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The Eurasian Politician - February 2003
Anssi Kullberg, 17th Feb. 2003
A week ago, Secretary of State Colin Powell presented US arguments against Iraq before the UN Security Council. Many were convinced. Many were not at all. But this harsh division of supporting or opposing action against Iraq does not mean so much that people would argue about facts, but about principles of military action in international politics, and about the consequences of such an action. It seems the US and Britain are more tending to emphasize consequences, believing these consequences will be generally positive, while the Continental European skeptics are not so much worried about the consequences of the Iraq War on the field, than about the principles of world politics.
For many Europeans, but also for Russia and China, the US is breaking the holy rules of the sovereignty regime that has prevailed in international politics since Roosevelt's times (but not longer than that). Those Americans and Europeans who favour action against Iraq may ask, if the principles sanctifying even the most tyrannical of states is really something worth of maintaining. After all, the world is full of states that have not obeyed the rules anyway. Some of them sit in the permanent section of the UN Security Council, now hypocritically demanding the US to obey rules that they have not obeyed in Central Asia, the Caucasus, Moldova, or in Africa. Some may even see "the worst scenario" as a positive change in the world regime: the US might be a better world police than the UN.
Indeed, friends of democracy and freedom do not need any more arguments to believe that Saddam Hussein's dictatorship in Iraq is based on cruel tyranny and violence that Saddam has well demonstrated several times in the last decades. Iraq used chemical and biological weapons in its mindless war against Iran – then with the silent support of the US – and after moving to the Soviet camp, it directed these weapons against its own population. Finally the invasion to the neighbour country, Kuwait, started the Gulf War.
Before that, alone in the notorious Anfal operation, Saddam's Iraq massacred thousands of Kurds within half a year, and the genocide against Kurds have been going on sporadically until the Gulf War. The no-fly zone imposed by the alliance in the war gave Iraq's Kurds a de facto independent Kurdistan. The Kurds, however, have always been notoriously divided, and so fighting went on between the two main factions, the KDP and PUK, who both occupied their own territories in Kurdistan. The KDP, led by Masud Barzani, then concentrated in the oil smuggling from Iraq to Turkey and was therefore not very sympathetic to giving up this beneficial exceptional state of affairs, for example, by declaring independent Kurdistan. The PUK, led by Jalal Talabani, was dropped out of the oil revenues, but even the PUK has not been actively advocating an independent Kurdistan, despite of the historical chance. The conclusion can only be that Kurds are still not a nation in the political sense, and therefore still not prepared to run a state on their own. After all, the KDP and PUK are still among the most mature of the Kurdish nationalist powers and thereby differ from the hard-line communist groupings like PKK.
Besides the Kurds, the victims of Saddam's genocidal policies included the Shia population of Southern Iraq. The Shia Muslims constitute majority in Iraq, but they are the traditional low caste and have therefore not been able to offer any better opposition force to Baghdad than the Kurds. The genocide of Iraqi Shias was completed with an ecological catastrophe: by destroying the wetlands of Euphrates and Tigris.
In spite of genocidal aggressions against the Kurds and Shias, the international community remained from any stronger means against Iraq than the economic blockade, which Iraq ridiculed by smuggling through Syria, Jordan, and Turkey, and which countries like Russia, France and several East European countries were ignoring. This non-action against Iraq, and finally opposition against action now, reminds us from the events in another genocidal dictatorship, Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia. Also Milosevic was able to continue his activities by starting four wars and three genocides, while the Clinton administration even supported him as late as in Dayton. And when finally the NATO had to react, first in Bosnia and then in Kosovo, the anti-war protesters were marching all over Europe just like now. It is ironical that the peace for Iraqi dictatorship is being defended by the same people in time when the state called Yugoslavia has finally been buried in history.
Iraq's most important contribution to terrorism is the own state terror machinery of Saddam's regime, constituting of the secret service Mukhabarat, various paramilitaries, and other tools of tyranny that the small Tikrit clan uses to rule the whole kingdom of fear from Baghdad. A couple of years ago Saddam's son gave to his father a birthday present: an own terrorist organization, which was symbolically named after a desired conquest of Jerusalem.
Although the present threat of war against Iraq rests mainly on the weapons of mass destruction and their supposed aggressive purposes of use, part of the arguments for the war have been constituted by the terrorist connections of Saddam Hussein's regime. There should not be anything new about it, although seen from the European anti-war point of view, Powell's arguments are propagandistic and exaggerated. For years already, it has been well and widely known, that the both Arab Socialist Baath dictatorships of the Middle East – Iraq and Syria – have acted as leading supporters of terrorism in the region. Their terrorist traditions can be traced equally to the "far right" Muslim Brothers, and to the "far left" PFLP and Abu Nidal organization.
However, it is a different issue, how extensive connections the Baath regimes have had with the so-called Salafi terrorist organizations, whose networks have recently been bunched under the common title Al-Qaida, after the network's front figure, the Saudi terrorist Usama bin Ladin, made the name known throughout the world with his terrorist strikes against the US in September 2001. Powell in fact mentioned in his speech, that although critics claim that the socialist and secular dictatorship or Iraq has nothing to do with the fundamentalists of Al-Qaida, he does not believe in these claims. Most of the historical evidence of the Al-Qaida's structure seem to support Powell's point of view: Al-Qaida is like an amoeba, a loose network that includes fanatics and terrorists from various Islamic schools that previously could not stand each other.
It seems to me that Al-Qaida was quite recently (in the mid-1990s) born in the post-Cold War situation, where two very different reference groups of terrorist tradition found each other, after becoming ideologically homeless. The financial channels and front figures were contributed by the radical Islamist opposition of conservative Arab countries (most importantly, Saudi Arabia). However, the methods and traditions of action as well as the global anti-American agenda, were inherited from the Marxist extremist organizations of the Middle East that were trained and supported by the Soviet Union since 1970s. Both the elements of the new network of terrorism were heavily Arab-centered. Thus, infiltrating the uneducated and peripheral Afghan rebel regime of the Taliban, practically capturing it and making it into a cover, was actually a very smart camouflage for the Arab network. (Afghans are not Arabs.)
The Swedish researcher of terrorism, Michael Fredholm, has described the Salafi reference group to be more a political view on Islam than a religious school, for which reason the network can cover terrorists from various religious groupings, independently on their dogmas, if only they share the common political hatred against the United States of America. Because of this, Al-Qaida's connections extend not only to very different Islamic terrorist cells that do not necessarily share anything else in common, and do not have contacts with each others, but also to entirely non-Islamic actors through weapons trade and financial activity.
What, on the other hand, should not be automatically connected with Al-Qaida, are those (albeit Islamic) movements, who are directed against some other country than the US or her closest allies. For example, the Chechen and Uighur separatists who fight Russia and China have practically not a single common political goal with Al-Qaida. Their connections with Al-Qaida, if there indeed are any, are probably limited to "business", that is, arms trade, on which branch Al-Qaida's tentacles are claimed to extend as far as to the FARC of Colombia, and to the Real IRA of North Ireland.
Besides the West, also the Muslims of the world should realize that Al-Qaida is not fighting for Islam, like it of course claims, and neither is it helping those Muslim nations who struggle for independence against, let's say, Russia, China, or Serbia. Al-Qaida might try to infiltrate any Muslim resistance movement anywhere in the world, but this is again more camouflage and pure business than a sign of common political goals. It should be openly admitted that Al-Qaida, in its very fundaments, is an exclusively anti-American movement. Being against America has even superceded the original main agendas of the Salafi radical movements: the overthrowing of secular or West-aligned Muslim regimes. (This change can be observed for example with the Egyptian Jihad of Ayman al Zawahiri.)
The Iraqi dictatorship is well experienced and – whether we wanted to admit it or not – it has also proved to be both efficient and lasting in power. It is naïve to expect that it would commit to as naked and apparent stupidity as the Taliban movement of Afghanistan, which was openly and publicly protecting Al-Qaida, and thereby sealing its own fate. After all, the West gave a damn to Afghanistan's suffering under the Taliban until bin Ladin's Arabs (who were never liked my Afghans, not even the Taliban) brought nemesis upon them. It is futile to expect that Saddam would be caught with such a "smoking gun" that would directly link him with Al-Qaida, although he has openly supported the goals of bin Ladin, and rejoiced of the acts of terrorism against the US. There is still enough reason to believe that Iraq's connections with Al-Qaida are not limited with one Abu Musab al Zarqawi in a Baghdad hospital. Al-Qaida was known to be active in Iraq in 2001 under the name Jund al-Islam, which in 2002 became Ansar al-Islam.
The Czech intelligence reported in 2001 that an Iraqi spy called Samir al Ani was meeting the leader of the Sept. 11th suicide pilots, the Egyptian Muhammad Atta, in Prague. After some time, the US denounced the information, as apparently in 2001 there was not yet political will to connect Iraq with Al-Qaida. Even the Czechs started to cancel their announcements. Still, al Ani got expelled from the Czech Republic, accused of espionage. It might be a coincidence that an Iraqi-born resident of Finland called Tariq al Ani was arrested in Finland, suspected of illegal deliveries to Iraq of materials that can be used in weapons production.
Even if there are no direct connections between the Iraqi government and Usama bin Ladin, let alone between Iraq and the September 11th terrorists, that could be proved, it still remains a generally known fact that Iraq has been a sponsor of terrorism for decades.
The biggest risk around the Iraq War might after all be constituted by the political deals that the US and her allies might give in, to please their reluctant "partners". An alarming signal of such a risk was shown by the equation by Powell between Iraq and Georgia, as countries where Al-Qaida was said to be active. Georgia is a predominantly Christian country, and the Pankisi Gorge, inhabited by the Chechen minority of Georgia, the Kists, is so narrow and limited that it is hard to believe that any "Al-Qaida nest" could anyhow reside there – especially as the intelligence services of Georgia as well as both Russia and the US are active in the very same gorge. If there are any probable nests for Al-Qaida in Georgian territory, they could rather be found in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the Russian-held separatist breakaways of Georgia, but it is most unlikely that the US would search for anyone there. According to some, the US would give Russia a "license to kill", besides Chechnya, also in Georgia, as a payment for non-resistance for the Iraq War. This would of course be a major mistake and would seriously endanger the War on Terrorism.
The critics of the war keep on repeating that the US is only after oil in Iraq. Even if this would be the case, the consequences of liberating Iraq and its oil would greatly benefit the economy in the Middle East, Europe and the US. The two main losers would be Russia and Saudi Arabia, who are both dependent on the artificially high price of oil. A drop in the price of oil would make Russia's war in Chechnya (and probably elsewhere) much more difficult. Russia has also been one of the main winners during the blockade of Iraq. Probably Russia, like France, too, is still most eager to get their shares secured if the Iraq War finally breaks out. For such a turn of coat, that would leave the poor Germany alone, they must be prepared already now. So, probably they are now just fishing maximal price out of their "support".
The US has her interests also in the Far East, where China would undoubtedly wish some concessions with Taiwan and Korea – in Sinkiang and Tibet it has already gained all green light it can possibly get. In this situation, North Korea could easily have exploited the situation for the time the Iraq crisis would last.
One of the most interesting issues of the Iraq War's after-play concerns the impact on Iran. Iran, too, was listed by George W. Bush to the "Axis of Evil", and it is well known that Iran has contributed greatly to world-wide terrorism. Yet in many senses Iran is an opposite to Iraq. As an historical empire, Iran as a nation lies on a much more stable platform than the colonial artifact Iraq. Like Iraq's, Iran's present regime is hostile at the US, but unlike Iraq's regime, Iran's is a religious, an Islamist one. While in Iraq there has been a rising Islamist opposition to Saddam, in Iran the anti-regime opposition is largely secular and even directly pro-Western. We should not mistake it for the smiling face of President Mohammed Khatami, who does not represent the opposition but the official reformism, and is thus more like Iran's Gorbachev. Like Gorbachev, Khatami does not want to overthrown the system, but to save it. Like in Gorbachev's Soviet Union, also in Iran the pressure from down to up, and especially from the large young generations that are just becoming politically active, is such that the system is in trouble, and will be increasingly so.
It may well be that Iran is finally becoming truly mature for a major cataclysm. Especially the younger generations but also the influential merchant and soldier circles in Iran have slowly been getting enough of the religious fanaticism and anti-Americanism of the ruling elite. The conservatives still control all the security machinery, and they have been able to arrange disciplinary punishments every half a year, but yet they have not been able to suppress the increasingly insolent and surprisingly brave defiance of their youth. While Saddam has managed to drive his tortured population to seek for help from Quraan, Iran's theocracy has indeed managed to alienate the Iranian population from the Islamist doctrines. It might not be entirely premature to think that Iraq's liberation could serve as a catalyst for a change in Iran, and it is not entirely out of chance that a reformist coup might rise, even from military circles like in Pakistan and in Reza Pahlavi's times.