By MICHAEL ELLIOTT AND MASSIMO CALABRESI
YURI KOZYREV FOR TIME
A large statue of Saddam Hussein looms over workers at a sculptor's studio in Baghdad
Saturday, Nov. 23, 2002 One day in mid-September, the phone rang in the Washington office of a former U.S. government official with close ties to the Iraqi exile community. On the other end of the line was an old Iraqi friend, now living in Europe, whom the former official had met when he was stationed in the Middle East in the 1990s. There were some pleasantries; then the Iraqi cut to the chase. In the past two months, he said, four senior Iraqi security officials had contacted him and asked if he could help them establish lines of communication to the U.S. so that if war started, they could be on the winning side. The former official had contacted two old colleagues, now at the White House and the cia, and put them in touch with the Iraqi middleman.
Listen to government officials in Washington and London, chat with members of the alphabet soup of Iraqi exile groups, and you can come away thinking that such conversations are a dime a dozen. And they may be. In small ways and big ones, the U.S. and its allies are working like termites to undermine the rickety foundations of Saddam's rule. As the U.N. weapons inspectors started their work inside Iraq and President George W. Bush conferred with possible coalition partners at meetings in Prague and Moscow, it was easy to miss a story taking place behind the scenes. Whatever timetable the U.N. Security Council resolution on Iraqi disarmament may imply, and whatever Saddam may or may not do to cough up his weapons of mass destruction, people in the know are behaving as if a war to unseat the regime in Baghdad has already begun.
America's recent combat experiences in the Balkans and Afghanistan have confirmed for the Pentagon the virtues of psychological warfare and political initiatives in weakening the enemy before battle. These days the U.S. Army likes to say it is committed to "softening up the battlefield." Iraq is being softened up in many different ways. For one, following a Presidential Decision Directive on Oct. 3, the U.S. started a program to train up to 5,000 Iraqi exiles for possible missions in Iraq that could assist American combat troops. There is action inside Iraq too. A senior intelligence official tells Time that the U.S. has contacted groups that may be capable of sabotage before full-scale hostilities start. The U.S., says this official, is opening up lines to "people who can do World War II-style resistance, breaking up the infrastructure of communications and command." In a program that links intelligence, diplomacy, psychological warfare and military action, Saddam is being squeezed. "I see it as poking," says a State Department official. "Let's poke this pressure point and see what happens; let's see what reaction we get."
To hear U.S. officials tell it, this war before the war brings a double benefit. On the one hand, it prepares the ground if a full-blown invasion proves necessary. On the other hand, it just may be enough to topple Saddam without having to bomb Iraq and march into Baghdad. "We've embarked on steps that help us prepare for a military option inside Iraq," says the State Department official, "but that don't constitute a crossing of the Rubicon. None of these steps are irreversible, and all of them could help promote the longer-term destabilization of Saddam's government."
Already, U.S. and British warplanes have moved to a more aggressive posture while enforcing Iraq's no-fly zones, the northern and southern regions from which Iraqi planes are banned. In the past, when Iraqi forces fired on allied planes, the reply came in attacks on guns and missile batteries. That has changed. Now the allied planes are attacking command-and-control centers, communications nodes and the fiber-optic network that links Iraq's air-defense system. "We're responding differently," says a Pentagon official, "hitting multiple targets when we're fired upon—and they're tending to be more important targets."
What's more, the U.S., safe in the northern no-fly zone over which Baghdad has no control, is beginning to work more closely with the Iraqi Kurds, who are starting to get their often tangled act together. A few weeks ago, the two leading Iraqi Kurdish political groups, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (K.D.P..) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (P.U.K.), started to carry out a historic accord designed to end their years of often violent rivalry and to launch a period of working together.
In March and May of this year, according to a senior Kurdish official, American teams from the Defense Department and the cia visited Iraqi Kurdistan to investigate Ansar al-Islam, a terrorist group that has been linked to al-Qaeda and that has its base in caves on the border between Iraq and Iran. (The Americans didn't hide their presence; they drove black Grand Cherokee suvs with communications gear on the roof, not exactly common in Kurdistan.) The U.S. teams promised the Kurds that they would be back, and they have kept their word. U.S. officials tell Time that within the past few weeks the cia has opened two stations in Iraqi Kurdistan, one in Salahaddin, the principal town controlled by the K.D.P.., and one in Suleimaniyah, the P.U.K.'s stronghold. "They're basically there as liaison" between Washington and the Kurdish leadership, says the Brookings Institution's Kenneth Pollack, a former cia and National Security Council staff member on Iraq issues.
U.S. officials say there are no plans to use the Kurds the way the Northern Alliance was used as a proxy force fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. Though the "free" Kurds claim to have 100,000 fighters ready to help the Americans and its allies if a war starts, a senior U.S. official in the region says the Kurdish forces, called the peshmerga, are poorly equipped. Jalal Talabani, secretary-general of the P.U.K., says he has never received arms or ammunition from the Americans. But the cia, intelligence officials say, will use its new stations in the north to win over to the U.S. side those Kurds who live south of the liberated zone and are now loyal to Baghdad.
Meanwhile, a key U.S. ally is working to undermine the Iraqi regime's capabilities in the west of Iraq, where Iraq launched Scud missiles on Israel in the Gulf War. U.S. and Israeli officials tell Time that Israeli special forces have been operating inside Iraq's western desert on reconnaissance and training missions, surveying 30,000 sq. mi. for places where Iraq might have hidden the missiles and launchers it kept after the Gulf War. "You sniff around in the western desert," says a U.S. official, "and try to get an idea about those hardened concrete bunkers that Saddam has created to put his Scuds in." In the past few years, members of an Israeli special-forces unit called Shaldag, Hebrew for "Kingfisher," have taken part in the Scud hunt. There are only a few dozen Shaldag fighters, trained to stay in the field for weeks at a time. Sources say that should a war start, Israel will ask the U.S. to allow it to contribute a few three-man teams to the search for missiles. The bulk of the searches, the Israelis assume, will be carried out by British and American special forces. A British source says none of his country's forces are in Iraq—"We haven't got there yet"—but adds they will go in "once it's clear there's going to be an invasion." Washington is doing its best to make those who would suffer the sharp end of such an invasion believe that one is coming—and to tell them what it will feel like. Recently revised U.S. military doctrine says forces must try to "influence the thoughts and opinions of adversaries and noncombatants" by dominating "the information environment." Meaning: in a military maneuver as old as Joshua's fanfare of horns before the walls of Jericho, the U.S. intends to scare the pants off its enemies. In the southern no-fly zone, leaflets are being dropped warning, none too subtly, precisely what will happen to individual Iraqi soldiers if they choose to resist. (Think a rocket smashing into an Iraqi gunner's battery with such force that it leaves nothing but iron filings and body parts.) Such operations don't always go according to plan. On Oct. 3, a U.S. A-10 attack plane was dropping leaflets in southern Iraq warning Iraqis not to fire on American warplanes—when it was fired on. Sometimes the scaremongering is done at a remove. Recently the Washington Post and the New York Times ran stories on the same day claiming that the U.S. was ready to commit 250,000 troops to an invasion; the double whammy stank of a calibrated piece of propaganda.
More ambitious psy-ops are ahead. The Air Force intends to put into the air over Iraq its EC-130 "Commando Solos," planes that will broadcast TV and radio signals to the country. Iraqi opposition groups are turning over telephone numbers of active- duty Iraqi troops to their U.S. military liaisons. If war begins, those in Iraq will get taped U.S. phone messages from their exiled colleagues suggesting it might be sensible for them to stay on the sidelines. "There is a professional officer corps, and they do have contacts outside," says the former U.S. official who in September acted as middleman between Iraqis and the Administration. "What you want to do is build up a capability to make those contacts." In a radio interview, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, "Saddam can't use (weapons of mass destruction) himself ... He has to use intermediaries. We are communicating with people in that regime. And the truth is that anyone who is in any way connected with weapons of mass destruction and their use ... would be held accountable."
Is the message getting through? Exile groups insist that the traffic from within Iraq to their offices has reached a new high. An official with the Iraqi National Congress (I.N.C.) in London says, "We are getting a significantly higher level of contacts from regime insiders, including very senior ones in circles around Saddam." Sometimes, this official claims, such contacts have been in telephone calls direct from Iraq, something the I.N.C. hasn't seen before. Ghassan Atiyyah, a former Iraqi diplomat who edits the Iraq File, a monthly newsletter, in London, says his answering machine has taken messages from people inside Iraq telling him of the movement of weapons.
The exile groups, however, remain at loggerheads with one another. Kurds, Shi'ites, Sunnis, former officers, monarchists and the London-based I.N.C., led by Ahmad Chalabi—the longtime favorite of hard-liners in Washington—continue to jockey for advantage. Last week, for the third time, a conference designed to bring all the opposition groups together so they could agree on the shape of a post-Saddam Iraq was canceled. The various groups still can't agree on how many delegates should be at the meeting (rescheduled for London in December) or how they should be chosen.
After Bush signed the Presidential Decision Directive authorizing the training of thousands of Iraqis for reconnaissance and other missions, the Pentagon asked the six main opposition groups for the names of 10,000 potential recruits. The I.N.C. has taken the lead in supplying the names, but few have been received so far. "The names just aren't coming in as quickly as we would like," says a State Department official. "And to be honest, we always asked for 10,000 with the hope that 1 out of 8 would be a valid candidate." One problem: checking the records of those nominated. "We have to make sure no one is a terrorist or double agent," says the State Department official. "You don't want to be training anyone who's going to wind up running back to Baghdad giving the full names of everyone he was in some training class with." Even when trust is not an issue, background checks are important; some of the most useful recruits—those with military backgrounds—are likely to have unsavory histories as Saddam henchmen.
The I.N.C.'s Chalabi continues to divide the allies. Even his supporters in Washington were annoyed when he began crowing about the release of money for a secret spy program in Iraq. "He got a call from (the Pentagon)," says the State Department official, "saying 'Cease and desist—you're going to screw this deal.'" Chalabi may live in London, but he is not a favorite of British officials. "The I.N.C. has precious little influence inside Iraq," says one. "People see them as corrupt and Chalabi as a bit of a fraudster." The Kurds dominate in the north and are often at odds with Chalabi. In the south, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, led by Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim and backed by Tehran (southern Iraq, like Iran, is mostly Shi'ite), has more clout.
To bolster its position in the south, the Administration is trying to reach out to Tehran through intermediaries. "We've asked our friends in Britain and Germany and Canada to help," says a U.S. official. American sources say political turmoil has made it difficult to tell whether hard-liners in Tehran can stomach siding with the U.S. A senior Iranian official tells Time that his government signaled that it wants to cooperate by allowing al-Hakim's brother to attend a meeting of opposition groups in Washington on Aug. 9. "The sending of Hakim was hugely important to us," says this source. On the other hand, says another official, Tehran was burned by the Bush Administration's reaction to Iran's discreet help in the war against the Taliban. "In Afghanistan," says this official, "the U.S. proved to be unreliable, because Iranian cooperation was rewarded with 'the axis of evil.'"
While making discreet diplomatic overtures to Iran, the U.S. is more openly safeguarding its relations with other nations that have a stake in Iraq's future. On the margins of the nato summit in Prague last week, Bush met with Turkey's President Ahmet Necdet Sezer to confirm that the U.S. did not want to see Iraq's borders changed. The Turkish government is worried that Iraqi Kurds will be so overjoyed if Saddam is defeated that their mood will infect the Kurds in Turkey, rekindling demands for autonomy from Ankara. As sweeteners, Bush reaffirmed American backing for Turkey's candidacy for membership in the European Union and promised support for Turkey's mess of an economy. Then he was off to Russia, where he reassured President Vladimir Putin that the Americans have not forgotten that Iraq owes Russia $8 billion—and would not forget that Russian companies have signed potentially lucrative contracts to develop Iraq's oil fields when U.N. sanctions are removed.
It all amounts to a steady, relentless encirclement designed to convince Saddam—and his supporters inside Iraq—that forces opposed to him are closing in. But Saddam has not caved yet. Indeed, knowledgeable observers say that so far the pressure has just led Saddam to step up his efforts to contain unrest. "They know people are trying to make contacts outside," says the former U.S. government official. "The regime is being extremely vigilant." A senior British official concurs that Saddam's security apparatus remains impressive. "We really don't know how serious the (internal) opposition is," he says, "because if we knew, Saddam would know. And it wouldn't last very long." Last month, Saddam ordered the families of diplomats abroad to return to Iraq, implying that he intends to hold those family members hostage. In both London and Washington, officials insist that it is unlikely that anyone very senior within the Iraqi power structure has made contact with the outside. "Nobody's going to bet their life yet that America is ready to roll," says the former government official. "You don't want to get yourself killed two months before the U.S. liberates the country. That's not smart." But allied officials are hoping that if they make the right moves now, the war before the war will be the only one they will have to fight.
—With reporting by J.F.O. McAllister/ London, Azadeh Moaveni/ Tehran, Andrew Purvis/Ankara, Matt Rees/ Jerusalem and Mark Thompson/Washington
-- Anonymous, November 24, 2002