Tuesday, September 02, 2003

Qaeda in Iraq but no Saddam ties

PV Vivekanand
FIGHTERS of Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda group entered Iraq and had been behind some of the most effective attacks against US forces occupying the country after Saddam Hussein's ouster, but there is no evidence that the group had links with the ousted regime, intelligence sources said on Sunday.
The US is also seeking to step up pressure on Saudi Arabia by highlighting that some of them were from the Wahabi sect of Sunnis since that is the dominant group in Saudi Arabia and the Saudi royal family is also Wahabi.
The sources were commenting on reports from Iraq that nearly 20 people, including Saudis, Kuwaitis, Palestinians and Jordanians as well as Iraqis, who were detained following Friday's bombing outside Imam Al Mosque in Najaf, had admitted to being Al Qaeda members.
"It is doubtful that all of them were Al Qaeda members," said one source who spoke to Malayalamanorama on condition of anonymity. "Some them were driven into staging anti-US attacks on their own because of ideological and personal reasons while others were organised and under the Al Qaeda banner."
However, American officials say otherwise. They insist that Al Qaeda and the Saddam regime were linked and Friday's bombing was irrefutable evidence that the links are continuing.
At least two of the detainees were intelligence operatives of the Saddam regime, according to the reports.
The sources said the Ansar Al Islam group, which had presence in northern Iraq in an area beyond the control of the Saddam regime in Baghdad and cited by the US as the link between Saddam and Bin Laden, appears to be operating on its own.
Ansar Al Islam is one of the groups suspected to have carried out the Aug.19 bombing against the UN headquarters in Baghdad and an earlier attack against the Jordanian embassy in the Iraqi capital.
"To an extent it could be said that Ansar Al Islam is following the lines of Al Qaeda in post-war Iraq," said the intelligence source. "There might or might not be communications between the group and some of the Qaeda leaders in hiding after the Afghan war. It does not really matter since the danger is very much existent in Iraq with or without any Qaeda leadership role."
Ansar Al Islam is "one of the several groups that is engaged in hit-and-run attacks" against the Americans in Iraq, said the source.
"There are Saddam loyalists, remnants of the Baathist regime, independent Islamist groups which are dedicated to fighting the US because of what they see as Washington's bias against Muslims and others.
"The most dangerous among these are the Islamists and they pose a continuing threat to the US since it is not a specific group with a specific number of members; their number could run into thousands like the Islamic Jihad or Hamas groups of Palestine sicne they are driven by despair, frustration and fury over the American approach to the Palestinian problem as well as all Muslim issues."
According to the source, the Najaf blast served several purposes for whoever was behind it: Apart from throwing out of gear US efforts to pacify post-war Iraq, it eliminated the leading Shiite cleric in the south, Ayatollah Mohammed Al Baqr Al Hakim, who was advocating co-operation with the US forces occupying the country, it (could have) led to widening the deep schism between the Hakim camp and the group led to Moqdata Baqr who preaches a hostile approach to the US, and brought up many theories and suppositions that added more complexities to the chaos of Iraq.
Obviously, in the short term the Americans would like to use the purported Al Qaeda role in Friday's blast that killed over 100 to re-emphaise that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was justified since Al Qaeda had links with the Saddam regime.
Deliberately left to in the grey area is that Al Qaeda operations in Iraq today could not be cited as evidence that the ousted regime had links with it.
On the Saudi angle, it is clear that the emphatic reference in all statements that some of those arrested are "Wahabis" is another form of American pressure on Saudi Arabia after contenting that Arab guerrillas were entering Iraq across the 800-kilometre Saudi-Iraq border.
Riyadh has denied the charges, but the denial has done little to improve the worsening strain in relations between Saudi Arabia and the US since Sept.11, 2001.
Fifteen of those carried out the suicide hijacking were Saudi members of Al Qaeda and since then Washington has been building a steady case that the source for Al Qaeda funds was Saudis, including members of the ruling family and various charity organisations and groups linked to mosques.

Wolfowitz - the man who knows

by pv vivekanand


OF THE many American officials and members of Congress who passed through the Middle East — including Iraq — in recent weeks, Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz stood out as the man who zeroed in on Arab satellite channels like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya for broadcasting statements and videotapes of Iraqi groups waging attacks on the US forces occupying Iraq.
Why should Wolfowitz be the one too perturbed by Al Jazeera and Al Araibya?
The reason is clear: Wolfowitz stands out among the so-called neoconservatives, or, to be more accurate, pro-Israelis, who orchestrated the war against Iraq, and he would definitely like the link to be kept away from public debate. Therefore, it is not as much the anti-US "incitement" broadcast by the two television channels that is distressing him as the pointed debates on the two channels on the short, medium-term and long-term implications of the US-led war against Iraq and how Israeli interests are served more than American interests by the US occupation and "containment" of Iraq.
There might or might not be truth in Wolfowitz's contention that the statements and videotapes attributed to Iraqi groups encourage further attacks on US forces occupying Iraq. But then, to warn the channels against broadcasting them goes against the grain of the very freedom of the media that is held high in the United States and elsewhere in the world.
Indeed, would Wolfowitz dare to accuse American television and radio stations or newspapers of anything? Of course, he might find no compelling reason to do so since it is unlikely that the same material transmitted by Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya will be carried by any US media in the same context and analysis.
An easy (hypothetical) example is: An American channel might carry a video-tape or statement issued by an Iraqi group vowing more attacks against the US forces in Iraq with an American commentary explaining that the group was obscure, unheard of before and suggesting that it could be nothing but terrorist and paid for by Saddam Hussein from his hideout, wherever that might be.
In contrast, the Al Jazeera or Al Arabiya commentary that would go with the same message or tape would say that it is an example of the growing Iraqi resistance against the US occupation and the group might or might not be linked with Saddam. Such portrayals are invariably picked up international news agencies and newspapers -- including American publications -- and reach American readers although with the typical twists and narrow interpretations.
The above summation is rather simplified. The key factor that complicates the American viewpoint here is the fact that it fails to take into account that the situation in Iraq today is very much an Arab concern and the Arab media are projecting the Arab viewpoint through lengthy debates that expose what many commentators describe as the hidden American/Israeli agenda in the invasion and occupation of the country.
To a large extent, American officials and even some of the media outlets see Arab newspapers, television and their enemy and embedded in the same camp with those resisting the American occupation of Iraq not because of Iraq alone but also because of Arab resentment over Washington's biased approach to Middle Eastern and Arab issues in general and Palestine in particular.
People like Wolfowitz are not willing to take in that Western media also portray the US presence in Iraq as occupation (that is the way even the UN describes it) and the attacks against US forces in Iraq as armed resistance.
They are overlooking that debates carried on American channels describe Palestinians fighting the Israeli occupation of their land as terrorists and such descriptions are an insult to the Arab cause in Palestine.
They do not want to acknowledge that Arab media do carry comments by American officials without censoring them.
They would never affirm -- perhaps they are incapable of doing so -- that the Arab media representation of events in Iraq are more accurate than that presented by their American counterparts.
As well-known Middle Eastern commentator Rami Khouri notes:
"At the technical level, the Arab media do exactly what the mainstream American media have done since March: They mirror and pander to the dominant emotional and political sentiments of their own public opinion, because they seek to maximise their market share of audience and advertising.
"In choosing, framing and scripting their stories, Arab and American television stations alike unabashedly and unapologetically cater to their respective audiences' sentiments: The flag-adorned US media emotionally support the US troops, and the Arab media are equally fervent in opposing America's occupation of Iraq."
Parallel to that analysis is indeed the American neoconservatives' anxiety to hide their pro-Israeli stand and activities away from the public eye and ear. It might even be argued that their concerns in this context are more intense than their alarm that Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya is "inciting" attacks against US soldiers in Iraq. They know that reports and debates focusing on how far Israel's interests were and are being served in the war against and occupation of Iraq are doing them damage by exposing their pro-Israeli priorities and, at some point, they could be held accountable.