reflections

Tuesday, March 25, 2003

Saddam replacement(s) in the making

v vivekanand

US-engineered moves are under way to establish a new
group of Iraqis opposed to Saddam Hussein as a
possible alternative to the known factions that are
deemed by American intelligence agencies as unsuitable
to serve US interests in post-war Iraq.
Iraqi exile sources said talks were being held in
Washington, Europe and in the Middle East on the shape
of the new group that is expected to be favoured by
the US to take over power in Baghdad under an American
umbrella.
Washington launched the moves after facing stiff
opposition to its plans to have a military
administration in post-war Iraq and a second-layer
civilian set-up backed by elements of the present
regime to run the bureaucracy.
Iraqi exile groups such as the Iraqi National
Congress, the Iraqi National Accord, the Constituional
Monarchy Movement and the dominant Kurdish groups in
northern Iraq as well as the main Shiite opposition
faction opposed the US plan.
As a result, the US agreed that Iraqi exile groups
would be given power in post-war Iraq although the
details of the arrangement have yet to be worked out.

The American "change of mind" was reported last week
by one of the Kurdish group, the Kurdistan Democratic
Party (KDP), and the Shiite faction, the Supreme
Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).
Washington has not commented on the reported
agreement. US President George Bush's special envoy,
Zalmay Zhalilzad, is in Turkey for talks with the
Iraqi exile groups.
Zhalizad rushed to Ankara after Turkey said it wanted
to send its military into northern Iraqi in order to
check Iraqi Kurds from seizing control of oil-rich
regions there to boost their moves towards
independence that could spell trouble for Ankara among
Turkish Kurds.
Zhalilzad has managed to secure a Turkish undertaking
that any Turkish deployment in northern Iraq would be
co-ordinated with the Americans.
And now he faces the task of working out the post-war
arrangements with the Iraqi exile groups.
The Iraqi exile sources said Zhalilzad was expected to
work with a "leadership council" established at the
conclusion of a January meeting which grouped almost
all Iraqi exile groups. That meeting was held in
northern Iraq..
Meanwhile, another meeting is being planned to be held
in London by Iraqi exiles who prefera United Nations
administration in Iraq when Saddam Hussein is toppled
rather than a United States administration.
The gathering is expected to name itself the Iraqi
Democracy Group and seeks a civil administration
.until the situation will be right for a general
election to elect the new government of Iraq.
organiser Saad Abdel Razek says the "group of Iraqi
liberals from all countries" would choose retired
Iraqi dissident Adnan Pachachi, a former foreign
minister, to lead the new group.
Pachachi, who lives in Abu Dhabi, has rejected the
idea of a US military administration for his country.
He also rejected a seat on a leadership council
formed by the other Iraqi opposition groups meeting in
Iraqi Kurdistan last month.
Ahmed Chalabi, who heads the umbrella group Iraqi
National Congress (INC) of iraqi dissiddents, opposes
major role for the United Nations in a post-war Iraq.
Chalabi argues that UN is too weak to deal with the
political intrigues of Iraq, the destruction of
weapons of mass destruction and the dismantling of
Saddam's security services.
Chalabi, who wants to succeed Saddam as president,
says he wants allied troops to remain after the war
until a referendum and then elections were held to
establish democracy and independence.
"The only ones who can mobilise the Iraqi people are
the opposition, and so far there is little role for us
in this war," says Chalabi, who claims his grop has
"tens of thousands of fighters throughout the
country."
"The leadership of the opposition are in a position to
declare a provisional government, which could play a
very important role in dealing with the security
situation," Chalabi said.
While the US has not made its position clear on
whether it favours Chalabi, reports indciate that
Washington has little respect for any of the existing
groups and that is why it favours setting up an
alternative leadership for Iraqi exiles.
The american moves are kept cloaked in secrecy and it
is not even known who the people the us is dealing
with. but, as a highly informed source put it, "soon
enough the world would know who the US favours."
One thing is sure: The US would not allow the UN to
have any major say in running post-war Iraq; nor would
the major powers in the world body would permit the US
to take control either

Opinion...

Iraq has seen a week of fierce fight. But the end to
the conflict is not in sight. But another war has
begun, the diplomatic war. It is to decide who is
going to control Baghdad once President Saddam Hussein
is ousted. Although the US-British war plans have gone
awry despite the "shock and awe" blitzkrieg, the war
planners are plotting the next move.
The only planning that is on course is the
pulverisation of Iraq with precision-guided bombs and
rockets. There is massive destruction of
infrastructures. It is assumed that in the first week
of military action there have been more than 4,000
civilians casualties. The number of dead could be as
much as 350.
Iraq, a country crippled by 10 years of backbreaking
United Nations sanctions, is putting up resistance.
The massive high-tech weaponry of the US could not
subdue the Iraqis which American military leaders
initially thought could be accomplished in a matter of
days. Now even the most optimistic scenario speaks of
months of military engagement.
The fears that the US forces are getting mired in the
Iraqi rubble and desert have dampened confidence of
the market worldwide. It is thought the war might last
for months. US President George W.
Bush said on Thursday the war would last "however long
it takes to win." This negative sentiment has resulted
in loss of consumer and business confidence. And that
is going to hit corporate earnings, the economy and
the market. The result is already there: Oil is up,
the dollar is down and safe haven gold is soaring
There is growing anger at the US for farming out
lucrative contracts for reconstruction work. However,
it is a message meant for France, Germany, Russia and
China for refusing to be part of the “coalition of the
willing.” They are denied participation. French
Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin has therefore
demanded the UN must be at the heart of Iraq
reconstruction. The European Union insists the world
body must be "in the driving seat" in post-war Iraq.
This is an issue before Bush and British Prime
Minister Tony Blair at the Camp David summit. The
only way Blair could tackle his critics at home for
joining America’s war on Iraq is to find a formula to
allow UN participation in post-Saddam Iraq. He could
hope to help mend ties with the European allies if
Britain is able to persuade the US to allow others
some role in post-war Iraq. But Bush does not appear
too keen on giving the UN a role. He has a grudge
against it for impeding his war plans through what he
considers the diplomacy farce aimed at delaying
decisions.
The Bush thinking is revealed by Secretary of State
Colin Powell who said Washington is not keen to cede
control of Iraq to the UN. The US does not take on
“this huge burden with our coalition partners not to
be able to have a significant dominating control over
how it unfolds in the future." The former US military
chief, who conducted the first Gulf War on behalf of
Bush’s father, is precise in explaining US objective:
Take control of Iraq and establish American political
and economic control.
Powell has rejected UN oversight of the transitional
authority it is planning for Iraq. It would be
initially led by a US military commander. He would be
at Iraq’s “centre of gravity.” After the
consolidation of the interim authority, which would
have Iraqis on board, the US might consider a role for
the UN. The Iraqi interim administration would be the
nucleus of new government and exert authority over
every aspect of emerging Iraqi government. Powell
promises the US would take care of Iraq with the full
understanding of the international community with a UN
special co-ordinator joining at a later date.

Apparently what Washington is expecting is a neat
surgical operation to remove Saddam and transplant a
government to America’s liking. Alas, in a war such
carefully planned operation can go wrong as is
happening now. The US war planners were expecting a
quick and decisive win in three or four days.
It would be wise if the US listens to Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak. He has warned that post-war
Iraq would be even more dangerous than the war itself.
Although he did not elaborate, his officials have
cautioned that instability may spread across the
region. The “democracy domino” that Bush hopes for
with US friendly regimes in place across the Middle
East is a myth for neo-conservative intellectuals to
mull over. Such a presumption is based on a lack of
understanding of the socio- political culture of the
region. Bush should have understood this when the
first shot was fired at Iraq.
Many independent analysts have warned that the ouster
of Saddam is likely to trigger radical nationalism.
Its impact would be hostility towards Washington.
Nobody can ignore the anger and sadness of the Muslim
and Arab nations that have been getting a raw deal for
over five decades. The epitome is the Palestinian
struggle that could not be resolved because of
involvement of the US as a biased peacebroker. The
inability of the US-led forces in restoring normalcy
in Afghanistan after the ouster of the Taliban regime,
the pathetic conditions of Afghans in the Guantanamo
Bay detention centre and denial of justice to them
have incensed right-thinking people.
The US attempts to sugarcoat the planned military
occupation of Iraq as liberation are bound to fail.
The rising wave of Iraqi pride and anger cannot be
stymied. The military crusade against Iraq would go
bust as in the colonial past. Let the Iraqis decide
their future. Leave them alone for the sake of peace
in the region.

US duplicity again...

by pv vivekanand

IT IS IRONIC THAT the US is insisting that Iraqi respect the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war in relevance to the American soldiers who were captured by the Iraqi army while it is oblivious to the decades-old demand that Israel apply the same in the case of the Palestinians.
Israel has steadfastly refused to apply any of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, whether related to prisoners of war or civilians under occupation.
Under the principles of the Geneva Convention, the Palestinians are entitled to adopt any means available to them to resist the Israeli occupation of their land as long as their actions do not go beyond the occupied territory.
Attacks against civilian targets of the occupying force does not apply here since the occupying force is not supposed to have such targets in the occupied territory in the first place.
The Arab countries have for long sought to force Israel into accepting that the Geneva Conventions as applicable to the Palestinian territory and its people under is occupation.
But Israel refuses to accept them by citing the paradox that it seized the territory from Jordan in the 1967 war and since Jordan was not entitled to the land -- its annexation of the West Bank in 1951 was not internationally recognised -- the issue concerns a stateless people. Its interpretation is that the Geneva Convention could be applied only between two states (the occupier and occupied) and that since the Palestinians do not have a state the convention has no relevance to the dispute.
Calls for forcing Israel into changing its rejectionist stand are a regular feature at every review conference of the Geneva Conventions, but the US has always supported the Israelis and warded off international pressure on the Jewish state.
The last such conference was to take place in 2000 but any discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian issue was scuttled because the United States warned all others to stay off.
In the US-Iraq context, the issue of Geneva Conventions came up after Iraqi Television as well as Qatar's Al Jazeera Television on Sunday broadcast images of several dead bodies, apparently US soldiers killed in Iraq, along with five prisoners, including two wounded, one of them a woman.
This was interpreted by the US as violation of Article 13 and 14 of the Geneva Convention.
The relevant paragraphs in Article 13 say: "Prisoners of war must at all times be humanely treated. Any unlawful act or omission by the Detaining Power causing death or seriously endangering the health of a prisoner of war in its custody is prohibited, and will be regarded as a serious breach of the present Convention."
"....Prisoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity. Measures of reprisal against prisoners of war are prohibited."
Article 14 says:
"Prisoners of war are entitled in all circumstances to respect for their persons and their honour. Women shall be treated with all the regard due to their sex and shall in all cases benefit by treatment as favourable as that granted to men. Prisoners of war shall retain the full civil capacity which they enjoyed at the time of their capture."
Article 129 of the convention says: "Each party to the convention has an
obligation to search for those suspected of having committed such
breaches and bring them to justice before its own courts or hand
them over for trial to another party."
US President George W. Bush warned on Sunday that he expected the Iraqis to treat the PoWs in a "humane" manner and those who do not would be tried as "war criminals."
Even before Bush spoke, Iraq said it would apply the Geneva Conventions in the case of PoWs.
For those who might argue that the US has no right to demand the applicability of the Geneva Conventions in the war with Iraq since the war itself was not authorised by the United Nations and thus has no legitimacy, the convention has the answer in Article Two which says:
"The present Convention shall apply to all cases of declared war or of any other armed conflict which may arise between two or more of the High Contracting Parties, even if the state of war is not recognised by one of them."
Indeed, the "embedded" US televison crews travelling with the American-British invading force into Iraq have broadcast footage of Iraqi captives, including civilians as well as soldiers. Wouldn't that constitute a violation of the Geneva Conventions? Wouldn't it be splitting hairs to note that the American captives were forced to speak on camera while captive Iraqis were also shown speaking to American television crew?
One might argue that the US government has no control over the private-run television channels while the Iraqi government controls the state-run channel and thus could be held responsible for what the channel broadcasts. However, the counterpoint is that the American television cameras would not have been able to see the Iraqi civilian and military prisoners had it not been for Washington's permission to have them along as "embedded" in the invading force.

US hypocrisy over Geneva Conventions

Sunday, March 23, 2003

Ansar Al Islam

s ongoing war against Iraq. The group was in
American gunsights since July last year when it
emerged that it was present in a corner of northern
Iraq near the border with Iran and had links with
Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda.
However, American intelligence could not find any
links between Ansar and the Baghdad government. Had
such a link been established, it would have given new
life to Washington's fumbling effort to assert that
the Saddam Hussein regime was connected with Al Qaeda
through Ansar.
That did not prevent US Secretary of State Colin
Powell to assert in February that Ansar enjoyed
Saddam's patronage and that the group had a
sophisticated "chemical weapons testing facility" in
northern Iraq.
But Powell was caught redfaced when American and
Western reporters rushed to the area and found no such
facility and reported their finding.
The reporters found that armed Ansar fighters were
present at the site and living like any Iraqi villager
and engaged in a running conflict with other Kurdish
groups in the area. There was no evidence, either on
the ground or otherwise, that they had any relations
with the Saddam regime.
However, the reporters who visited the site found the
walls covered with poems and graffiti praising Bin
Laden and the Sept. 11 attacks on the US.."
In one, ther was a picture of the New York twin towers
with a drawing of Bin Laden standing on the top
holding a Kalashnikov rifle in one hand and a knife in
the other, according to one report.
In any event, Powell's claim was contradictory in
itself because the area where Ansar is present is
beyond the control of the Saddam government and the
region comes under the "no-fly" zone that the US had
declared in northern Iraq, preventing the Iraqi army
from entering the area.
As such, Iraq immediately countered Powell, pointing
out that it was illogical, baseless and unreasonable
to expect the Iraqi government to crack down on a
group which was present and operating in an area under
US protection. It also asked why American officials
have not publicly raised the Al Qaeda matter with the
Kurdish groups Washington supports in northern Iraq.
On Saturday and again on Sunday, Americans bombed the
group's base near Halabja in northern Iraq, killing at
least 60 of its fighters. No doubt further attacks
were planned along with a ground offensive against the
group be launched by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
(PUK), one of the two dominant Kurdish factions in the
area.
US intelligence reports said that Ansar had more than
2,500 fighters grouped in the area ahead of the March
19 launch of the American war against Iraq. The
reports could not be confirmed independently since
earlier estimates said the group did not have more
than 800 members.
The PUK and Ansar have been locked in a bitter battle
for more than two years and it was backing from
Iranian sympathisers -- not necessarily the Tehran
regime itself -- that helped Ansar substain itself
against PUK assaults and also to make daring forays
into PUK-held territories.
Ansar's name hit headlines in early August when Cable
News Network (CNN) screened testing of chemical
weapons in Afghanistan by Al Qaeda members and the
group was present in northern Iraq.
Immediately after the CNN screening of the purported
tapes of Qaeda testing of chemical weapons, US
"experts" said it looked like a method followed by
Ansar Al Islam.
According to US intelligence reports, Ansar fighters
trained with Al Qaeda members in Afghanistan and the
group is harbouring Al Qaeda activists in northern
Iraq after they fled overland from Afghanistan in the
wake of the American war there in late 2001. The
implication is that they might have reached northern
Iraq through Iranian territory.
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said there
were Al Qaeda members in Iraq, but he had not said
where they were.
US intelligence had monitored an Ansar Al Islam site
in northern Iraq where chemical or biological weapons
experiments were allegedly conducted with farm
animals. It initially was feared this might constitute
a significant chemical-biological threat, but US
officials decided it was not serious enough to justify
a military strike, reports said at that time.
US officials initially said Arab members of Ansar Al
Islam were involved in the alleged experimentation
with chemicals, but later they said it was unclear
whether they were Arabs or Kurds.
Washington has failed to establish that Baghdad had
links with Al Qaeda although several attempts were
made: first with a report that an Iraqi diplomat had
met with Mohammed Atta, the suspected leader of the
Sept. 11 attacks, in Europe in early 2001. It could
not be confirmed that such a meeting took place, let
alone that the two discussed Al Qaeda plans to stage
the attacks in New York and Washington.
The second attempt came with reports that a defecting
Iraqi intelligence agent had seen Al Qaeda leader
Osama Bin Laden in Baghdad in early 2000. The US media
played up the report, but then it became aparent that
the defecting agent could not have been telling the
truth since he had left Iraq in early 1999 and never
went back.
In any event, British intelligence reports backed by
Central Intelligence Agency findings have showed that
Saddam could not have had any alliance with Bin Laden
if only because of the deep ideological chasm between
them. Bin Laden calls Saddam an infidel and has blamed
the Iraqi leader for giving a pretext for the US
military presence in the Gulf by invading Kuwait in
1990.
It is possible that Saddam might have tried to use
Ansar Al Islam if only to create confusion among the
dozens of Kurdish groups which challenge his control
of northern Iraq, but it is doubtful whether he had
much success with the group, which is staunchly
fundamentalist bordering on fanatic obsession with
their version of Islam against "the blasphemous
secularist, political, social, and cultural" society
there.
Ansar Al Islam, which is led by a Kurd, Najmuddin
Faraj Ahmad, who goes by the name of Mullah Syed
Kreekar, had links with Al Qaeda, says US officials.
What is known about Ansar Al Islam?
It is a tight-knit group of less than 800 followers --
Iraqis, Jordanians, Moroccans, Palestinians and
Afghans -- and enforces a Taliban-style Islamic code
in a cluster of villages in a tiny pocket of territory
between the town of Halabja and the Iranian border,
an area around 80 kilometres southeast of the PUK's
administrative centre of Sulaymaniya.
(Halabja is the site of what the US has described as a
massive chemical attack towards the end of the 1980-88
Iran-Iraq war in order to fight Kurdish dissent. The
US accused Iraq of using the chemical weapons, but
analysis of the chemical used left the question open.
The analysis found that the chemical was not of the
type used by Iraq and experts suggested that it could
have come from Iran).
Mulla Kreekar has refugee status in Norway after
landing there from Iran under a UN refugee programme.
However, the Norwegian government has moved to expel
him after the US allegation that the group had ties
with Al Qaeda.
Mullah joined Ansar Al Islam after its formation in
September 2001. He replaced Abu Abdullah Shafae - an
Iraqi Kurd who trained with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan
for 10 years - and changed his name from Warya Holery.
Shafae is now Ansar Al Islam's deputy.
Ansar Al Islam activists have ransacked and razed
beauty salons, burned schools for girls, and murdered
women in the streets for refusing to wear the veil in
the areas under their control.
"Ansar Al Islam is a kind of Taliban," says PUK leader
Jalal Talibani. "They are terrorists who have declared
war against all Kurdish political parties. We gave
them a chance to change their ways ... and end their
terrorist acts. But if we can't do it through
dialogue, we are obliged to use force."
The PUK, which is engaged in a running battle with
Ansar Al Islam for domination of the villages on the
border, does not believe Ansar is backed by Iran.
"The Iranians are emphatic that this group is a threat
to their own security," according to Barham Salih, a
senior PUK official.
PUK officials have claimed that Ansar had received
hundreds of thousands of dolllars, weapons and Toyota
landcruisers from Al Qaeda and that the group has ties
to Iraqi government agents operating in northern Iraq.

The source of such information was, they ssay,
intercepted telephone conversations between Iraqis and
Ansar Al Islam.
Given that the PUK is bitterly opposed to the Iraqi
regime, such comments need a lot more than simple
assertions..
Saddam's eldest son Uday has accused Iran of backing
the group but his comment was ambiguous since he
referred to a group called "Jund Al Islam," which US
officials varying describe as either a mother group
from which Ansar Al Islam broke away or an offshoot of
Ansar Al Islam itself.
"They (Jund Al Islam) do not have any link whatsoever
with Al Qaeda, and this is purely an Iranian game
aimed at gaining influence in the area," according to
Uday Hussein.
Traditionally, Tehran has supported the PUK)of Jalal
Talabani, and its support for other groups is seen as
aimed at using them if, as and when Kurdish activities
threaten Iranian interests.
Tehran is anxious to ensure that Iranian Kurds, Iraqi
Kurds and Turkish Kurds do not gang up to set up an
independent Kurdistan in the border area.
Shortly after Saturday's US bombing, an apparent car
bomb in northern Iraq killed at least five people,
including an Australian cameraman near an Ansar camp.
The camp itself was subjected to a two-hour
bombardment by some 50 cruise missiles.
US missiles also targeted a base of the Komala Islami
Kurdistan (Islamic Society of Kurdistan), in the
small town of Khormal, killing at least 50 people.
Komala control an area between PUK and Ansar territory
It was unclear why Komala was targetted. It keeps out
of the PUK-Ansar dispute.

Saturday, March 15, 2003

Treble trouble for US

PV Vivekanand

THE US is facing treble trouble in Turkey. It has all but given up hope for access to Turkish territory to wage a war against Iraq and Ankara has yet to allow the use of its airspace for American warplanes to bomb Iraq. Worse still is the possibility that Turkey might send in its own military into northern Iraq to seize key oil-producing areas of that country citing its Ottoman-era claims and fears that Iraqi Kurds would gain control of oil resources and spark nationalist fever among Turkish Kurds.
A war between Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds could be in the offing unless Washington comes up with an elusive magic formula to contain both sides, and it is an effort it could ill-afford against the run-up to and execution of its war plans.
As of Saturday, it seemed highly unlikely that the US would have access in time to Turkish territory to deploy more than 62,000 soldiers in the war effort. The new Ankara government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has further delayed any vote in parliament for at least another week. The US had to make alternate arrangements and move some of its warships off the Mediterranean to the Red Sea from where missiles would not have to fly through Turkish airspace.
To express its anger at the Turkish stand, Washington has withdrawn an offer of up to $26 billion in American aid and loans. "The package was time-bound and we have moved on time wise," according to a US official quoted by the Associated Press.
Erdogan, a hard-line Islamist who is perceived to have softened his stand in the wake of his Justice and Development Party's landslide elections late last year, says that he wants his cabinet to secure a vote of confidence in parliament before bringing up the American request for use of Turkish territory for war against Iraq.
Obviously, Erdogan wants to pre-empt the repeat of a "no" vote that came early this month when about 100 of his own AKP members of parliament voted against the motion and others stayed away from the session. Opinion polls have shown that more than 80 per cent of Turks reject a war against Iraq.
Going to parliament first with a demand that his Islamist followers endorse a move to help the US fight a war against a fellow Muslim country might not be the best idea for Erdogan because a "no" vote could have a damaging effect on his political standing and might find reverberations in a subsequent confidence vote for his government.
Washington could not find fault with his logic and pressure him into rushing a vote on its request as a priority.
Then came the second jolt; Ankara has yet to approve American use of Turkish airspace for US warplanes to launch strikes on Iraq. It remained unclear over the weekend whether the Turkish airbase that the US and Britain are using to enforce the "no-fly" zone in northern Iraq would still be available for use once military action is launched, perhaps as early as this week.
The Turkish reticence in granting airspace rights is a serious strain in Ankara-Washington relationship. Both countries are members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), whose charter calls for granting such rights to fellow member countries. Even France, which is in the forefront of opposition to a US-led war on Iraq, has respected that right and granted use of its airspace to the US. This point was emphasised by US President George W.Bush in a message to Erdogan after the Turkish leader's victory in a by-poll that saw him enter parliament last Sunday. He was banned from running in elections under a constitutional provision in view of an earlier court verdict against him. His party amended the constitutional provision after emerging as the dominant party in parliament and cleared the way for his election.
The US, which seems to have given up hope of using Turkish territory for its planned war, is getting impatient with the Turkish posture over airspace.. Ankara newspapers reported that US Vice President Dick Cheney told Erdogan during a phone call last week that: "We're calling for the last time."
If indeed, Erdogan fails to secure a parliament vote in favour of American military deployment -- although it might be a bit too late, given the course of present events -- and continues to deny the US use of Turkish airspace, then serious troubles could start for the Turkish Islamists. Washington would have little use for them and might even find them a hurdle in its plans in the region after the war. That is where the strong links between the US and Turkish military establishments could come into play, and that would not be in the interest of democracy in Turkey.
In what seemed to a last-ditch American effort, Bush's special envoy to the Iraqi opposition Zalmay Khalilzad met Turkish officials in Ankara on Friday and Saturday.
Surely, Khalilzad's mission would not have been limited to discussing the request for airspace.
He is burdened with the task of convincing Ankara to stay put and not to send in its military into northern Iraq when the US launches the expected military action.
That would take much of an effort to convince Turkey, which fears that Iraqi Kurds might declare an independent Kurdistan, and stir trouble among Turkish Kurds.
On the ground, Turkey has already deployed tens of thousands of soldiers on the border with Iraq.
Iraqi Kurdish groups, who control among them a fighting force of about 80,000-85,000 members -- not to mention several thousand pro-Iranian Shiite fighters deployed near the Iraqi-Iranian border -- have condemned the Turkish moves. Some of them have said publicly that they would not move to create an independent state in northern Iraq, but Ankara is not buying their promises.
The Iraqi Kurds would definitely put up a bitter fight against Turkish soldiers entering northern Iraq and this would only complicate the US war effort aimed at replacing the Saddam Hussein regime in Baghdad.
Erdogan has hinted that he was seeking fresh US guarantees over its concerns over the intention of the Iraqi Kurds.
"We want to get a second motion through parliament, but the United States should also make some openings to facilitate this," he said on Saturday.
However, Bush might not be able to offer such guarantees, given that the Iraqi Kurds are suspicious of American intentions in Iraq and have rejected reported Washington plans to set up a military regime headed by Americans to run the affairs of post-war Iraq.
It is definitely a tight-rope for Washington in Turkey, and a razor thin rope at that.
US hopes are now set on a meeting on Monday grouping US and Turkish officials with Iraqi opposition leaders with the focus, as a Kurdish official said, on Ankara's "military intentions in the event of war and arrangements for the interim (period) after a war."
The meeting was arranged by Khalilzad, but, given the mutual suspicions between Ankara and the Iraqi Kurds, particularly given Turkey's record of using force to suppress its own Kurds, it is unlikely that the US envoy would be able to pull off a deal.
From the Ankara vantage point, allowing the Iraqi Kurds access to the oil-rich areas is a pre-cursor for trouble since the hydro-carbon resources would allow the growth of the Iraqi Kurds into an independent state.
But the underlying fear of the Iraqi Kurds is that Ankara, which recently stepped up references to the presence of a two- million Turcomen community -- who hold Iraqi nationality -- around the oil areas of Kirkuk and Mosul, might seize and annex the areas and thus realise its grievance that post-World War I borders were drawn up by Britain at the expense of Turkey.
In either case, the US would find its plans going terribly wrong since a key pillar of its projections of post-war Iraq includes its own control of the country's oil resources -- unless of course Washington is prepared to fight off both Iraqi Kurds and Turkish soldiers from the oil-producing areas.

Tuesday, March 11, 2003

War is round the corner.

The unprecedented wave of international protests
coupled with French and Russian warnings of vetos
against a new UN resolution clearing the way for war
against Iraq has done little to dampen American and British
governments’ enthusiasm to launch military action
against Iraq.
US President George Bush has simply shrugged off the protests as a democratic expression
of people's right to express their opion but said that
he was not to be dissuaded from what he described as
his duty to protect the people of his country.
However, the real reason for his determination to wage
war stems from a combination of political, economic
and strategic considerations that have less to do with
the security of the US than an effort to serve vested
interests and self-survival.

THE WORLD does not want a war against Iraq and it has
resoundingly said so, with millions of
people taking to the streets from Australia
and Europe to New York protesting against the
US-British plans for military action aimed at toppling
the regime of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad and installing
a Washington-controlled occupation authority there.
However, the unprecedented protests have failed to
make any
dent on the apparently one-track mind of US President
George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Nor are they dissuaded by the French and Russian
positions, backed by China, that Paris and Moscow
would not allow a new resolution to be adopted that
would clear the way for war against Iraq.
Obviously, it is too late for Bush and Blair to have
a change of heart now since they have gone too far
into their plans and tied their political future with
a successful regime change in Baghdad.
Indeed, it could even be described as an overkill if
conventional wisdom were to be applied. However,
conventional wisdom does not come into play here since
the stakes are far too high for both the US president
and British prime minister.
If anything, neither Bush nor Blair could retrace
their steps since both are caught in their own traps.
Both have worked up their constituencies over the
"threats" that Saddam poses to them and indeed to
"world security and stability." To climb down from the
war wagon now would be political suicide for them
since a no-war situation could mean that the "monster
regime" in Baghdad would remain in power with no
guarantee that its ability to pose "threats" to
American lives have been eliminated as Bush and Blair
have promised their people.
Worse still for Bush and Blair is the possibility that
the UN inspectors now checking Iraq for its alleged
weapons of mass destruction could finish their mission
successfully and issue a clean bill for Baghdad that
would lead to the embarrassing situation where they
would face calls for the lifting of the 12-year-old
sanctions against Iraq.
Bush and Blair would have to answer many hard-hitting
questions from their people if they were to reverse
their war wagon headed for Baghdad.
Among them are:
Wasn't it you and your people who told us that Saddam
was linked with Al Qaeda and the next Sept.11-style
attackers would be armed with biological and chemical
weapons? How has the situation changed today?
Wasn't it you and your people who told us that Saddam
was the worst dictator and the ultimate despot in
violating human rights that the world had ever seen?
Has he started respecting human rights overnight?
Wasn't it you and your people who told us that the
people of Iraq needed to be "liberated" from Saddam?
Have they been "liberated"?
From our vantage point in the Middle East, it is a
foregone conclusion that Bush and Blair would go to
war, with or without UN endorsement, if only because
they have no other option if they were to hope to
salvage their political future.
In the bargain, they would undermine the very concept
of the United Nations, impose new rules of the game
in international relations and collective world action
and create a wide chasm between the US and UK on the
one side and most European countries and indeed the
Arab and Muslim worlds on the other.
Let us visualise for a moment the situation that Bush
would be facing in the hypothesis that the
international protests against his war plans and the
strong opposition put up by powerful countries like
France, Germany China and Russia have prompted him to
reconsider his plans in view of the demand for more
time -- several months -- for the UN weapons
inspectors to complete their job in Iraq.
-- He is left with some 130,000 - !50,000 American
soldiers who are either in the Gulf region or on their
way there along with hundreds of fighter jets and
advanced war machinery and equipment. It is almost
impossible for him to keep them in the region for long
without rotating. Rotations would mean an equal number
of soldiers to be trained in Middle-East-specific
warfare, and the costs would double. Then there is the
reality of American soldiers being ill-equipped to
fight a war in the scorching heat of the Arabian
desert for any prolonged period against Iraqi troops
who have had eight years of experience of such
fighting against Iran in the 80s.
-- He is saddled with a massive bill for the
mobilisation and build-up so far and to recall the
forces without a war would be politically disastrous,
particularly that he intends to seek re-election next
year. He has also to consider that he would be taking
down his closest ally, Blair, with him. To go to the
voters with Saddam remaining in power in Baghdad is
the perfect recipe for disaster for both.
-- Neither Bush nor Blair would have satisfying
answers to their people how and why they had not
accomplished the task of eliminating the "greatest
threat" they ever faced in the form of Saddam Hussein,
and this would reflect when the Americans go to the
polls in 2004 and when Britons follow them.
-- Bush faces the possibility of a veto of a second UN
Security Council resolution to follow up Resolution
1441 and authorise war against Iraq and lend
international legitimacy to his plans. The eventuality
of presenting a draft resolution and then having it
shot down in the council would only further
delegitimise a war against Iraq that would boost
anti-US sentiments around the world and expose
Americans to the same very threats that he had been
expounding.
-- A US decision to go to war without UN endorsement
could lead to the collapse of the world body whose
"supreme authority in international affairs" has been
repeatedly affirmed by his people and himself in
recent weeks. By circumventing the Security Council,
the Bush administration would only be exposing its
selectivity in involving the world body in matters
that involve American and, indeed, Israeli, interests.

-- An option that experts see as possible to be taken
up by the US is the use of a paragraph at the end of
Resolution 1441, which was unanimously adopted. It
says: "The (Security) Council has repeatedly warned
Iraq that it will face serious consequences as a
result of its continued violation of its obligations."
-- Even if the US president wanted to spare the world
a war, his hawkish aides -- who have been plotting the
elimination of Iraq as a military power since 1996 to
serve Israeli interests -- would not allow him to step
off the war tracks. The pressure that a disappointed
Israel would apply on him would be too enormous for
him to bear.
On the other hand, the rewards of launching and
successfully waging a war are not only too tempting
and perhaps even irresistible but also his political
salvation. He could establish US supremacy of the
world if he could get rid of Saddam and eliminate his
people from power in Baghdad; secure absolute control
of Iraq's oil wealth and address all US concerns of
its role in the international energy market (and, in
the bargain, reap massive benefits for the oil
companies in which and he and his aides hold high
stakes); remove a threat to the US's staunchest ally
Israel and ensure the Jewish state's domination of the
Middle East (and, in the bargain, force an Israeli
version of peace down the Palestinian and Arab
throat); browbeat all those who opposed his plans for
war against Iraq and redraw the Middle Eastern map to
suit American interests. And finally, he could pat
himself in the back as having become the US president
to have waged a successful long-distance military
campaign ostensibly aimed at protecting American
lives.
In realistic terms, the situation speaks for itself:
Bush could not be persuaded to give the UN inspectors
more time in Iraq since an extension would work
against his
interests. He could not afford to leave room for the
possibility that the UN inspectors successfully
complete the process and formally close the Iraq file
on weapons of mass destruction since it would
automatically lead to demands for lifting the UN
sanctions against that country.
US officials' characterisation of the American
approach to the issue through the UN has at best been
deceptive.
They now describe Bush's decision to get a resolution
passed by the Security Council on Iraq and disarmament
(resolution 1441) in November as reflecting the
president's authority to uphold the supremacy of the
Security Council in international affairs.
In reality, Bush had no choice and was forced into
taking his Iraq case to the council in September when
he faced mounting international rejection of a
unilateral US war against that country.
At the same time, he also placed a card up his sleeve
when he declared that he reserved the right to take
unilateral action against Iraq if he felt that the UN
had not handled the case properly.
Obviously, he intends to exercise that option now.
Further strengthening his hand, in his view, is the
"Bush Doctrine" he presented to the US Congress in
September asserting that he, as president of his
country, was determined to take any action necessary
against any individual, group, government or country
that he deems as posing a threat to the safety and
security of the US and its people.
And then of course is the US Congressional
authorisation that he secured to "disarm" Iraq
through, if necessary, the use of American military.
Bush declared that "the game is over" even after the
generally positive report
submitted by the chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix
of Sweden, dealt a severe blow to the build-up of the
US case against Iraq,
Washington accepted a delay last month for a vote on a
new UN resolution, but it was no climbdown since that
time frame suited
the US military build-up in the Middle East for war.
US armed forces reached peak readiness by March 8 for
a
successful war against Iraq, including the vital land
assault that the US hopes would take its forces all
the way to Baghdad in a matter of days.
That the world has become wise to the US-British
deception aimed at talking the international community
into war against Iraq was evident in the massive
demonstrations across almost all major cities this
week.
Described by commentators as the most diverse diverse
peace protest since the Vietnam War, the demonstration
was unique since almost every colour of the political
spectrum across the world was represented.
Particularly noted was that while the demonstrators
condemned Bush for his "obsession" with Iraq, they did
not voice any support for Saddam.
Their thrust was clear: America's interest in Iraq had
more to do with oil than with disarming a country that
allegedly poses a threat to world security.
They argued that Iraq should not be allowed to possess
weapons of mass destruction, but a war to achieve that
goal was a morally bankrupt action that would benefit
no one but would harm the global economy, widen
American-Arab differences and undermine US allies in
Asia.
Close to a million people demonstrated in London's
Hyde Park, while nearly a quarter million gathered in
Berlin and hundreds of thousands more protested in 350
cities across Europe, the Middle East and Asia as well
as the US.
Coming under fire at the protests were also US
Vice-President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defene Donald
Rumsfeld, National Security Advisor Condaleesa Rice
and other hawks who are deemed to have goaded Bush
into an irreversible course for war. Also drawing fire
was Secretary of State Colin Powell, who has hitherto
been seen as a relative moderate in the Bush
administration.
But those voices of protest, which would definitely
grow into a world-deafening roar in the days ahead,
seem ordained not to reach the ears of those in
Washington who are determined to take charge of
international destiny and shape it to suit American
and Israeli interests.
Bush simply shrugged off the protests and repeated his
clichés to defend himself with indifference, saying
"democracy is a beautiful thing and people are allowed
to express their opinion" and insisting that Saddam
Hussein is a risk to peace.
"Evidently some in the world don't view Saddam as a
risk to peace. I respectfully disagree," Bush said.
He added: "War is my last choice, but the risk of
doing nothing is even a worse option, as far as I'm
concerned. I owe it to the American people to secure
this country. I will do so."
Few outside the US might buy his words, but no one
seems to be able to check him.

Monday, March 10, 2003

War plan on homestretch

THE FACADE of the US-British allegations to justify a
war against Iraq has disintergrated in the homestetch
to a new UN resolution. Fresh revelations have
highlighted that Washington has been resorting to
blatant deception in its effort to secure domestic and
international support for its plans for military
action aimed at "regime change" in Baghdad.
Almost every contention made by Washington and London
while building their case for war against Iraq have
been found to be deceptive, whether linked to Saddam's
alleged weapons of mass destruction or his alleged
alliance with Osama Bin Laden and support for
"international terrorism."
The latest weapon to pierce through the US armour of
contentions and arguments for war against Iraq came
from a hitherto secret transcript of an interview that
senior UN weapons inspectors held with an Iraqi
defector, Hussein Kamel Hassan Al Majed, a son-in-law
of Saddam Hussein, in August 1995.
That transcript shows that Kamel, who had defected
from Iraq, told the then chief of UN weapon
inspectors, Sweden's Rolf Ekeus, that he, in his
capacity as head of Iraq's Military Industrialisation
Commission, had ordered the destruction of the
country's entire stockpile of chemical and biological
weapons and banned missiles.
He also told Ekeus, who headed the UN Special
Commission (Unscom), that all that remained ere
"hidden blueprints, computer disks, microfiches" and
production dies. The weapons were destroyed secretly,
in order to hide their existence from inspectors, in
the hope of someday resuming production after
inspections had finished, he told Ekeus, who was
accompanied by Maurizio Zifferero. deputy director of
the IAEA and head of the inspections team in Iraq, and
Nikita Smidovich, a Russian diplomat who led Unscom's
ballistic missile team.
Kamel, who returned to Iraq in February 1996 and was
killed (see separate story), repeated the same
assertions to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
and Britain's MI6 while he was in Amman, said
Newsweek, which added that these statements were
"hushed up by the UN inspectors" in order to "bluff
Saddam into disclosing still more."
Predictably, the CIA rejected the report. "It is
incorrect, bogus, wrong, untrue," said CIA spokesman
Bill Harlow in a statement to Reuters commenting on
the Newsweek revelations.
However, Glen Rangwala, a Cambridge University
analyst who in early February exposed that a British
"intelligence report" on Iraq was plagiarised from an
academic thesis, got hold the actual Ekeus-Kamel
transcript and has released it (see
http://www.fair.org/press-releases/kamel.pdf).
Washington now finds itself caught further in its own
web.
It has to either stand by assertions made by President
George W. Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and
Secretary of State Colin Powell that Kamel, the Iraqi
defector, was a treasure trove of information and that
had it not been for him the world would not have known
of Iraq's weapons programme; or it has to reject
Kamel's statement in its entirety including his
revelations of Iraq's weapons programme and that all
the weapons stockpiles were destroyed. The Bush
administration cannot be selective and accept as
truth Kamel's disclosures about the weapons programme
and reject as lie the assertion that the stockpile of
weapons was destroyed.
Without any trace of doubt, Washington had access to
the Ekeus-Kamel transcript, the contents of which were
backed by Kamel's statements to the CIA during his
nearly seven-month exile in Jordan. As such, the
presumption goes that the Bush aides who had gone
through the document deliberately held back parts of
it from the presidential eyes or Bush himself chose to
ignore those comments which undermined his case
against Iraq.
Almost all the US claims against Iraq have been
rejected by UN weapons inspectors as well as
international experts.
While the contradictions do not make Saddam an angel
or do away with the stigma of dictatorial appression
attached to him, they do highlight the US and British
desparation to deceive the world into accepting that
he poses a major threat to the region and indeed the
international community.
In his analysis of the US approach to Kamel's
statement, Rangwala notes that Bush and others in his
administration have repeatedly cited the Iraqi
defector's statements as evidence that Iraq has not
disarmed, that inspections cannot disarm it, and that
defectors such as Kamel are the most reliable source
of information on Iraq's weapons.
The Cambridge analyst also notes that Bush said in an
Oct.7, 2002 speech: "In 1995, after several years of
deceit by the Iraqi regime, the head of Iraq's
military industries defected. It was then that the
regime was forced to admit that it had produced more
than 30,000 litres of anthrax and other deadly
biological agents. The inspectors, however, concluded
that Iraq had likely produced two to four times that
amount. This is a massive stockpile of biological
weapons that has never been accounted for, and capable
of killing millions."
Powell's said in a Feb. 5 presentation to the UN
Security Council: "It took years for Iraq to finally
admit that it had produced four tonnes of the deadly
nerve agent, VX. A single drop of VX on the skin will
kill in minutes. Four tonnes. The admission only came
out after inspectors collected documentation as a
result of the defection of Hussein Kamel, Saddam
Hussein's late son-in-law."
In an Aug.27, 2002 speeach, Cheney asserted that
Kamel's story "should serve as a reminder to all that
we often learned more as the result of defections than
we learned from the inspection regime itself."
Bush and Powell were actually referring to anthrax
and VX produced by Iraq before the 1991 Gulf War as
were all the weapons cited by Kamel, who, according
to the Ekeus transcript, also said that Iraq
destroyed all these weapons in 1991.
Kamel told Ekeus during the August 1995 meeting in
Amman: "I ordered destruction of all chemical
weapons. All weapons - biological, chemical, missile,
nuclear were destroyed."
"Not a single missile left but they had blueprints and
molds for production," he said. "All missiles were
destroyed."
On anthrax, he said it was the "main focus" of the
biological programme , but that "nothing remained"
after he ordered the stocks destroyed following visits
by UN inspection teams.
"I made the decision to disclose everything so that
Iraq could return to normal" so that the sanctions
could be lifted, he told Ekeus.
Kamel admitted that Iraq had loaded chemical weapons t
in bombs during last days of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq
war. "They were not used and the programme was
terminated," he told Ekeus..
Interestingly, Richard Butler, the Australian diplomat
who succeeded Ekeus in 1997, has never referred to
Kamel's statements during his meetings with the press
and declined to answer any questions in this context.
Among the many other statements, claims and
contentions made by Bush and others in their push for
UN and international backing for their plans for war
against Iraq are those about nuclear weapons.
Among these contradictions are:
The admistration has asserted that the International
Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Iraq
had an advanced nuclear weapons development programme
, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was enriching
uranium for a bomb.
However, the IAEA has reported to the UN Security
Council that it had found that Iraq’s nuclear capacity
had been completely dismantled by 1998.
In a 1998 report, the agency said that there were "no
indications that there remains in Iraq any physical
capability for the production of weapon-usable nuclear
material of any practical significance."
In its latest report to the Security Council, IAEA
chief Mohammed Al Baradei stated that the agency
"found no evidence that Iraq has revived its nuclear
weapons program since the elimination of the programme
in the 1990’s.” That statement is supported by a
former Iraqi nuclear scientist who now lives in Canada
who says that Iraq does not have the expertise and
hardware to produce a nuclear bomb.
Compare the IAEA report and the scientist's assertion
with Bush's claim in September 2002 that the IAEA
had stated in a report that Iraq was “six months away
from developing a [nuclear] weapon." Someone should
ask Bush and his aides for a copy of that specific
report.
No such report actually exists.
Washington has charged that Iraq “had attempted to
purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for
nuclear weapons production.” But the IAEA contradicts
that charge saying the aluminum tubes were not
suitable for nuclear use.
The Institute for Science and International Security
also says that it found the Bush contention to be
“very misleading."
The Bush administration is “selectively picking
information to bolster a case that the Iraqi nuclear
threat was more imminent than it is, and, in essence,
scare people,” says the institute.
Powell claimed that UN weapons inspectors had found
that Iraqi officials were hiding and moving illicit
materials within and outside of Iraq to prevent their
discovery and that Iraq had developed mobile
biological weapons laborataries.
However, chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix
contradicted the assertion by saying that “inspectors
had reported no such incidents” of hiding or moving
illicit materials and that they have seen “no
evidence” of mobile biological weapons labs.
Independent experts have ridiculed a claim by Bush
that Iraq had a growing fleet of unmanned aircraft
that could be used “for missions targeting the United
States.” Iraq does not have that kind of advance
technology and there is no evidence whatsoever that it
acquired such unmanned aircraft with the range to
reach the US.
Countering the Bush administration's claims that Iraq
"aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al
Qaeda," is the reality that the Central Intelligence
Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and
British intelligence agencies have found no link
between Al Qaeda and Iraq.
If anything, a British intelligence report -- that has
never been made public by the Blair government -- says
that there could have no link between Saddam and Bin
Laden if only because of their "ideological"
differences.
While the US claims that Iraq had the materials to
produce as much as 500 tonnes of sarin, mustard and VX
nerve agent and has given no evidence that it has
destroyed them, the UN inspectors say that by 1998 at
least 95 per cent of Iraq’s chemical weapons had been
accounted for and destroyed.
Agaisnt the US assertion that the UN had found that
Iraq had materials sufficient to produce more than
38,000 litres of botulinum toxic, a 1999 UN report
said that Iraq had to account only for an amount of
the growth media for the toxin that could produce
1,200 litres of botulinum toxin.
Blix has also shot down an American contention that
Iraqi intelligence officers were posing as the
scientists inspectors are supposed to interview.
The littany of the US deception also includes a claim
by Defenee Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that he had
“nothing to do” with helping Iraq in its war against
Iran and that he cautioned Saddam about the use of
chemical weapons in a 90-minute meeting in 1983. In
reality, Rumsfeld led a delegation to Iraq to resume
diplomatic relations in order to prevent an Iranian
victory in the war, according to State Department
notes of the Rumsfeld-Saddam meeting as reported by
The Washington Post in late December 2002.
What is the net impact of these revelations of deceit?

Definitely not a rethink of the US and British plans
for war against Iraq. However, that is not all. If
anything, in the days ahead the world would be privvy
to further revelations of the hidden motives and
ulterior objectives of the American-British plans for
Iraq. And that would further erode chances of any
legitimacy for any war against Iraq. Obviously,
neither Washington nor London could afford any delay
that would leave room for further undermining of their
plans; and hence their haste to set a March 17
deadline for war.

A defector who never was!!!

NEWSWEEK sparked a controversy by its report last
month that Hussein Kamel Hassan Al Majed, Saddam
Hussein’s son-in-law who was in charge of Iraq's
military production for about 10 years, had told
Western intelligence agents and UN weapons inspectors
in 1995 that Iraq had destroyed all its chemical and
biological weapons stocks and the missiles to deliver
them after the 1991 war.
As such, the Newsweek article implies, there could not
be much truth in the American and British allegations
that Iraq continues to hide a massive stockpile of
such weapons in violation of UN Security Council
resolutions. The argument here is that if Kamel is to
be taken as seriously as the British and US
administrations have previously held him to be, then
his claim that "all weapons — biological, chemical,
missile, nuclear — were destroyed" should be taken
equally seriously. That pulls the rug further from
under the feet of the American and British charges
that Iraq has a stockpile of weapons of mass
destruction.
That might indeed be the case. But the point I'd like
to raise here is how far Kamel's "defection" itself
was authentic. For all we know, the possibility could
not ruled out outright that it was a stage-managed
affair although a conventional analysis would rule
that out. But then, there is nothing conventional
about Iraq and Saddam Hussein.
Kamel, who "defected" to Jordan in 1995 and went back
home seven months later only to be (allegedly) lynched
by his clan, had declared that he fled Iraq because he
wanted to reveal all information regarding his
country's military industry and weapons programmes.
While in "exile," he met Central Intelligence Agency
and British intelligence agents in the Jordanian
capital and revealed to them what the latter
considered as closely guarded secrets of the Saddam
regime's arsenal.
Kamel's prime revelations were made to Rolf Ekeus, the
then head of the UN Special Commission (Unscom)
entrusted with ensuring that Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction were scuttled and the country stripped of
the ability to produce them.
Ekeus found himself almost overburdened with the
"details" provided by Kamel. It took him and his
experts several months to match the information
provided by Kamel with that was "voluntarily" to given
to them by the Iraqi government. By the time Ekeus
drew up more pointed questions to be put to Kamel,
the Iraqi was no longer alive to answer them. Since
then, it has remained a closely guarded secret what
exactly Ekeus learnt from the files and what questions
he had for Kamel.
Kamel was director of Iraq's Military
Industrialisation Corporation and in charge of Iraq's
weapons programme and he superised Iraq’s nuclear,
chemical, biological and missile programmes. His
bother Colonel Saddam Kamel was the head of
presidential security.
Kamel, who arrived in Jordan in the second week of
August 1995 with his wife and children as well as his
brother and his family and cousin Izzeddine plus a
dozen or so bodyguards, was the most senior official
from Saddam's inner circle to defect.
As such, he was a prize catch for Western
intelligence.
His made his first public appearance at a press
conference on the lawns of the Royal Palace on Aug.12,
and his interpreter was the head of Jordan Television
and Radio Corporation and a son-in-law of the then
crown prince of Jordan. That reflected the importance
the Jordanian leadership gave to Kamel, who was also
given accommodation at one of the palaces in the
Jordanian capital before being moved to a smaller
palace in the suburbs.
"We will work inside Iraq and in the whole Arab World
to topple the Iraqi regime," Kamel declared at the
press conference. But his words were not convincing
since Kamel was considered as ruthless as Saddam
Hussein by many Iraqi exiles.
I was almost a minority of one among Amman-based
journalists who did not fully buy Kamel's story. I
subsequently pulled a few strings and managed to get
an exclusive interview with him (for your info Rosh,
it was a world exclusive!!!!). His comments during
that 65-minute encounter -- and in other interviews
thereafter -- only strengthened my suspicion that his
so-called defection could have been stage managed and
that Saddam was as much a part of the drama as much as
Kamel himself.
The best argument against that theory was that it was
not Saddam's style to resort to such a deception. It
is simply beyond him, many argued. The very fact that
his defection was a "body blow" to Saddam was a
central pillar of argument for those who inisted that
it was no drama. "After all, in a society like Iraq,
Saddam lost much face among his people because the
defection proved that he could not control his own
family," was the comment of a veteran journalist with
extensive Middle Eastern experience. "If you cannot
control your own family, how could you maintain
control over the whole country?"
The argument was strengthened in February 1996 when
Kamel and his brother as well as their father were
murdered when the two brothers returned home. However,
even their murder does not really rule out the
possiiblity that the defection was a drama.
The arguments in favour of the theory that the
defection was stage managed hinged on several
contentions and assumptions as opposed to the "facts"
as they appeared to the world at large.
These contentions and assumptions are:
In 1995, it was four years after the UN weapons
inspectors launched their mission in Iraq and were
engaged in on-again off-again standoffs with Iraqi
officials. No real progress was made in their work,
and it seemed every day that passed by was only
furthering the realisation of the UN objectives and
chances of Iraq returning to the international fold
were receding.
By mid-1995, Saddam should have realised that he
could not hope to continue to conceal his weapons
programmes from the UN inspectors, who were backed by
satellite spying information provided by the US. He
should have summarised that the UN inspectors would
gradually unearth whatever military programmes he had.
But it would have taken years if not decades and in
the meantime he could not hope for a lifting of the
crippling UN sanctions imposed on Iraq in 1990.
However, he could not very well order his people on a
fine morning to reveal everything to the UN inspectors
because that would be an indignified affair for him.
That realisation prompted him to seek a face-saving
formula under which he would not be held personally
responsible for concealing the weapons and programmes
but the details would nonetheless be made available to
the UN inspectors.
Kamel's "defection" was that compromise.
Having reached that "foundation," it is relatively
easy to figure out the rest if one suspects that
there was no real defection at all.
Kamel was not supposed to have lived in "exile" in
Jordan for more than three to four months during which
he was supposed to "tell all" to the UN inspectors.
Another mission was added to his "defection" at some
point: Penetrate the Iraqi exile movements and be
Saddam's Trojan horse among them.
Let us look at what happened after Kamel arrived in
Amman in August.
In less than 24 hours, he was denounced as a traitor.
In a week's time the Iraqi government declared that
Kamel had unilaterally, without informing Saddam,
concealed a lot of information from the UN inspectors.
Baghdad requested Ekeus to visit Iraq to collect all
information that Kamel had purportedly held back from
him.
The contention was clear: Saddam had ordered every
Iraqi official to reveal all information on the
country's military industry to the UN inspectors, but
his own son-in-law disobeyed him for reasons of his
own.
Ekeus flew to Baghdad in the third week of August.
Sure enough, masses of files on Iraq's military
industry were handed over to him along with
explanations that had Saddam been aware of Kamel's
deception, the information would not have been held
back from the UN inspectors.
The clinch came when a senior Iraqi minister drove
Ekeus to Kamel's chicken farm outside Baghdad and
showed the UN inspector several locked cupboards
there. These were found to contain more "confidential
and vital" information on Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction. Kamel had secreted these files at his
farmhouse without informing anyone, Ekeus was told.
The UN official carted off all the files to Baghdad
from where they were shipped to Vienna and the UN
headquarters in New York. Some were also sent to
Bahrain where the Unscom had set up base for its Iraq
mission.
Ekeus's next stop was Amman, where he, Maurizio
Zifferero, deputy director of the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) and head of the inspections team
in Iraq, and Nikita Smidovich, a Russian diplomat who
led UNSCOM's ballistic missile team and former deputy
director for operations of Unscom, interviewed Kamel.
Major Izzeddin Al Majid, a cousin of Kamel, who had
also defected, acted as an interpreter (Izzeddin Al
Majid did not return with them to Iraq in 1996. He is
now believed to be living somewhere in Europe).
Obviously, whatever information the UN inspectors had
gleaned from the newfound files in Baghdad were
confirmed point to point by Kamel during that Amman
encounter. However, he did not provide an iota of
information more than what Ekeus had gathered from the
files except that he had ordered all weapons of mass
destruction be destroyed.
The transcript of the Ekeus-Kamel meeting was
classified as sensitive and was not made public.
However, a copy was "leaked" to Glen Rangwala, the
same person who exposed that the recent British
intelligence report on Iraq was a partial reprint of
an academic study conducted by a California student in
1991. The "leak" came after the Newsweek article was
published.
What the transcript does not contain is that at the
beginning of the meeting, Kamel told Ekeus to get rid
of his main translator, a Syrian or a Tunisian, saying
he was on Iraqi payroll.
"That was perhaps the only new revelation that Kamel
made during his meetings with Ekeus," according to a
source close to the Ekeus-Kamel encounter. "Everything
else Kamel told Ekeus was only confirmation of what
was contained in the files given to the inspectors by
the Iraqi government."
Ekeus left Amman, apparently happier than ever since
he began his mission in Iraq in 1991.
The data contained in the Iraqi files took several
months to be deciphered into practical information and
Ekeus either overlooked that the Iraqi defector did
not give him any information not available in the
files or was too overwhelmed by the details given to
him.
By the time he was ready for another meeting with
Kamel, the defector had returned to Iraq and was
killed along with his brother by "vengeful" members of
their Majed clan despite a pardon offered to them by
Saddam. Some of those who killed him were "executed."
It was reported that Saddam's eldest son Uday
supervised the killing of his brother-in-laws. The
sisters and children were reportedly sent off to the
family home on Tikrit. Kamel's wife was reported since
then to have lost her mind.
There are many who believe that the entire script of
the "defection, revelations, pardon and return home"
drama was written by none other than Saddam himself
and agreed with Kamel. But what Kamel did not account
for was that his father-in-law had rewritten the happy
ending without his knowledge.
Why was the script rewritten?
Again, it is conjecture. Saddam had not anticipated
the kind of approach that the Western media would take
to Kamel, who was described, immediately after his
"defection," as Saddam's replacement as Iraq's
president after a Western-engineered coup in Baghdad.
The Clinton administration sought to portray Kamel as
an alternative to Saddam and gave public assurances of
support to Jordan's King Hussein for granting asylum
to the Iraqi defectors. That was an unexpected
development for Saddam, who was, at best, expecting
the outside world see his son-in-law as an "important"
Iraqi defector but not of presidential material.
Furthermore, Saddam had allowed for a three-to-four
month stay for Kamel in Jordan (Kamel actually never
left Jordanian territory during his seven-month
"exile," except, according to unconfirmed reports,
when the late King Hussein took him along to perform
Umra in Saudi Arabia). The stay had to be extended
because Kamel's second mission -- of penetrating the
camp of Iraqi dissidents-- was faltering because no
Iraqi exile leader was ready to accept him as the
future president of Iraq; if anything, they did not
trust him as far as they could throw him.
Prominent Iraqi exile leaders were unanimous in their
opinion of Kamel: He could have been helpful in
securing the support of senior Iraqi military generals
from the Sunni community and could at best be rewarded
with a ministerial post in a post-Saddam government.
Saddam was more disturbed, according to those who who
advocate the theory that the defection was a drama,
that Kamel in Amman was in almost daily contact with
senior CIA officials and other Western intelligence
agencies, which used their good offices with the
Jordanians to remain in touch with him.
Obviously, Saddam put himself in Kamel's shoes and
applied his own philosophy and approach. He reached
the conclusion that Kamel could have been "turned" by
the CIA and the possibility could not be ruled out
that his son-in-law might shoot him in the back at the
first given opportunity in a carefully orchestrated
plot and take over the helm in Iraq with CIA backing.
That was not something that he had not provided for in
the original script for the defection drama.
After all, goes the theory, Saddam would have thought
that had he been Kamel he would not waste an
opportunity to grab power, father-in-law or no
father-in-law, and as such, he posed a major risk if
readmitted to the ruling circles as written in the
original defection script.
Kamel belonged to the same clan as Saddam's father. He
was a member of the presidential security guard and
steadily rose in prominence. He was known for his
efficiency in arranging Saddam's security details and
this brought him into close quarters with the
president. Saddam was obviously taken to the man since
he found common streaks, including a ruthlessness that
is so vital to survival in the labrynth of power in
Baghdad (Kamel was known for his brutality while
handling the Kurdish rebellion in the north and Shiite
unrest in the south, and he also showed that trait
while handling Kuwaiti resistance during the Iraqi
occupation of the emirate).
Apparently, Saddam decided that it was ideal to seal
Kamel into his camp by marrying off his daughter,
Raghad, to him. That was done. And Kamel manipulated
the pawns and arranged his brother Saddam Kamel to
marry the president's younger daughter Rana and
elevate him as head of presidential security. At some
point, reports have said, Saddam Hussein considered
Kamel closer to him than his own sons Uday and Qusai
and that was one of the reasons that Uday was hostile
to Kamel and his brother.
Is there any hard evidence that Kamel's "defection"
was faked?
Consider this: In mid-October 1995 -- two months after
Kamel defected -- I was told aan interesting story
about a Jordanian woman who was giving private tution
to the children of the Iraqi defectors. At one point,
she was being a bit harsh with the children for
truancy, but was told by Kamel's wife to "take it
easy."
"Don't take these tutions too seriously," she was
told. "We should be going back in a few weeks anyway,
so don't bother too much and don't be too tough on the
children."
Consider this: During my interviews with Kamel -- and
others have said the same thing -- I found him
largely naive to the ways of life outside Iraq. He
came across like a villager who was suddenly
catapulted into a position of power and influence and
did not know what to do with his newfound strength. He
spoke little English and even his Arabic was deemed by
experts to be too sub-standard for someone who served
as a minister of Iraq.
Consider this: Kamel blamed Saddam's eldest son Uday
for all the troubles of Iraq. He contented that Saddam
was surrounded by people who told him only what he
wanted to hear and who manipulated him. Thes included
Tareq Aziz and Taha Yassin Ramadan. He said he himself
was finding it difficult to get access to the
president despite his position as a member of the
cabinet as well as his family relationship. He said he
chose to leave Iraq because he feared for his life
since Uday was plotting against him.
Consider this: Kamel never gave a straight answer to
the question whether he envisaged himself to be
Saddam's successor as president of Iraq. In fact, he
seemed to be taken aback when the question was put to
him for the first time as if the thought had never
occurred to him earlier.
Consider this: Kamel said while in Jordan that he knew
of an impending Iraqi plan to reinvade and reoccupy
Kuwait and that a massive force was being assembled
near the border. The US was alarmed, particularly
after satellite spying spotted some movements near the
border. However, what were supposed to have been a
concentration of battle tanks disappeared overnight in
what many experts then theorised as a replay of the
feigned allied invasion of France during World War II.
But for sceptics, it was the enactment of a
pre-arranged Saddam ploy aimed at giving credence to
Kamel's "revelations."
The theory that the defection was faked does not make
much sense when seen from a conventional vantage
point. That apporoach would see Hussein Kamel as a
man who was fed up of his father-in-law's machinations
and wanted to put an end to the cat-and-mouse game
with the UN inspectors. "I made the decision to
disclose everything so that Iraq could return to
normal," he had told Ekeus. "They (Saddam and others
in the regime) are only interested in themselves and
not worried about economics or political state of the
country. I can state publicly I will work against the
regime."
He fled his country with his family, hoping that his
revelations would help hasten the demise of Saddam
from power and he stood a chance to succeed his
father-in-law as president of Iraq. He was
disillusioned when Iraqi exile groups turned down his
overtures and labelled him as untrustworthy as Saddam
himself.
Kamel also realised that the Americans were not
taking him seriously. His wife and sister-in-law
pleaded to be allowed to return to their homeland. His
will was weakened by the arrival of his weeping
mother-in-law, Sajida, who told him Saddam had
promised her that he would forgive him and his brother
if they would return to Baghdad.
He established contacts with the Iraqi diplomatic
mission in Amman and informed Saddam he regreted his
decision to defect and wanted to return home. Soon
word came through the mission that he was given a
presidential pardon and he could return. On Feb.20,
1996, he, his brother and their families crossed the
border back into Iraq. The moment they were in Iraqi
territory, they were separated from their wives and
taken to their home in Baghdad where they were kept
under house arrest.
Their divorces from Saddam's daughters were announced
immediately thereafter.
Their repeated appeals for a meeting with their
father-in-law were rejected. On the night of Feb.23, a
group led by elders of their Majed clan attacked them.
Both brothers as well as their father and a few
supporters were said to have put up a brave battle
before all of them were shot down by the clansmen who
claimed they were cleansing the honour of the clan by
killing the "traitors."
The bodies of the Kamels were never seen. That leaves
open speculation that even their "death" was faked and
that the Kamel brothers are living in secret with
their families somewhere in Iraq. That is a theory
that is equally fascinating but impossible.

Monday, March 03, 2003

Turkish Islamists and Iraq

by pv vivekanand

THE dominant Islamists of Turkey have taken a big political risk by voting in parliament against allowing American troops to deploy in Turkish territory to wage a war against Iraq. Obviously, the strategists in Washington might even be contemplating manipulating the US "connections" with the Turkish military into staging events that might see the demise of the Islamist domination of the Turkish parliament and create new realities in the country that would serve the pressing American need to have access to Turkish territory for military action against Iraq. US-engineered upheavals have been known to happen before and there is no reason not to rule it out this time around either.
The motion for approval for the Ankara-Washington deal was voted down in parliament by three votes after several members abstained and others conveniently stayed away from the session and spared themselves from answering their voters why they opted to support a war against a fellow Muslim country.
There is considerable opposition among Turks to a US-led war against Iraq since many see it was a campaign against Islam itself. Those sentiments have to seen against the decades of "discrimination" that Turks feel they were subjected to in the West coupled with post-Sept.11 events.
It is not simply the parliamentary rejection of an American military deployment in Turkey that should be irking Washington. It is the realisation that the politics of Turkey has changed dramatically after the election victory last year of the Justice and Development (AKP) party led by firebrand Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has made no secret of his distaste of his country's alliance with the West rather than its natural partners in the Arab and Muslim world.
At the same time, other AKP leaders, including the current prime minister Adullah Gul -- who is actually standing in for Erdogan until the latter wins a bye-election and qualifies to be prime minister -- are seen as a moderating factor.
The prospect of a war against Iraq has come to Turkey at a most inappropriate time for the Islamists, who, for the first time in the modern history of the country, have an absolute majority in parliament and need to consolidate their political grip through meeting the expectations of the electorate. Their agenda did not have any room for an external crisis interfering with their plans. Their pressing priority is to stabilise the internal front and consolidate their newfound status as the dominant political power in the coutnry.
They need a stable environment in order to achieve social and economic objectives that would endear them more to the voters. The crisis over Iraq was something they could have done very well without.
The Turkish military establishment, which has a record of intervening whenever serious political crises erupted, is watching from the wings, and many would not rule out that the generals could go into action if they felt that Ankara was going too far from its traditional relationship with Washington.
Analysts believe that many senior Turkish military generals have close affiliation with the US; many of them have undergone training in the US and feel close to the US military establishment; most of their weapons and equipment are supplied by the US; and some might even be outraged that the Islamist politicians are placing the relationship with the US on the firing line by denying Washington the much-needed military facility to wage a successful war against Iraq.
The first thought that occurred to many observers when the AKP won the elections last year was how the generals would take it. It was indeed a relief that the military relented and said the party had its backing to rule Turkey with the first wholly Islamist government. Since then it was generally been smooth sailing for the AKP, which went on to introduce legislative amendsments that allowed Erdogan to stand in elections. A by-poll is scheduled to be held on Sunday which is expected to see Erdogan entering parliament and take over premiership from Gul.
The election should be another irritating factor for the Americans since it has frozen any move by the government to put in a new request for parliament to take a new vote on the deployment of US troops in the country. A vote would not come before another two or three weeks in view of the government reshuffle that is expected to follow Erdogan's election.
There should have been many considerations behind the Gul goverment's failed move last week to secure parliamentary approval for US military deployment, and those considerations remain unchanged.
These include:
Turkey would definitely like to have a military say in northern Iraq because of fears that Iraqi Kurds could take control the oil-producing areas there and move towards declaring an independent state that would stir the Turkish Kurdish community.
Turkish politicians have been demanding that Ankara pre-empt such a move by seizing control of the oil regions of northern Iraq citing Ottoman territorial claims and the presence there of two million Turcomen -- Iraqis of Turkish origin.
Turkey's economy needs urgent infusion of funds. A deal made between Ankara and Washington would allow Ankara to get $6 billion immediately and up to $26 billion in credit facilities iin return for allowing Turkish territory to be used by the Americans to open a northern front against Saddam Hussein.
Under the Islamists, Turkey, which has come under criticism in the Arab World for the last 30 years for its ties with Israel, is hoping to signal a slow-down in its interaction with Israel and seek to strengthen its relationship with the Arab World. It has already sought an observer status in the Arab League.
Given the Arab and Muslim rejection of a regime change in Iraq through military means, Turkey has to be careful in its steps in the crisis.
Obviously, the Islamist government's decision to close the deal with the US was prompted by a calculation that business would be back as usual once the Iraqi crisis tides over with the ouster of the Saddam regime since it knows well that there is not much love lost for Saddam among Arab leaders. At the same time, Erdogan also faces the task of justifying his decision to the wider Islamic World.
Reminding Ankara of the pitfalls it faces in Iraq is the growing internal rejection of war against Iraq as well as the Iraqi Kurdish approach to the issue. Tousands of Iraqi Kurds who staged a protest against any deployment of Turkish troops in northern Iraq on Monday and burnt Turkish flags in front of the UN headquarters in Arbil.
Iraqi Kurds fear that the Turkish-US deal is at their expense although the political and military details of the accord have yet to be disclosed.
The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), one of the two dominant Iraqi Kurdish groups, has voiced fears that the deal gives Turkey the green light to pour in thousands of Turkish troops into northern Iraq. The KDP sees it as a betral of the Kurds and has vowed to fight the Turks if they enter the Kurdish enclave that is shared between the KDP and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). The Kurdish distrust of Turkey was highlighted when Kurdish border guards prevented Turks from accompanying journalists and delegates who attended an Iraqi opposition conference in northern Iraq last week.
The uncertainty over Turkish approval of the deal has put American miltiary plans in disarray since use of Turkish territory is vital to success in the planned US war against Iraq. Senior US commanders have admitted as much and are seeking alternative plans to using Turkey.
However, denial of access to Turkish territory will cripple US plans to execute a "short war" to achieve its objectives in Iraq. Any prolonged conflict would only work against the carefully planned US scenario for a post-war Iraq.
As such, the angry response the Turkish parliament vote drew from Washington was understandable. It reflected the frustration of the American strategists who worked for more than three months to close the deal with Ankara.
However, those protests and words of condemnation would have little effect unless Erdogan streamlines his members of parliament and forces through an approval of the deal with the US before the delay throws a spanner in the US works. But then, Erdogan's priorities are too complex for a smooth process of a parliamentary approval of the deal in a new vote.
And that is why all eyes are on the options of the Turkish military generals.

Sunday, March 02, 2003

It is all about water

Parallel to the argument that the US is seeking control of Iraq's oil wealth through its campaign to topple Saddam Hussein, a new contention has emerged that Washington might also be eyeing to reshape the region's water system.
The assertion has come from Stephen C. Pelletiere, who served as Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and as a professor at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000. In that capacity, says Pelletriere, "I was privy to much of the classified material that flowed through Washington having to do with the (Arabian) Gulf..."
In an opinion/editorial piece written in the New York Times under the title "A war crime or an act of war," Petteriere primarily sought to establish that it was not Iraq but Iran which had used chemical weapons on the people of Halabja on the border between the two countries at the end of the 1980-88 war.
"...The truth is, all we know for certain is that Kurds were bombarded with poison gas that day at Halabja," he wrote. "We cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds. This is not the only distortion in the Halabja story."
According to the former CIA officer, it was during an Iraqi-Iranian battle that ensued when Iran soought take over of the Darbandikhan lake and dam the border in an area including Halabja that chemical weapons were used. The gas that was used was known to have been used by Iran and not Iraq, he says in contradiction to President George W,Bush's implicit accusation in is recent State of the Union address that Saddam had used chemical weapons against his own people.
Beyond the debate about the use of chemical weapons in Halabja, Pelletriere's article refers to plans about the region's water resources.
"Iraq has the most extensive river system in the Middle East," he says.
"Before the Gulf war, Iraq had built an impressive system of dams and river control projects, the largest being the Darbandikhan dam in the Kurdish area," says the article. "And it was this dam the Iranians were aiming to take control of when they seized Halabja.
"In the 1990s there was much discussion over the construction of a so-called Peace Pipeline that would bring the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates south to the Gulf states, and, by extension, Israel," Pelletriere writes.
The Peace Pipeline project was the brainchild of the late Turkish president Turgut Ozal in the late 80s and early 90s. He proposed that Turkey dam up the Euphrates and sell the water to the region's countries, including Israel.
Turkey on the one hand and downstream Syria and Iraq had been for long locked in disputes over the Euphrates since Turkey slowed down the flow of the river through dams build upstream. In the 90s, it built the Ataturk Dam, which has considerably reduced the flow.
Eighty per cent of Iraq’s water originates outside its borders. Turkey controls most of the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates, the twin rivers upon which both Syria and Iraq depend.
While the Peace Pipeline project was welcomed by Israel, which has the highest per capita water consumption in the Middle East, Iraq and Syria objected to it since damming up the Euphrates would have serious consequences on their sections of the river.
--

The Peace Pipeline project involved conveying Turkey's waters through Syrian territory or along the Mediterranean to Israel. The Gulf-bound water would pass through Iraq, according to the Turkish plan.
Russia was the main non-Arab opponent of the project since Moscow felt that that the project will have dangerous outcomes and will lead to new fights and Arab-Israeli wars over the water.
Indeed, that assumption is held valid in view of the growing water crisis in the region and a lack of agreement on how the region’s scarce resources should be divided.
In any event, it is elementary that a Turkish water pipeline running through Syrian territory to Israel could be contemplated only in a situation of Arab-Israeli peace -- which seems far too distant at this jucture in history.
But, does the US have any plans to use Iraqi territory for a pipeline to Israel running through Jordan?
While Pelletriere, the former CIA expert, is not clear on this point, he suggests all options could be open.
"We are constantly reminded that Iraq has perhaps the world's largest reserves of oil," says Pelletriere. "But in a regional and perhaps even geopolitical sense, it may be more important that Iraq has the most extensive river system in the Middle East."
"Iraq was covered with irrigation works by the sixth century AD., and was a granary for the region," says Pelletriere.
According to the former espionage official, no progress was made on the Peace Pipeline project because of what he calls Iraqi intransigence.
"With Iraq in American hands, of course, all that could change," he says.
"Thus America could alter the destiny of the Middle East in a way that probably could not be challenged for decades — not solely by controlling Iraq's oil, but by controlling its water....."
Indeed, experts have often predicted that the next Middle East war would be over water.
“Many of the wars of this [20th] century were about oil,” World Bank Vice-President Ismail Serageldin observed in the late 90s, “but the wars of the next century will be about water.”
Seen against the obivous "invisible" US objective of removing Iraq as a potential military threat against Israel, it would also seem conceivable that its plan includes opening the door to address its ally's water concerns. With the US in absolute control of Iraq, it would be free to use Iraqi territory to convey water Israel through Jordan, which has signed a peace treaty with the Jewish state and has strong economic and trade links with the US,
Israel has proved it would not hesitate to go to war over water. Its seizure of Syria's Golan Heights in the 1967 war had more to do with its anxiety to take control of the strategic area which is the main source of its water than military strategy; and its persistent refusal to negotiate the return of the Golan to Syria evidences its determination not to give up control of the water source.
The Israeli invasion and 23-year occupation of southern Lebanon was also partly motivated by designs to gain control over Lebanon's water sources and divert them into Israeli territory.
Israel's continued occupation of parts of the West Bank is aimed at retaining control of aquifers in the occupied territory that accounts for nearly one fourth of its water consumption. It has imposed severe controls over Palestinian exploitation of their own water sources.
As such, Pelletriere's assertion that the US would seek to revamp the region's water-sharing arrangements could not be dismissed out of hand.
However, it need not be the case that Iraq would be a conduit to Turkey's water to Israel.
A US control of Iraq would definitely change the region's shape and political perceptions and Washington might eventually be able to "persuade" Syria to make peace with Israel under the new reality of a strong American military presence in neighbouring Iraq.
A Syrian-Israeli peace agreement, by definition if, as and when it is signed, would definitely involve firm accords of water sharing and the world could bet it would be more oriented towards addressing Israel's "water concerns" than those of the Arabs.

Droughts are frequent in the northern parts of Iraq, indicating that the water sources in that part of the country are not dependable.
The Tigris and Euphrates rivers rise in the eastern mountains of Turkey and enter Iraq along its northwestern borders.
After flowing for some 1,200 kilometres tranversing through Iraq, the two rivers converge at Karmat Al, just north of Basra, to form the Shatt Al Arab waterway, which flows some 110 kilometres to enter the Gulf. The middle of the waterway is supposed to be the Iran-Iraq international border.
The Euphrates does not receive any tributaries within Iraq, while the Tigris receives four main tributaries, the Khabour, Great Zab, Little Zab and Diyala, which rise in the mountains of eastern Turkey and northwestern Iran and flow in a southwesterly direction until they meet the Tigris River, according to data provided by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation. A seasonal river, Al Authaim, rising in the highlands of northern Iraq, also flows into the Tigris, and is the only significant tributary arising entirely within Iraq.