IRAQ: Washington hopes for military coup

October 23, 2002
Issue 

BY NORM DIXON

A series of "leaks" to major US newspapers have shed light on what is emerging as Washington's preferred political scenario in a post-invasion Iraq: before or during the US attack, senior officers of Iraq's armed forces overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the US military takes over Iraq and slowly transfers power to this new military regime which pledges to bring "stability" to Iraq and maintain the oil-rich state's "territorial integrity".

The most widely reported account of this scenario appeared in the October 11 New York Times. "One senior official" told the newspaper that the Bush administration was "coalescing around" the concept of imposing a US-led military government on Iraq after the invasion, probably headed by a US general, "modelled on the post-war occupation of Japan".

Direct rule by Washington would last "a year or more while the United States and its allies searched for weapons and maintained Iraq's oil fields", the NYT reported.

While it was the revelations of Washington's plan for extended direct military rule that subsequently grabbed most headlines, the more sinister aspect of the plan was downplayed — that the US is prepared to eventually hand power to an authoritarian, military-dominated pro-US regime that it hopes will emerge from within the Hussein dictatorship.

The Los Angeles Times had already reported the essentials of the October 11 NYT story on October 2: "The Bush administration has quietly begun planning the transition to a new government in Baghdad, built around a leader emerging from inside Iraq... US planners now oppose either a government-in-exile or a candidate emerging from within the opposition based outside the country to replace Saddam Hussein.

"Instead, they favour allowing events on the ground to play the biggest role in determining the new leadership, with the US-backed opposition largely in a supporting role, the US officials say. 'We know that there's a strong possibility that either an individual or group of leaders inside Iraq could emerge with sizable support and look like the natural leaders', said an administration official."

The October 6 Washington Post was told a similar story: "Senior intelligence experts inside and outside government have reached a consensus that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would likely be ousted in a coup led by members of his inner circle in the final days or hours before US forces launch a major ground attack.

'Successors'

"Faced with an imminent, overwhelming US assault and the choice of either being Hussein's successors or being imprisoned or killed in the fighting, top-ranking officers or a group of military and other senior officials would take the chance to eliminate the Iraqi leader, several senior officials and intelligence experts said in recent interviews."

In recent weeks, US officials have repeatedly made conciliatory noises towards potential defectors among Iraqi military commanders and political figures. The September 30 Washington Post reported that US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld had told the House of Representatives armed services committee that the US "will make it clear at the outset that those [Iraqi military commanders] who are not guilty of atrocities can play a role in the new Iraq".

The October 2 LA Times reported that the White House was debating how deep the purge of Hussein collaborators should go: "'It's like the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. You had to be a member to get a good job or a promotion, even in universities. Does that mean you have to fire all university professors who belonged to the Baath Party? Obviously not', said a well-placed US official. 'That applies to every branch of government, including the military... But you do have to remove key players and symbols of the regime.'"

So how deep will the purge go? Not very far, if an October 6 LA Times report is accurate: "[T]he Bush administration is laying the groundwork for prosecuting ... Hussein and a 'dirty dozen' other officials for genocide... and other crimes against humanity... [The US] is looking at a three-tiered system of tribunals to deal with the thousands of army commanders, ruling Baath party officials, government employees and security and intelligence officials implicated in war crimes...

"The administration now favours a [Rwanda-style] tribunal to try top officials... The next level — potentially dealing with hundreds or even thousands of offences, because the war crimes go back a full generation — would be left to local courts, US officials say... The third and largest group of cases might never go to trial but would instead be worked out through a group similar to the [Truth and Reconciliation Commission] in South Africa that would grant a form of amnesty in exchange for a full accounting of crimes committed."

In an October 5 speech, Zalmay Khalilzad, US President George Bush's special assistant for near east, south-west Asia and North African affairs, said that after the invasion, the US would "downsize" the Iraq armed forces and remove the most senior Baath Party officials from government ministries, however "much of the bureaucracy would carry on under new management".

The October 6 Washington Post also noted: "A coup also would leave many of Iraq's upper- and middle-level bureaucrats in place, limiting the need for major rebuilding of the government, according to the intelligence community's thinking."

On October 16, the NYT quoted John Bolton, a prominent "hawk" and the State Department's undersecretary for arms control and international security, who stated that the construction of a post-Hussein regime might not be "that different from what we did in Afghanistan, where many people who were part of the Taliban administration, but were not really Taliban adherents, were allowed to stay in their positions".

According to the October 10 Washington Post: "Teams at the State Department and the National Security Council are analysing a host of problems, from how to reform the Iraqi military to how to balance prosecution and amnesty for members of Hussein's government."

The State Department and CIA have for several years concentrated on cultivating groups of exiled Iraqi military defectors, who claim to maintain contacts with senior military figures inside Iraq or have support among Iraq's Sunni Arabs, who may be able to ferment a coup against Hussein.

Many are guilty of gross human rights abuses and have participated in massacres of Kurds and other opponents of Baathist rule in Iraq. The most notorious of these is Nizar al Khazraji, chief of staff of Iraq's armed forces between 1980 and 1991. He is now living in exile in Denmark.

Khazraji is under investigation for ordering poison gas attacks against Iraq's Kurdish minority and Iranian soldiers between 1983 and 1988, culminating in the horrific 1988 gassing of 5000 people in the Kurdish town of Halabja. According to a report in the March 11 Boston Globe, Khazraji is most favoured by the CIA and State Department to replace Hussein.

'Anarchy'

"Asked what would happen if American pressure prompted a coup against Mr Hussein, a senior official said, 'That would be nice'", reported the October 11 NYT. "But the official suggested that the American military might enter and secure the country anyway, not only to eliminate weapons of mass destruction but also to ensure against anarchy."

Key to the "stability" envisaged by Washington is to ensure that the millions of Kurds in the north and Iraq's Shiite majority, who are concentrated in the south and in the poorest areas of the capital of Baghdad, do not attempt to take advantage of the "liberation" to be delivered by US bombs and tanks.

This is what Washington means by preventing "anarchy". As the October 6 Washington Post admitted: "Although US officials have talked of instituting a democratic government in Baghdad, many intelligence officials believe that a military-led coup could help keep Iraq together and avoid moves towards separation that could come from its three major ethnic groups."

The US is signalling that it wants a post-Hussein regime dominated by part of the present Iraqi military leadership and much of the existing Iraqi ruling class, drawn from the minority Sunni elite from central Iraq, which have brutally repressed the Kurds and Shiites for decades. Concern has been expressed from many quarters of the US ruling class that tens of thousands of US troops may have to occupy Iraq for as long as 10 years unless a "viable" Iraqi government is installed.

Turkey — a key US ally whose air bases are central to its war plans against Hussein — is fiercely opposed to an independent or genuinely autonomous Kurdish state in northern Iraq because it fears it would incite similar demands from its oppressed Kurdish minority. Syria and Iran also have significant Kurdish oppressed minorities and both governments are similarly opposed to Iraq's Kurds winning their national rights.

The ruling classes in the Arab states — especially Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf sheikdoms, also key players in any US invasion of Iraq — are terrified at the prospect of a Shiite statelet in southern Iraq, or even worse, a democratic Iraq ruled by the country's Shiite majority. They are afraid that a Shiite-ruled Iraq could become an ally of Iran.

With Iran next on Washington's "Axis of Evil" hit list, the US is unlikely to allow Iraq's Shiite majority any genuine measure of democracy that is not held in check by a strong Sunni-dominated Iraqi military.

Confirming that a US occupation would be directed as much at restraining the Kurds' national ambitions as it would be to countering resistance from Hussein's forces, the October 10 NYT reported that in "northern Iraq, military forces would probably protect the oil fields around Kirkuk and Mosul to prevent rival groups from trying to seize them".

This is a response to a draft constitution for a federal Iraq being circulated by the Kurdish Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which claims Kirkuk as the capital of a Kurdish province and calls for the revenues of the oil industry in that part of the Iraq to be controlled by the local government. The Turkish government has threatened to invade northern Iraq if Kirkuk is declared the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.

From Green Left Weekly, October 23, 2002.
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