military force and a willingness to use it in
pursuing legitimate international grievances and
programs against this Iraqi regime. Part of that
is represented by what the opposition is trying to
do to delegitimize Saddam Hussein and some of his
key henchmen, and to provide an alternate vision
for what the Iraqi nation can become and the
possibility that it can take its rightful place
again in the region.
Host: Well, Ms. Francke, was that vision on
display in New York several weeks ago when three-
hundred some leaders of the Iraqi opposition met
at a conference to try to put forth a platform on
which they could all agree and elect a new
leadership council?
Francke: Yes. The ideas of what Iraq should look
like in the future did not simply emanate in New
York in two and a half days of meetings. You have
to keep in mind that there is a history to this
meeting in New York. There were large meetings in
1992 twice. One of them was right inside Iraq in
northern Iraq. The vision of what we want Iraq to
look like in the future was really evolved from
the early 1990s, particularly through those
meetings, the two major meetings in 1992. And, of
course, the evolution has continued. The platform
that was presented in New York is a natural
continuation of the thoughts and concepts and
ideals that were evolved from 1990 and took shape
in 1992. I do want to go back the question of
potential. I think there is, in fact, potential.
One of our problems is that there has been a great
time lag between statements and decisions in the
U.S. and the execution on the ground or with the
Iraqi opposition. If we go back to the Iraq
Liberation Act, which was adopted by Congress in
August 1998, it was signed by the President in
October 1998. We are only now beginning to see
some implementation. And I might say very small-
scale implementation of the Iraq Liberation Act.
Host: But may I ask you, is that the fault of the
administration in failing to disperse these funds,
or is it reflective of what David Mack said that
the opposition itself was not coherent enough to
offer something to fund?
Francke: I don't really particularly want to go
back and place blame on anybody. And I think
everybody needs to work together with the U.S.
administration, the Iraqi opposition, the U.S.
Congress, and, I might add, countries in the
region. I would like to touch on this subject at
some stage. But without saying it was the fault of
this or that, it was rather slow in being
implemented, and we are at the very beginning of
thinking through ways by which the Iraqi
opposition can become more effective, can work on
the ground. It's really too soon to say there is
no potential, or there is tremendous potential. I
believe there is, but I think we are too early, at
a too early stage to judge the value.
Muravchik: I can just make one point that has
come up here, which has to do with the fact of the
opposition being divided. And Bob, even in
introducing the topic, you said "the often
fractious opposition." I believe this is largely a
red herring. Of course they're divided. Of course
they're fractious. These are people who say they
want to create a democracy in Iraq, and certainly
what we want is to encourage them to have a
democracy as a goal. The nature of democracy is
that you are going to have different fractions
that have different ideas and that argue with each
other about it.
Host: But is that indeed the problem? I mean,
some people point out that the nature of Iraq is
that it is more or less cobbled together by
colonial powers, that it doesn't make sense in
terms of some kind of homogeneous population, that
it's riven by different clans, by different
religious beliefs, and that, were there not a
strong power holding the place together, it would
come apart.
Muravchik: Well, this is true of the big majority
of the member states of United Nations today. Most
of the states in the world were put together,
cobbled together by colonial rulers. If you go
back to the founding of the U-N fifty years ago,
there were only fifty members, and now there are
one-hundred and eighty or so. These are new
nations that were once colonial territories and
out of which nations were created. And they all
have some tensions within them. But so what?
Francke: I really would like to address this
issue because I think, as Josh said, this is a red
herring. And there are two sources for this type
of propaganda. One of them, I think, is the people
and countries that do not want to see change in
Iraq. Saddam is very happy with this type of
propaganda. He is delighted to say and to hear
people say that Iraq is a mosaic that will fall
apart without him, without a strong man. I think
there are also countries in the region that would
like to perpetrate this myth. I think,
unfortunately, some Western countries also like to
explore this and propound it. And I believe that
this is a sort of neo-colonialist attitude towards
a Middle Eastern country. These counties are too
fractious; they cannot govern themselves; they
don't understand about democracy. Unless there is
a strong man, a single leader, who leads them by
strength, by coercion, they will fall apart. I
believe this is not true. Iraq certainly has
variety and has pluralism. And pluralism is an
important factor of Iraqi society and Iraqi
politics. But I think we ought to recognize that
and yet also recognize that there is a sense of
Iraqi nationhood. We have seen it manifested and
established time and time again. Even the Kurds
who are most accused of wanting to secede and
wanting to separate, there is not a single Kurdish
party in Iraq that has called for separation and
secession. And I think this is a credit we never
give to them.
Host: Let me ask David Mack, because of, once
again, your long history in the U.S. State
Department. One enunciated goal of U.S. policy is
the territorial integrity of Iraq. Do you think it
is at risk by supporting a broad opposition?
Mack: Certainly not. I think what would put that
principle at risk is if the U.S. were supporting a
faction that wanted to have some kind of separate
regime. I think the position that the U.S.
government has taken in the past, and I think it
is a very sound position, is that we want to see a
new government in Baghdad, not a new government in
Irbil or some new government in Karbala. I think
this is entirely correct. And, as Rend indicated,
there really is no support from the various
factions of the Iraqi opposition for some kind of
separate regional identities, as opposed to a
certain amount of federalism and local autonomy,
which we're very familiar with in our own system
in the United States. But I'd like to go back a
minute to this question of what it is we should be
looking to the Iraqi opposition for. Because it's
not just a question, as Josh indicated, of people
who are engaged in political disputes. Along with,
I think, a certain fecklessness in U.S. policy at
various points, one of the reasons why the
opposition lost its momentum was that people
started fighting with one another -- not having
arguments over a table -- but they started
shooting at one another and blowing up bombs in
one another's offices, and so on. So I think we
have to be realistic. We shouldn't expect too much
of the opposition, but at the same time we ought
to recognize that there is potential out there.
But there is potential that has to be built on by
a lot of hard work, and you don't just solve that
by suddenly thrusting guns into people's hands.
Host: That's an interesting history you referred
to. Joshua Muravchik referred to it too, when the
United States failed to support uprisings in the
north. But at the same time, Saddam Hussein has
proved particularly adept at exploiting the
differences within the opposition, in turning one
Kurdish group against another.
Muravchik: He has exploited it, but also we have,
in a sense, encouraged it. We have encouraged some
of them to look opportunistically toward him
because we gave repeated signals that we were not
very serious about supporting an effort to
overthrow him and or supporting an effort to unite
the opposition.
Host: Are we serious now?
Muravchik: I'm not sure. We seem to be a drop
more serious than we've been. If I can just hark
back again to the experience of the Reagan
doctrine. I watched closely the experience in
Nicaragua. If you want to talk about fractious, if
you want to talk about bombs in each other's
offices, that was all going on there. But the
Reagan administration made a very intense
commitment to supporting the so-called contras in
Nicaragua. They spent lots of money and lots of
man-hours of people in the State Department, the
C-I-A, and the National Security Council, knocking
heads together among the opposition. They never
succeeded in getting them completely united, but
they got them to the point where they were focused
on fighting the Sandinista regime, rather than on
fighting each other. If we would devote that kind
of seriousness of purpose to supporting the Iraqi
oppositionists, then I think we would have a heck
of a lot more leverage in getting them to work in
the way we need them to work.
Francke: I don't want to exonerate those factions
and we're really talking here about the two major
Kurdish parties who fought one another from 1995-
1996 -- but I do want to add that, in many ways, I
do fault the U.S. because they did not give the
Kurds in northern Iraq enough moral support and
enough political support. And in the absence of
such support and such commitment by the U.S. as
Josh said, the coast was cleared for intervention
by regional countries, especially in northern
Iraq. I went to northern Iraq between 1992 and
1995 several times, and I had an opportunity to
see how easy it was, not only for Saddam from
Baghdad, but also for all of Iraq's neighbors and
all countries in the region, to meddle in the
situation.
Host: You mean Turkey and Iran?
Francke: I mean a great number of countries and
not necessarily only Iraq's immediate neighbors,
but certainly Iraq's immediate neighbors. I think
this was an area which was very young, which was
very experimental, which was weak in many ways in
terms of being able to stand up on its own feet.
The United States did not give it the moral and
political support that was required. And there
were many things at the time that we urged the
U.S. to do and the kind of assistance we asked the
U.S. to take up, which was absent.
Host: Do you think it is forthcoming now?
Francke: Well, I think the U.S. seems to be a
little more serious. I don't know how serious.
Host: Let me ask this question, because you spoke
of the opposition on the ground, which I presume
means inside Iraq. Max van der Stoel, as you know,
has been the U-N rapporteur on human rights in
Iraq for many years. He recently resigned and,
when he did, he said, as he had before, that there
are very few parallels to this situation within
Iraq since World War Two because it is so
extraordinarily repressive. How, under a tyranny
of the magnitude that Saddam Hussein conducts, can
an opposition possibly have effect?
Mack: Let me just say that, along with the U.S.
support for the opposition -- something we've been
talking about here -- the U.S. can do a tremendous
amount to provide an environment in which not only
the opposition outside the country, but all those
Iraqis opposed to the regime inside the country,
can thrive, and from which they can take
encouragement. One of the most important things
that the United States could be doing is to make
it far more clear than we have before that Iraq
after Saddam Hussein is going to be an important
and valued part of the regional system.
Host: But President Clinton has said that.
Mack: Not really. He's been very clear about the
anti-Saddam parts of our policy. He hasn't been
nearly so clear about the pro-Iraq parts of our
policy. By pro-Iraq, I mean a clear statement that
the economic sanctions would come to an end, a
clear statement that there would be debt relief,
that there would be relief from sanctions and
reparations, that the United States would support
in the international community measures to do
this. There needs to be some light at the end of
the tunnel for people to encourage them to take
the extraordinary personal risks and risks for
their families that are involved in opposing this
regime actively from inside the country.
Host: I'm afraid that's all the time we have
this week. I'd like to thank our guests - Joshua
Muravchik from the American Enterprise Institute;
David Mack from the Middle East institute; and
Rend Rahim Francke from the Iraq Foundation - for
joining me to discuss the future of Iraq. This is
Robert Reilly for On the Line.
Anncr: You've been listening to "On the Line" - a
discussion of United States policies and
contemporary issues. This is --------.
24-Nov-1999 11:22 AM EDT (24-Nov-1999 1622 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
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