Attack May Pay Off For Saddam’s Regime

Saddam Hussein may yet pay a price for his weekend blitz into northern Iraq’s Kurdish zone. But the view from Amman is that the Iraqi president’s gamble appears to be paying off, shoring up his political standing at home, exposing the limits of Western ability to control his behavior and consolidating government access to key trade routes through northern Iraq into Turkey.

By capturing the city of Irbil in the Kurdish haven protected by U.S. and British warplanes, Saddam has done more than reassert government sovereignty, however fleetingly, over an area that had been outside his control since the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

On the domestic front, the Iraqi leader has demonstrated to his sanctions-weary populace that he still commands the loyalty of a formidable military machine, notwithstanding coup plots and widespread unhappiness with his rule.

Moreover, Saddam’s forces invaded at the invitation of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) - one of two factions vying for control of the Kurdish enclave - and the Iraqi army has operated within Iraq’s internationally recognized borders. As a result, it has not violated U.N. resolutions stemming from the end of the gulf war.

On a pragmatic level, Saddam’s budding military alliance with the KDP led by Kurdish tribal chieftain Massoud Barzani - also could serve to ease Baghdad’s isolation, improving its ability to smuggle oil through northern Iraq into Turkey in return for food and other badly needed goods.

“He will be much stronger, and that’s what worries me,” said Tahsin Muallah, a former dean of Baghdad University Medical School who now works with the Iraqi National Accord, an opposition group backed by the United States and Saudi Arabia with offices in Amman.

Like any gambler, Saddam faced the risk of a U.S. military strike or a suspension of the recent agreement between Baghdad and the United Nations to allow limited Iraqi oil sales in exchange for food and medicine. U.N. Secretary-General Boutros-Boutros Ghali has ordered a delay in the sales, which were to have resumed this month, citing lack of security for U.N. officials who would monitor them.

But some of Washington’s Arab allies show little enthusiam for a tough response while defending Baghdad’s right to assert its sovereignty over northern Iraq. Jordan’s information minister, Marwan Moasher, denied reports Sunday that Jordan has agreed to accept a U.S. expeditionary force of 34 strike aircraft. “We are not involved and we will not be involved in any effort involving a military operation,” he said.

Meanwhile, Egypt’s leading semi-official daily Al Ahram asserted that Saddam’s invasion is “logical” given the need for Iraq to maintain its territorial integrity. “Stability in northern Iraq requires all countries to avoid intervention there,” the newspaper said.

Among Baghdad’s explanations for its attack on Irbil by up to 30,000 Republican Guards is the alliance between neighboring Iran and the KDP’s leading rival in Kurdistan, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). According to the Iraqi National Accord, Iran has supplied the PUK with arms and seeded much of northern Iraq with Iranian intelligence officers. There also have been reports - denied by Tehran - of Iranian Revolutionary Guards fighting alongside PUK militiamen in recent weeks.

The U.S.-led coalition created the so-called “no-fly” zone above the 36th parallel in northern Iraq after Saddam’s forces crushed a Kurdish uprising of 1991 and sent more than 1 million Kurds fleeing toward Turkey.

Saddam apparently has been laying the groundwork for intervention in the north since warfare erupted between the two Kurdish factions in 1994. Baghdad gradually has improved its ties with the KDP, restoring electricity to some KDPcontrolled areas and providing Barzani’s forces with between 50 and 60 tanks, according to the Accord’s Muallah.

Although some analysts predict that Saddam might try to press his advantage by turning his guns on other PUK strongholds, few expect him to try to reassert control over more than a fraction of the mountainous region. But even the limited action of this weekend is likely to pay dividends that could outweigh any U.S. retaliation, they say.

“In the short term, he (can say to) the Iraqis, ‘I went into Irbil and the United States wasn’t able to interfere.’ This is for internal (consumption), to show the Iraqi people that he is still strong,” Muallah said.

That is no small consideration given persistent reports of coup plots against the Iraqi leader.

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