Issue No. 594
Opinion
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11 - 17 July 2002 Issue No. 594 Opinion |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Ensnaring Saddam
Washington's determination to get rid of the current Iraqi regime is the result of a piece of crude, and not very convincing, cost-benefit analysis, argues Ayman El-Amir*
Talks between Iraq and the United Nations in Vienna failed to make any progress towards the return of weapons' inspectors to Iraq. The standoff will add an important building block to the United States' case for launching a military attack to topple the regime of President Saddam Hussein. And this is probably where the talks were heading even before they officially started: the intention being to corner Iraq into a seeming show of intransigence to better justify a sweeping military invasion. The Iraqi delegation fell for it, though President Saddam Hussein should not be the only Arab leader to worry about such an ominous development.
The stage for the talks was meticulously set by Washington, leaving neither Iraq nor United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan any room for manoeuvre. In May Naji Sabry, the Iraqi minister for foreign affairs, who headed his country's delegation, submitted to the secretary-general a list of 19 questions which, taken together, formed an outline of the kind of settlement Iraq was seeking. The list of questions dealt with Washington's threats to unseat President Saddam Hussein, its deliberately leaked plan for the invasion of Iraq, the US-British enforcement of the no-fly zone in the north and south of Iraq without authorisation from the Security Council, and the lifting of the 11-year-old sanctions against the country and its people. But Mr Annan had a much easier task than answering such questions, a task set for him by the Security Council, for which read the US. He had simply to procure a yes or no answer to the question whether Iraq was prepared to accept unconditional, unrestricted and comprehensive inspection of suspected chemical and biological warfare facilities. The secretary- general has now reported to the Security Council what Washington wanted to hear: Iraq is reluctant to accept the unconditional return of the weapons experts team that had been withdrawn on the eve of the American-British punitive strike against Iraq in December 1998.
In building the case against Iraq, President George W Bush and his aides have pondered the lessons learned from the 1991 Gulf War. President George Bush senior, and his able Secretary-of-State James Baker, spared no effort then in assembling an international political, military and diplomatic coalition against the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. At that time no country in the world could, in good conscience, have opposed military action to push back Iraq's aggression against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a member state of the United Nations. Former President Bush, with long experience in international affairs, worked patiently for five months, between August 1990 and January 1991, to rally a coalition of more than 150 countries and a formidable military armada, including 450,000 US-led international troops, to dislodge the Iraqi forces occupying Kuwait. It was an open and shut case. In the eyes of the American public the only mistake he made was that he left President Saddam Hussein in power. That mistake continued to haunt him for years and may have contributed to the limitation of his presidency to a single term.
President George W Bush's mission vis-à- vis Iraq has been cast for him by last year's terrorist acts of 11 September. Iraq, a member of Bush's "axis of evil", is not responding unconditionally to demands for the full inspection of its suspected cache of weapons of mass destruction. With a congressional mandate already secured to remove Saddam Hussein from power, President Bush has little reason to seek international approval or much to fear from international opprobrium. One needs only to remember a parallel example when, in December 1989, the US launched a large-scale military operation in Panama that was intended to remove the then head of state, Manuel Noriega. He was put on trial in the US and convicted on charges of drug trafficking, arms smuggling, money laundering and brutal oppression of his people. He is now serving a 40-year prison term in a Florida jail.
Much has been touted about the invasion plan and the military build-up leading up to it. Iraq is ringed by US military bases in Turkey, Qatar, Bahrain and, of course, in Kuwait, which is home to the forward headquarters of the US Army Central Command. No one can bet on the course of the battle or its ferocity. But the objective is clear-cut. Without the forced removal of Saddam Hussein, the battle will be judged a fiasco. And it is not a fiasco that President Bush can afford in his quest for a second Republican term.
Part of Washington's on-going diplomatic offensive is intended to neutralise and contain the reaction of Arab governments. Vice- President Dick Cheney, who made a 10- country tour of the region in March to gauge views on the removal of Saddam Hussein, failed to garner much in the way of support from Arab leaders. While Arab media reports generally considered his mission a failure, he intimated to the US media that a number of Arab leaders had indicated to him they would not shed a tear if a change of leadership in Baghdad could be brought about. The calculated military leaks, diplomatic manoeuvres to isolate Iraq and the increasingly apocalyptic invective against the evils of weapons of mass destruction, Israel excluded, is part of Washington's strategy to up the psychological warfare. In this context there has been a deal of speculation that the Middle East peace plan President George W Bush has recently unveiled is in effect little more than a side-show in the preparation for the final battle against Saddam Hussein.
Some Arab leaders will be more welcoming to the demise of Saddam Hussein than others. But the dire consequences of the probable invasion of Iraq must be viewed in the wider context of the new, US formulated framework of "the war against terror". In the current American administration's strategic analyses of the events of 11 September Middle East-based terrorism is attributed to two primary factors -- political oppression and the code of religious education. Political oppression, the rule of emergency laws, corruption, proscription of civil liberties and poverty are the root-causes of internal terrorism which is inevitably externalised. The system of religious education that elevates Jihad and death in the cause of Allah to the highest rank of martyrdom is regarded as a terrorism assembly line. Israeli occupation and decimation of the Palestinian people and their land is of secondary importance. In the US analysis, terrorism has become both a criminal and a political problem for which Arab regimes are held accountable. This conviction will be reinforced by the findings of the Arab Human Development Report that appeared in Cairo last week. The report listed absence of political freedom, discrimination against women and inadequate education systems as the reasons for the substantial development gap between Arab countries and far poorer regions of the world.
The targetting of President Saddam Hussein is consistent with that strand of US political thinking that legitimises the ouster of political leaders who may pose a threat to Washington's perception of its national interests. In the cold war years the roll call of undesirables consisted mainly of communist or nationalist leaders in countries outside the officially recognised Soviet bloc. With the rising power of the United States and the dramatic events of 11 September the agenda has shifted. The US is now embracing a change- of-leaders doctrine and in a relatively short time the justification for such changes will be as varied as harboring terrorism, suppressing political dissent, or endangering US economic interests by, say, enforcing an oil embargo.
Any large-scale invasion of Iraq is a risky proposition. The chaos it will create in the delicate, multi-ethnic balancing act that is Iraq, and its ramifications in the Arab world, may far outweigh the benefits. Kurds in the north of Iraq have learned from bitter experience in 1991, when they were encouraged to rebel against the regime of President Saddam Hussein in return for American support, how fickle an ally the US can be. They are understandably reluctant to join the campaign this time. However, should the ouster of President Saddam Hussein be as swift and surgical as the US military would like it to be, leaders in the region and elsewhere may soon find themselves added to President Bush's laundry list.
* The writer is a former correspondent of Al- Ahram in Washington DC and served as director of the UN Radio and Television in New York.
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