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i n t e l l n e t : |
GROUNDING PHOENIX
(Saddam Hussein's Continuing Threat to the International Community)
By: Peter Martin
The more optimistic pundits believed that Iraq's militant intent was in terminal decline after the Gulf war of 1991. Regrettably, Saddam Hussein has not dropped off the radar screen as intended; on the contrary, he has proven to have the same political resistance, self-sustainment, recalcitrance and perverseness of a certain recent US president. He is like the Phoenix rising from the ashes of the Gulf War. Saddam's continuing menace reflects a failure to recognize the dangers, both contained and potential, and is only proof of a long series of analytical misjudgments concerning Saddam. This paper will try to evaluate his reasoning, objectives and the risk he presents to the international community, and suggest a means to deal with him in this strategically significant region.
PROFILE OF VIOLENCE
The strategic intentions and possibilities of this irrational, aggressive despot are hard to ascertain because one can hardly relate to him on a logical basis; mirror imaging just won't work in his case. He has distinct illusions of grandeur, comparing himself with Nebuchardrezzar II of Babylon, a historical figure he especially idolizes and who subjugated Israel. Throughout his leadership he has lived a very isolated life, surrounded by his family and a covey of "yes men", who are there to protect him from what he does not want to hear or see. His unworldly vision is legendary, his schizophrenic tendencies well recorded and his military miscues are notorious. He is very superstitious, believing in omens, prophecies, legends, demons and apparitions. He is devoid of sensibilities and compassion; the only emotion he displays is anger. His thuggish style is manifested in his general brutality and his barbaric ways. He personally enjoys torturing his victims and indulges in fiendish rapes and homosexual practices. His education never went further than fourth grade and he is suspicious of anybody with a higher education.
But, he is extremely wily and survives on wit and brutal instincts. Saddam may be insane but he is far from stupid. The literal translation of Saddam is "He who shocks", which happens to be most fitting, considering his vile behavior. He rules by sheer cruelty, killing, torturing, jailing his subjects without pity and often without reason; just to keep his citizens off balance, terrorized, and totally subjugated. He is well protected and as well informed, with the total numbers of police and militia far exceeding the size of his army. He has 70,000 troops assigned to leadership protection, not counting the Republican Guards, and his total aggregate of staff in agencies with other intelligence and security functions is another 30,000. His security forces are made up of:
- Secret Service (Mukhabarat)
- Special Security Organization (Amn al-Khass)
- Military Intelligence (Istikhbarat)
- Signal intelligence or Project 858 (al-Hadi)
- The Republican Guard
PARTY OF VIOLENCE
When Saddam bullied his way to power in 1956, this vicious issue of the rustic Tikriti clan joined the Baath or "renewal" Party, made up of nationalists and socialists. The insular and sectarian Baath Party invents its enemies. Its ideology is based on the fiction that the outside world is naturally hostile and is a constant danger to Iraq; consequently, the only way to preserve and protect the party (the state) is through ideological unity, multi-levels of organization and brute force. The Iraqi State is grounded in a triangle of violence, fear, and complicity surrounding the power center. Violence generates the fear that creates the complicity that establishes and sustains the power. All decisions radiate down from Saddam and nobody questions Saddam's authority. In short, it's a paranoid rat's nest of cruelty and contradictions.
PROVOKED INTO VIOLENCE
To try and understand Saddam's reasoning it might help to examine why he ever decided to attack Kuwait; reviewing his tactics during the ensuing Gulf War also might assist in divining his future actions.
After the barbarous war with Iran ended in a draw (a war the majority of Arab States profited from) Saddam owed some $40 billion to Kuwait and the other Gulf Sheikdoms. Instead of showing gratitude for Iraq's defense of Sunni Arabs against Persian Shi'ites, they demanded immediate repayment of their war loans. To make matters worse, Iraq found out that Kuwait had been taking advantage of Iraq's distraction over their war with Iran by siphoning off oil on the Iraqi side of the Rumaila oil fields. Additionally, the Arab nations he was indebted to were forcing down the price of oil by pumping far beyond their quotas, making it far more difficult for Iraq to earn the money to pay back their loans. After getting conflicting signals from Washington, coupled with an ambivalent reply on the US attitude relating to his dispute with Kuwait from US Ambassador April Glaspie; Saddam, enraged, financially desperate and isolated, struck out at Kuwait, soon bringing "Desert Storm" down upon him.
One ominous fact that has now been discovered is that, as the US prepared its offensive against Iraq, Saddam initiated a crash program to try and produce enough fuel for one nuclear device. Planning that if the Allies had him cornered during the military engagement, and threatened his downfall, and was in possession of a nuclear device, he would willingly use it against Israel; retaliation be damned! Much to his chagrin, he eventually found out that his invasion of Kuwait inevitably doomed his entire nuclear program aborting his crash program.
Never being one without resources, Saddam planned a desperate, last-ditch riposte in case his army was ever on the verge of total destruction. The primary tactic was to charge biological and chemical payloads aboard his Scud missiles in anticipation that his regime would be overrun. The second tactic would be to plant payloads of biological and chemical weapons in bunkers near his southern border, at sites such as Basra, Diqwaniyah, and Simawa, in hopes that the allied troops would chose to blow them up out of expediency, as they swiftly advanced north toward Baghdad, thus exposing his antagonists to the deadly fallout from such ordnance. Likewise, in the case that the allies did not explode all the bunkers, he would make sure it was done by the retreating Republican Guards units. Whatever the final outcome, he wanted to be assured that it would be hell for his invaders. And hell it was. The chemical and biological residues eventually had just the effect planned (Gulf War Syndrome), long after the allies knew what they had haplessly exposed themselves to.
POWER FROM PHYSICS
After the Gulf War Saddam used smoke and mirror tactics to outsmart the UNSCOM, who came looking for his weapons of mass destruction (WMD). One of his obfuscating tactics: Iraq would appear to be cooperating and complying with UNSCOM but was in fact cunningly directing the inspection teams to their "discoveries", then denying them access; allowing time to sanitize the sites before allowing entry. Another tactic was to plant many distorted and false documents to mislead the inspectors; and finally, Saddam was willing to give up some redundant material to appease the inspectors. For example, he misled them by admitting to possessing explosive lenses (shaped charges) as detonators made from RDX/TNT, while in fact he had imported 300 tons of HMX, a more powerful explosive that could be used to make lighter and more powerful lenses, more suitable to use in a rocket. While UNSCOM did destroy many sites, they ultimately failed to get to the heart of his WMD projects, which remained well dispersed and concealed, and which, in due course, of UNSCOM's withdrawal, resumed on a fast-track program.
Before the war, Saddam had over 12,000 employees working on the nuclear bomb project plus thousands of technicians; he probably has that work force back in service today. Their first efforts were on what is called a "Levitation design". Briefly stated, while not a very sophisticated design, it creates a bigger explosion per kilo because of a critical space between the core and its surrounding components. It was an unwieldy crude device, not suitable for air delivery.
His technicians' next model was based on the gun-type bomb of Hiroshima repute; intelligence reports offer reason to believe they later bought several unarmed warheads of this type from Russia. Uranium enrichment went on in a facility west of Baghdad called al-Ubur, which contained huge particle accelerators known as calutrons. A mysterious technician of the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission who recently defected reported that Iraq conducted a nuclear underground test at 1030 hrs on Sept. 19, 1989 under Lake Rezzaza. The Iraqis went to great lengths to hide the test from being seen or heard by painstakingly plugging the test hole with sand and concrete - a method known as "decoupling" ultimately recording only 2.7 on the Richter scale. To further hide his secret test site, Saddam ordered a team of workers to dismantle, bury and conceal the area; he then had them all executed. The technician claims Iraq now has 9 weapons: 3 gun-type bombs, 3 implosion ones and 3 thermonuclear models which are stored deep underground in a hardened bunker in the Hemrin mountains.
How did Saddam ever manage it? With guile, a lot of money and the assistance of other countries, such as India, Serbia, Russia and China; supposedly, the enriched nuclear fuel was smuggled out of South Africa via Brazil. Iraq imported much of the material under the cover of their universities and ministries. He secretly used Jordan as a front for importing a lot of duel use materials. Furthermore, there is substantial evidence gathered by Federal German Intelligence (BND) that he is in the process of assembling a secret nuclear reactor to produce plutonium in a desolate area known as al-Qaim.
PRINCIPALS OF NUCLEAR POWER PLAYS
It might be helpful to examine why Saddam would want nuclear arms? If we knew his motives it might assist in deterring his future adventures.
One dimension of nuclear arms is the structural power they offer to a nation, they confer a certain rank, a particular status in the hierarchy of states; they are also, of course, a commanding deterrent against potential adversaries. In a lesser sense, they can be used as tools for political coercion. Taking Saddam's psychological profile into consideration, he would certainly be one to believe they provide a measure of distinction and a means to threaten his neighbors. In short, and in his case, nuclear weapons provide a megalomaniac a means to pursue his ambitions. Some would argue that nuclear weapons lack credibility as their use would ensure massive retaliation and self-destruction. If past experience with Saddam is any guide, he certainly does have a distinct tendency to act in what we would consider a suicidal frame of mind, although in his own culture this could be viewed as heroic defiance for martyrdom and the glory of Allah. There is little doubt Saddam would use nuclear weapons and other WMD. In fact his use of chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq war is proof of this. The probable destruction of himself and his country would be no more a deterrent that it was for Adolph Hitler in his Berlin bunker. And to secure any chance of winning, he would strike first. So it can be reasoned that the only defense others have against such a maniacal scheme must be a strategy of denial and preemption.
PREVENTIVE MEASURES
It has been argued that to preserve regional stability one has to simply contain Saddam Hussein to prevent him from realizing his virulent ambitions; that is being tried and is proving less than effective. Saddam's own aberrant nature rules out the use of reward for cooperation or moderation. In Saddam's view this would constitute a weakness, to be exploited. Sanctions have proved to be fruitless at best, at worst they ultimately strengthened his hold on power. Sanctions have weakened the Iraqi people and given Saddam a rallying cry against the world. Smuggling and illegal oil sales have ensured that Saddam and his top cronies have been totally unaffected by the sanctions.
Trying to discredit or intimidate Saddam with air strikes has had no more effect on him than his defeat in "Desert Storm"; it has only hardened his resolve and given him a propaganda advantage, both with his own population as well as with many sympathetic nations in the world.
Attempts to instigate a coup have failed, from lack of resolve, or his own security measures, and would surely fail again unless fundamental revisions in allied policy and ground rules were initiated. Typical is the 1995 CIA plan for a coup that was aborted at the last moment by meddling from the Clinton administration. The plan was to combine a Kurdish uprising in the north with an attack by military opponents against the barracks where Saddam had his residence. After such debacles, one would be hard put to find any internal support among the population for further coup operations in Iraq, unless the allies react with more skill and resolve.
There have been some reliable reports circulating that Saddam is dying of a cancer and that he has designated his youngest son, Qusay as his successor. The scoundrel Qusay's mental problems are on par with his father's, so the future doesn't offer much hope with that type of leadership change, giving more substance to the argument that patience and containment isn't enough. Clearly, organizing a palace coup, even if successful, would only replace the dictator with a similar strong man. There are courses of action that would be more effective. Saddam's totalitarian regime's footing is more fragile than it appears; its base is critically limited to a clan alliance, the Republican Guard and the secret police. Any regime that is so restricted, alienated from the public, and so paranoid, has no true popular support. It rules only through terror. This is the element that could be exploited.
Tactically, Saddam needs to be truly boxed in. Protect his opposition in the north (Kurds) and south (Shi'ites) by prohibiting his army from moving heavy material on the ground under the No-Fly Zones and enforce it from the air. Imposing such a restrained environment on Saddam, besides making it more conducive to an eventual overthrow of Saddam's regime, would serve numerous strategic purposes. Among them, the demoralization of his own forces as their helplessness before the allies becomes undeniable, the opposition would feel safer to organize a popular war of liberation, their maneuvers would be concealed from Saddam's forces (protected by allied air) and they would have more time and expanse to mount an attack.
Saddam's continuing menacing posture today represents a clear threat to peace and stability in this oil rich region, which translates to an overt strategic threat to the international community. This grave menace must be recognized, preferably by the UN Security Council, soon, and addressed by at least the United Kingdom and the United States military forces, if not more allies from the Gulf War coalition. Saddam's nuclear and other WMD threats are manifest and represent a clear and present danger toward those he openly intimidates, according them a right to self-defense. Under such circumstances, any armed action by them, or their allies, should be seen as legitimate and justified within the jurisdiction of international law. The Phoenix must not achieve his destiny.
Peter B. Martin
March-April 2001
c o p y r i g h t © 2 0 0 0 t h e i n t e l l i g e n c e n e t w o r k i n t e l l n e t . o r g a l l r i g h t s r e s e r v e d p r i v a c y p o l i c y
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