Posted on 08/20/2002 by Juan Cole
Iraqi Terrorism and War with Iraq?
There is a double standard in Western approaches to Middle Eastern movements. On the whole and by and large, few sane observers suspected the United States government of supporting Communist movements for Machiavellian purposes during the Cold War. I am not speaking of WW II, when the US saw the major threat to be from fascism. I am talking about 1946 forward, when Communism was the main opponent. Anyone who suggested that the US helped the communists in Greece or tried to put Allende in power in Chile would be dismissed as a conspiracy theorist. This is because Western political actors are assumed to have principles and to adhere to them by and large under ordinary circumstances.
Iranian Shi`ites feel about hyper-Sunni movements like Wahhabism exactly as the Cold War US felt about Communism. No Shi`ite looks upon Saudi Wahhabis as allies in any way shape or form. Saudi Arabia funded Iraq’s war on Iran precisely because it was so afraid of Shi`ite republicanism spreading its influence. And Shi`ite Iran never gave any support to al-Qaida in Afghanistan, despite what authors such as Bodansky have alleged. Shadowy allegations to the contrary play on an Orientalist trope of the unreliable and unprincipled Easterner, a la Forster’s *Passage to India.*
I agree that the question of Iraqi support for terrorism is insufficient as a casus belli or cause for going to war. There is not good evidence for any significant Iraqi terrorist operation outside Iraq. Some operations that have been alleged, such as the supposed 1992 attempt to assassinate Bush senior in Kuwait, have been sharply questioned by investigative journalists like Seymour Hersh. Baathist stirring the pot in Kurdistan by giving some money to the ultra-fundamentalist Ansar al-Islam is not international terrorism; it is a brutal form of domestic politics. It can be dealt with by acting against Ansar al-Islam in liberated Kurdistan.
None of us likes the idea of Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction. However, the tradition of the United States is that we go to war only if attacked. I am very nervous about a first strike doctrine, which sounds to me more Prussian than American. A first strike doctrine might well cause wars, by making enemies trigger happy. If China knows we have a first strike doctrine, what will happen the next time there is a serious tiff over Taiwan? Might they not lash out with nuclear weapons because they fear we will do so first?
Moreover, it is not in fact clear that Iraq does have weapons of mass destruction that it can deliver to the United States, or that it would if it could. Several US enemies have had far more deadly arsenals than Iraq will ever have, and yet these were never used because regimes dislike being obliterated.
As we saw last fall, anthrax and most other biological weapons are not easy to deliver, and nor are chemical weapons. Cities are thermal pumps that throw microbes into the upper atmosphere. Aum Shinrikyo only killed 12 with its sarin attack in Tokyo, but had dreamed of killing thousands. Strains can be traced (the anthrax was the Ames strain and most likely came from Ft. Detrick), and so for Iraq to release them would invite a nuclear attack on Iraq. Moreover, in today’s globalized world, any significant disease outbreak would go back to Iraq. So far, the biological weapons programs of the U.S. military in Maryland have probably contributed (unwillingly, of course, via a rogue biologist) to more American deaths than any foreign power. Perhaps we should begin by closing down Ft. Detrick before addressing hypothetical threats from Baghdad.
Iraq does not have nuclear weapons, nor does it have any means of delivering a nuclear bomb to the US, lacking ICBMs, nor is there any reason to believe that it would do so if it could, since that would invite the nuclear obliteration of Iraq by the US.
Most arguments for a US first strike on Iraq assume that Saddam would behave like al-Qaida if given the opportunity. He would not. Al-Qaida as a covert organization could strike the US and hope to survive. A state like Iraq could not do so, and Saddam certainly wants to survive and enjoy his tinpot dictatorship.
Moreover, lots of countries are bigger potential threats to the US than Iraq at the moment, China most of all. But how can we be sure that if we increase the strength of our alliance with Pakistan we might not face a threat from New Delhi, which has more proven weapons of mass destruction than does Iraq? Do the Washington hawks propose a series of wars against all the other countries in the world with WMD capabilities? If not, then why single out Iraq, which is weaker and less likely to attack the US than the others? Former weapons inspector Scott Ritter thinks the Iraqi capabilities virtually nil.
These considerations do not even begin to take into account the possibility that a US war on Iraq will throw the Middle East into even greater turmoil, detract from our ability to wage the war on al-Qaida, actually give a recruitment boost to al-Qaida and cause new massive terrorism against the US, etc., etc.
I’d like to see Saddam removed from power and the installation of a democratic Iraq. I’d rather see the Iraqis arrange for that than for it to result from an unprovoked neo-imperial war not sanctioned by the UN Security Council or by NATO.
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Posted on 08/19/2002 by Juan Cole
The Guardian Blows the Whistle on the Ersatz Middle East Experts
http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,777100,00.html:
US thinktanks give lessons in foreign policy
Brian Whitaker reports on the network of research institutes whose views and TV appearances are supplanting all other experts on Middle Eastern issues
See also:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020902&s=vest
The Nation, September 2
The Men From JINSA and CSP
by Jason Vest
lmost thirty years ago, a prominent group of neoconservative hawks found an effective vehicle for advocating their views via the Committee on the Present Danger, a group that fervently believed the United States was a hair away from being militarily surpassed by the Soviet Union, and whose raison d’être was strident advocacy of bigger military budgets, near-fanatical opposition to any form of arms control and zealous championing of a Likudnik Israel. Considered a marginal group in its nascent days during the Carter Administration, with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 CPD went from the margins to the center of power.
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Posted on 08/14/2002 by Juan Cole
No Iraq link to al-Qaida
Thanks to M.S. for his further comments.
There is also, however, no credible evidence of *indirect* Iraqi, Baathist
support for al-Qaida. The US has an enormous number of documents bearing
on funding for al-Qaida, gathered from Afghanistan and elsewhere, and no
money comes from Iraq. No training of al-Qaida fighters in Iraq. No
al-Qaida informant or defector has mentioned Iraq. That Baathist Iraq’s
ideology is secular and nationalist and virulently anti-Islamist would not
absolutely prevent some sort of shadowy cooperation with theocratic
al-Qaida, I suppose. Such cooperation is, however, unlikely and
counter-intuitive and therefore would have to be demonstrated. It has not
been demonstrated. Since the war advocates in Washington–with their
enormous resources and access to classified intelligence–have been trying
hard to make the argument for 11 months, I presume this means it cannot be
demonstrated.
There is no evidence of Saddam Hussein being willing to talk to al-Qaida,
and some to suggest that he repeatedly refused to do so.
If the US government wants to invade Iraq, I presume it can do so. There
may be reasons for doing this, though I am unable to comprehend them,
myself (as is, apparently, the international community). However, an
al-Qaida-Iraq link is not such a reason because none exists.
Many implausible things are alleged by supposed experts that fall apart if
one begins examining the available evidence. There is no evidence that
Shiite Iran was behind Wahhabi Bin Laden, as Josef Bodansky asserted, and
this idea is frankly preposterous. Yet Bodansky is a security analyst for
the U.S. Congress and gets lots of television time. In fact, Iran nearly
went to war against the Taliban regime because of its Sunni bigotry and
mistreatment of the Hazara Shiites in Afghanistan, and al-Qaida-related
groups have conducted a campaign of assassinating Shiites in Pakistan,
including Iranian attaches in Karachi. Iran recently handed 16 al-Qaida
detainees over to Saudi Arabia.
I am simply pleading for an end to argumentation from innuendo, unsupported
allegations, and vague guilt by association on this important topic. We
are historians interested in diplomatic history, which has always been
driven by solid documentation. It is not too much to ask for such
documentation when an Iraq link with al-Qaida is implied by someone.
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Posted on 08/12/2002 by Juan Cole
Iran has turned over 16 al-Qaida terrorists to Saudi Arabia, according to Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister. These were Saudi nationals who had escaped from Afghanistan to Iran. This report challenges earlier charges by Pentagon officials that Iran was deliberately giving safe haven to and harboring al-Qaida remnants. This allegation never made much sense, since strongly Shi`ite Iran deeply dislikes the hyper-Sunni al-Qaida and Taliban, and almost went to war against the latter itself.
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Posted on 08/09/2002 by Juan Cole
al-Qaida acted alone
For anyone interested in the documents on Usama Bin Laden, a very useful web site is:
http://www.robert-fisk.com/understanding_enemy.htm
The September 11 operation was neither complex nor expensive, and well within al-Qaida resources. Almost all the money has been traced by the FBI, which came via either al-Hasawi in the UAE or other cell members in Hamburg to US based accounts. The hijackers kept these accounts in their own names, with no attempt at camouflage, so confident were they. The whole operation appears to have cost on the order of $500,000. Al-Qaida paid salaries like a cheapskate, often only $15,000 to $20,000 a year, and some defectors left precisely because they felt as though they were badly used. It could act this way because most of its cadres were so committed and had other sources of income. Atta even sent back $15,000 that hadn’t been spent to al-Hasawi so it could be used to fund other plots.
The operation simply involved training a small group of pilots to use computerized jet liner guidance systems, which is not an impossible task. These were kept as sleepers in the US. At the last moment “newskins” were brought in, largely Saudis personally loyal to Bin Laden who had been trained as muscle in Afghanistan. Bin Laden seems to say that the muscle was only told they were on a suicide mission at the last moment. The combination of sleepers and newskins in a covert operation is apparently something al-Qaida learned from the CIA back in the 1980s when the two were cooperating.
Al-Gamaa al-Islamiyyah leader Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman has admitted that back in the early 1990s he and his circle of radical fundamentalists were trying to think of some way to get explosives on a plane and then to ram it into a major building. When Muhammad Atta and Ziad Jarrah were recruited in Hamburg, al-Qaida (which had picked up the remnants of the Gamaa and al-Jihad al-Islami, which had been forced to flee Egypt) got highly trained engineers who knew that jet liners are themselves bombs when they first take off, because they are heavy with jet fuel. Atta was a key planner in the attack, and Bin Laden and he and others in Afghanistan had a discussion as to whether the planes could destroy the WTC Towers. Everyone but Bin Laden was convinced that they would hold but suffer substantial damage. Bin Laden, himself an engineer, says he believed that at least the floors above the planes’ impact would collapse. The operation exploited a simple security hole in US thinking, which was the premise that hijackers would not kill themselves in a concerted manner.
There is no evidence of direct funding for the September 11 operation by any organization or state other than al-Qaida. The money trail all goes back to known al-Qaida operatives. Although the Pakistan Inter Services Intelligence certainly gave substantial support in money and arms to the Taliban, whether they helped fund al-Qaida is unknown and perhaps unknowable. In any case ISI was forced to cut off its clients in Afghanistan and turn against them in the aftermath of Sept. 11, or risk becoming a target of the US itself.
The Saudi intelligence chief appears to have met with Bin Laden once or twice, but this was to put pressure on him to stop his operations. Bin Laden wished to overthrow the Saudi government. The mantra one keeps hearing that the majority of the hijackers was Saudi is misleading if it is used to imply that there is any general support in the Saudi government or in the mainstream of Saudi society for terrorism against the US. Al-Qaida is a tiny fringe wherever it exists, rather analogous to the Weathermen in the US in the 60s.
There is likewise no evidence of Iraqi involvement. The Baath Party is militantly secular and has killed thousands of Iraqi Islamists of the sort who might lean toward al-Qaida. Al-Qaida wishes to see states like that of Saddam Hussein overthrown.
Some sources in Czech intelligence believe that Muhammad Atta met with the Iraqi intelligence station chief, al-Ani, in Prague in spring of 2001. This meeting is disputed and unclear, and the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies deny the meeting. There is some evidence that Atta was known to be in Florida when the Czechs allege that it took place.
I do not believe such a meeting is relevant either way. The Iraqis are unlikely to have been willing to deal with al-Qaida, and even if al-Ani met Atta, Atta may have misrepresented himself as sympathetic to the Baathists. Atta had shaved his beard and al-Qaida had absorbed from its earlier CIA partnerships the idea of “false flag tradecraft.” That is a fancy way of saying you misrepresent yourself to a potential agent so as to get him to work against the interests of his own government without knowing it. If Atta and al-Ani met, it would have been to discuss a terrorist action against the headquarters of Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty, which broadcasts into the Middle East (including Iraq and Afghanistan), and is a pain in the neck to both the Baathists and al-Qaida. Al-Qaida was very good at leveraging resources, and getting Iraq to help it do something that was foolish and for which Iraq would take the fall would have been delicious to them.
Allegations of Iraqi involvement in al-Qaida are completely unsubstantiated and one should be very suspicious of them because the war party in Washington is attempting to trump up a casus belli so as to drag us into a war. Former CIA director Jim Woolsey and others have essentially lied repeatedly on national television, or employed innuendo and spin, to give this impression. An added benefit for the war party is that the Congress has already authorized military reaction to 9/11, so if one could hang it on the Iraqis one would not need to go back to Congress. I write Iraqi history and I see *no* credible evidence of Iraqi involvement in September 11, and there are many reasons to think it implausible.
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Posted on 08/08/2002 by Juan Cole
US Isolation on Iraq
There were several international and national developments with regard to the coming US attack on Iraq on Wednesday.
On Wednesday, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder warned in Bild that “any military attack on Iraq could destroy the international coalition against terrorism.” He said, “This fight (against terrorism) is not yet won and that is why I am warning against an attack on Iraq,” adding “It will not be well understood as a means of defence and could destroy the international alliance against terrorism.” Bild likewise reported that the Christian Democrat candidate in the upcoming elections, Edmund Stoiber, *also* said, “New commitments abroad by the Bundeswehr [German military] are not on the agenda.”
AFP reported that the European Union diplomats insisted that all diplomatic means to resolving the conflict with Iraq be exhausted before a military solution was adopted.
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov called a military strike on Iraq “unacceptable.”
Also on Wednesday, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud said “publicly and privately” that “the U.S. military will not be allowed to use the kingdom’s soil in any way for an attack on Iraq.” (AP). He added, “We have told them we don’t (want) them to use Saudi grounds” for any attack on Iraq, he said. [This wording leaves in question whether the US will be permitted to use Saudi airspace, which from a military point of view is highly desirable and perhaps necessary to the whole operation.]
Prince Saud also complained about the briefing given to a Pentagon advisory board on Monday by a Rand analyst, Laurent Murawiec, who had called for all relations with the Saudis to be cut off and alleged that “The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader,” and that it “attacks our allies and supports our enemies.” This presentation was apparently arranged for the board by Richard Perle of the American Enterprise Institute (who serves on it), as part of an ongoing neoconservative attempt to drive a wedge between the US and Saudi Arabia. This effort is being pursued in a concerted manner by AEI, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and the Hudson Institute–all supported by anonymous wealthy donors and all with a policy tilt toward the Likud Party. Apparently the effort is mounted both because Saudi Arabia is an obstacle in the planned attack on Iraq, which is being pushed by the same think tanks, and because of Saudia’s role in the Mideast conflict.
Canadian Foreign Minister Bill Graham criticized Washington for rejecting out of hand an Iraqi offer to resume weapons inspections. He insisted that any US action against Iraq must be authorized by the UN Security Council (a stance also taken by Kuwait’s foreign minister). Canada, he said, would decline to join in any military action without UN sanction.
The Iraqi Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan) announced during a visit to Ankara that he would not blindly commit to a U.S. action against Baghdad. He seemed especially worried that the US intends to replace Saddam with just another dictator, and said this would be unacceptable. (Christopher Hitchens in this week’s Nation also raises the possibility that the Bush administration really seeks a more malleable replacement for Saddam rather than a truly democratic regime).
On the other hand, the Tehran-based chairman of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, SCIRI , Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, has come under severe pressure from conservatives in Iran because of his decision to continue contacts with the Bush administration (this from a special to Asharq al-Awsat). The Shi`ites are the cooperative ones here, folks.
A busy day. Even the days just previous had some significant developments.
On Tuesday the spokesman for China’ foreign ministry welcomed Saddam’s hedged offer to allow UN weapons inspectors back in. China has repeatedly criticized any notion of Washington expanding the war on terror to Iraq, with which China has good relations. A diplomatic emissary from Baghdad will visit Beijing and Moscow later in August.
In Amman, Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri met withTurkish Foreign Minister Sukru Sina Gurel to discuss the possible US attack on Iraq. Gurel urged Iraq to resume weapons inspections as soon as possible.
On Monday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair came under pressure to recall Parliament (in recess until Oct. 15) to debate a military move against Iraq. A recent poll showed that a little over half of UK citizens opposed a war with Iraq. A British Foreign Office minister said on Wednesday that war was “imminent” but not “inevitable.”
It seems obvious that the Bush administration remains internationally isolated on the issue of a war against Iraq. I suspect the war party in Washington underestimates how important a UN Security Council resolution would be to legitimizing such an effort. At the moment, I count France, China and Russia as “no” votes on the Council, and of course it only needs one really stubborn member willing to use a veto to torpedo any resolution.
In the meantime, I continue to be amazed at the blatant unprofessionalism of most cable television news interviewers and the breathtaking dishonesty of their guests. Repeated unsubstantiated allegations are made hourly with regard both to Iraq’s supposed links to al-Qaida and with regard to the Saudi government being full of terrorists. Bill O’Reilly launched into a frankly racist tirade against a poor German correspondent over Schroeder’s statement. Probably only a couple of million Americans watch such programs, but these techniques and statements are mirrored on conservative radio talk shows, which have much larger audiences. The sad state of US mass media news may well help pitch us into perpetual war because it is not doing its job of reporting critically on the facts and keeping interviewees honest.
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Posted on 08/07/2002 by Juan Cole
Realism vs. Humanitarianism in Afghanistan and Iraq
One element of this debate, it seems to me is not in actual doubt. That is the very early and correct Bush administration identification of al-Qaida as the source of the attack. Moreover, this assessment was based on intelligence to which any president would have had access.
The Bush White House team, including the National Security Staff, identified al-Qaida as the source of the September 11 attacks right from the morning of September 11. Just by the way, I identified al-Qaida as the source on Detroit’s Channel 7 that evening. It was obvious to anyone who had been following al-Gamaa al-Islamiyya, al-Jihad al-Islami, and al-Qaida. Ramzi Yousef, who was the mastermind of the 1993 WTC bombing, drew up plans in the Philippines for flying a jet liner into the CIA headquarters when he was in Manila in the mid-1990s, which were captured by Philippine intelligence when he had a fire in his kitchen and had to leave abruptly. The MO was typical of al-Qaida thinking.
The money trail goes back to the UAE (via Mustafa al-Hasawi, an old Bin Laden associate from Sudan days) and thence to Pakistan. Atta and others went to Afghanistan for training. Al-Qaida informants report seeing some of the hijackers in al-Qaida camps. Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid al-Mihdar met with the al-Qaida station chief in Malaysia before going on to San Diego. (There is even a videotape of this).
And, Bin Ladin has been caught on tape talking about the planning of the operation! Ahmed Ressam (now in federal penitentiary), Djemal Baghal of Algeria (now in prison in France) and Ra’id Hijazi (now in prison in Jordan) have given extensive information on al-Qaida activities that has been proven accurate, and they knew, as well, that September 11 was theirs.
Even just from open sources an airtight case can be constructed (and was constructed last September), and there is much that hasn’t been released to the public.
Al-Qaida had 40 training camps in Afghanistan that had graduated thousands of jihadis in bomb-making and other deadly skills, and sent them back to home countries or Europe to form operational cells. That structure had to be destroyed, obviously, and the Taliban government was in the way of doing so, and so made itself a target. I don’t see how any of this changes with a change of party in the White House.
Pentagon insiders say they have seen contingency plans for an invasion of Afghanistan from 2000 that track fairly well with what actually happened. That is, the military planners of the late Clinton administration were already considering support for the Northern Alliance against the Taliban. This is further evidence for the cross-administration nature of such planning and thinking in the military.
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