TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/020392/0203105.000

Text File | 1992-10-20 | 13.2 KB | 266 lines

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                                                        ╚NATION, Page 18

THE GULF

Are Saddam's Days Numbered?


Hints of a new U.S. effort to get rid of the Iraqi leader seem
to be aimed more at American voters than at Baghdad. Good thing
too: it's an idea likely to fail -- and to raise havoc even
if it succeeded.

By GEORGE J. CHURCH -- Reported by Michael Duffy/Washington, Dean
Fischer/Cairo and William Mader/London


    SADDAM HUSSEIN STILL HAS HIS JOB. DO YOU?

    Sightings of that bumper sticker in California and New
Hampshire probably go farther than any deep-think analysis to
unravel a Washington mystery. Why is the Bush Administration
starting to leak hints of a new scheme to dethrone the Iraqi
strongman, despite the derision of virtually everyone who knows
anything about the Middle East?

    In its most extreme version, the operation would begin
with covert CIA stimulation of a new revolt by Saddam's Kurdish
and Shi`ite opponents and proceed to very overt bombing of the
forces the Iraqi dictator sent to smash the rebellion. That,
goes the plan, would so weaken the regime that either the rebels
or Saddam's military commanders, or both, would get rid of him.
In another version, the U.S. would covertly incite a military
coup by Saddam's lieutenants, in part by letting them know
Washington stood ready to back them up with air power, if need
be.

    Either way, Middle East experts overwhelmingly consider
the idea a harebrained plot likely to end in disaster -- not
only if it failed, which it probably would, but even if it
succeeded. Allies are appalled: the British government has
strongly warned George Bush against any such scheme. Pentagon
leaders and some high State Department officials also want no
part of it.

    Indeed, Administration officials say they are only taking
a new look at some long-standing contingency plans. They give
two principal reasons. Though their analysis is strongly
disputed, they believe Saddam's hold on power is weakening;
rumors of a new American plot to bring him down just might throw
him off balance and embolden his opponents to try something.
Such rumors also might encourage some allies who Washington
fears might soon be ready to do business with Saddam -- notably
Turkey -- to reconsider and hang tough in keeping the Iraqi
regime isolated. Says an Administration official: "It's a comedy
of errors. Those stories [of a well-advanced plot] are
inaccurate, but they suit our policy."

    Another reason undoubtedly is campaign politics. As those
bumper stickers symbolize, the glow of victory in the gulf war
has faded faster than the yellow ribbons that still cling to
trees here and there; it no longer distracts voters from their
worries about the recession. And as long as Saddam maintains his
bloody totalitarian rule, efforts by Bush and his campaigners
to revive memories of the glorious triumph are likely to ring
false to many voters. Pat Buchanan and the Democrats can claim,
misleadingly but perhaps effectively, that Desert Storm won at
best a hollow victory.

    Suppose, though, the Administration keeps dropping hints
that Saddam after all might soon be thrown out, dead or alive,
and that in fact the U.S. has a hush-hush operation under way
to get rid of him. That just might defuse the issue long enough
to get Bush past Election Day -- without the need to actually do
anything. Still, the leaks and hints could do some damage by
leading the public to believe the U.S. has far more chance of
finally finishing off Saddam, and a much better developed
strategy for doing so, than is really the case, thus setting the
stage for disillusionment. To indicate just how limited the
options are, the plot-that-really-isn't deserves close analysis.


    THE SCENARIOS. To some reporters, and to the British
government, Administration officials have represented the most
detailed and extreme plan as one urged by Saudi Arabia. Could
be: Riyadh is worried about a possible resurgence of Iraqi
aggression, and more immediately by the rising power of Islamic
fundamentalists who hail Saddam as their hero (forgetting his
persecution of their brethren in Iraq because of his
in-your-face attitude toward the West). But analysts raise two
questions: Why would King Fahd invite the reintroduction of
American power into the gulf that the plan presupposes, since
he has been reluctant even to let the U.S. stockpile military
supplies in his country? And why would the Saudis want Iraq's
Shi`ites to win power, since the Saudis detest Iran and its
Shi`ite allies quite as much as they hate Saddam? It is possible
that Washington hawks have sold some Saudis on the idea, but not
yet the King.

    Whoever wrote it, the scenario begins with CIA
encouragement of a coordinated revolt by Shi`ites in southern
Iraq, Kurdish guerrillas in the north and possibly even some
Sunni Muslim opponents of Saddam in the central area around
Baghdad. The rebels, supplied by the U.S. and Saudis with modern
weapons, overcome the poorly armed and trained Iraqi troops
facing them. To put down the rebellion, Saddam has to dispatch
army and Republican Guard units from the Baghdad area, as he did
successfully last March and April. But this time, U.S. and
possibly allied warplanes strafe their tanks and shoot down
their helicopter gunships. With the Guard defeated, Saddam's
commanders realize the game is up and dispatch him, by exile or
execution. The generals then join hands with the Kurds and
Shi`ites in a new government granting wide autonomy, though not
independence, to the rebels, and they live happily ever after.

    An alternative plan, and one that Administration officials
say they have seriously discussed, is to encourage a coup by
Saddam's officers without a preceding Kurdish-Shi`ite rebellion.
Dissidents could, at least in theory, be identified, slipped
some money and assured of U.S. backing in a crunch. For example,
they could be told that if shooting broke out between rebellious
factions of the Iraqi army and troops loyal to Saddam, American
warplanes would bomb the loyalist units.


    THE ODDS AGAINST. For openers, the chance that Saddam's
enemies can form a united front seems remote. Kurds and Shi`ites
dislike each other as much as they despise the dictator, and
there are factional divisions within each camp to boot.
Moreover, the failed revolts of 1991, and the massacres by
Saddam's troops that followed, have left a legacy of bitter
distrust toward the U.S., since it stood aside and watched. The
Kurds in addition remember what they regard as American
betrayals of their quest for independence going back to the
1970s. It is hard to imagine any guarantees of American support
so ironclad as to spur the rebels into renewed fighting.

    If the Kurds and Shi`ites did rise again, British analysts
warn, it is by no means certain that they could overcome the
Iraqi regulars facing them. Saddam has 400,000 fresh troops that
he kept out of the gulf war standing by, as well as two
Republican Guard divisions confronting potential rebels in the
north and south. He might never have to call on the three or
four Guard divisions he keeps around Baghdad as a kind of
personal army. Nor is it certain that American air power could
turn the tide -- or even that it could be fully employed. The
U.S. has only about 150 ground-based warplanes left in the area,
less than a tenth of those that flew in Desert Storm, and some
of those operate out of Incirlik in Turkey. The Turks might
never let them take off. Ankara's top priority is to prevent
formation of anything resembling an independent Kurdish state
inside Iraq that inevitably would try to break off a piece of
Turkey; Turkish troops already have exchanged fire with Turkish
Kurd guerrillas operating out of Iraq.

    The potential clincher: Colin Powell, Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, has told the White House that the only
way to make sure of Saddam's defeat would be once more to
commit American ground troops. British military sources estimate
that as many as 100,000 to 200,000 would be required -- and
that if they had to be sent into combat, they would take far
heavier casualties than last year. Moreover, this time the
casualties would be all American: London and such U.S. allies
as France and Egypt want no part of the reported scheme. More
flag-draped coffins are the last thing Bush needs when he is
trying to win a second term.

    Fomenting a military coup against Saddam seems a slightly
more promising option. Some of the dictator's officers regard
him as a bungler who has brought disaster on Iraq; British
intelligence in fact hears there have been three unsuccessful
coup attempts since the end of the gulf war. Americans add that
Saddam has had 80-odd officers executed, and there are stories
of gun battles in the streets of Baghdad between supporters of
an ousted intelligence chief and followers of his successor.

    But does all that indicate that Saddam's grip is
faltering? British intelligence analysts take exactly the
opposite view: the boss of Baghdad has been able to liquidate
his chief opponents, real or imagined. They add that Saddam has
been playing an adroit game: doling out to the masses just
enough of the food that comes through the United
Nations-mandated blockade to keep them from starvation, while
permitting privation that he can blame on the allies. Meanwhile
he has rewarded the Republican Guard and other loyal forces with
abundant rations and fat pay increases.

    The officers and troops remaining may be more afraid of
the Iraqi masses -- and the Kurdish and Shi`ite dissidents --
than they are of Saddam. An Arab diplomat relates a
conversation that occurred when the Iraqi dictator visited his
capital well before the invasion of Kuwait. Saddam, says the
diplomat, told his hosts that he had no illusions: if he ever
fell from power, the mobs would so shred his body that not a
piece of him larger than a fingertip would survive. But, he
added, he had warned his subordinates that exactly the same
thing would happen to them -- so they had better not join in any
plots to depose him. In any case, a coup would succeed or not
pretty much irrespective of what the U.S. did or failed to do.
Those American officials most eager to incite a coup confess
they have no idea at this point who might lead it, and thus whom
to approach with money, promises of military backing or any
other blandishments.


    WHAT PRICE VICTORY? What would the U.S. gain if it did
succeed in speeding Saddam's demise? Take the most favorable
case, which an American official describes as "two officers
walking into Saddam's office and putting a bullet in his head."
They might be bullies only slightly less obnoxious than the
dictator himself; Saddam's inner circle is not exactly crawling
with liberal democratic reformers. Minus Saddam, Iraq would have
a better chance of getting out from under intrusive U.N.
sanctions, building the nuclear weapons that Saddam got close
to, and becoming a regional menace once more.

    The effect could be even worse if Saddam were toppled by
an American-supported Kurdish-Shi`ite rebellion. Far from
clasping hands in a new regime, the guerrillas would be more
likely to wage a bloody civil war for supremacy -- and not only
against each other. They might join in slaughtering the Sunni
Muslims in central Iraq from whom Saddam has drawn the elite of
his regime. "It would make Kuwaiti brutality against the
Palestinians [who supported Iraqi occupation or were suspected
of doing so] seem mild," says a senior British diplomat.

    To prevent or stop massacres, the U.S. might be forced
into an indefinite occupation and installation of a kind of
puppet government in Baghdad (shades of Vietnam!). Absent some
gross new provocation from Saddam, much of the Arab world would
regard this as a neo-colonial occupation; the outbreaks of
anti-Western fury that were predicted but failed to occur during
the gulf war might really happen this time. At minimum, the U.S.
would lose the leverage that has enabled it to get Arab-Israeli
peace talks started.

    And all for what? At least for now, Saddam's continued
presence in Baghdad is only an annoyance, not a menace (except
to his unfortunate subjects). Despite the criticisms from Bush's
political opponents, the U.S. and its allies did accomplish
their principal goals in the gulf war: they decisively punished
an act of naked and unprovoked aggression, kept Saddam's hands
off vital oil supplies, wrecked his military machine enough to
keep him from threatening his neighbors again anytime soon, and
decisively set back if not eliminated his attempts to develop
nuclear weapons.

    True enough, maintaining indefinitely the U.N. sanctions
and worldwide embargo that keep Saddam caged will be no small
trick. But the difficulties of doing so pale beside the
potential disasters of either a failed or a successful attempt
to get rid of him. Some of Bush's advisers doubt that Saddam's
survival even bothers American voters enough to make much
difference in the campaign. For the loftiest global strategic
reasons and the crudest motives of down-and-dirty domestic
politics, there are times when it is best to leave well enough
-- or, for that matter, bad enough -- alone.