Scott Ritter: Saddam's People Are Winning the War

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From: "Robert J. Berger" <rberger () ibd com>
To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>, Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 18:10:51 -0700
Subj: Scott Ritter: Saddam's People Are Winning the War

Saddam's People Are Winning the War
By Scott Ritter 
International Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/articles/530608.html
     Thursday 22 July 2004
 Misunderstanding Iraq

    Washington - The battle for Iraq's sovereign future is a battle for the
hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. As things stand, it appears that
victory will go to the side most in tune with the reality of the Iraqi
society of today: the leaders of the anti-U.S. resistance.

     Iyad Allawi's government was recently installed by the U.S.-led
Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to counter a Baathist nationalism that
ceased to exist nearly a decade ago.

     In the aftermath of the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein's regime shifted
toward an amalgam of Islamic fundamentalism, tribalism and nationalism that
more accurately reflected the political reality of Iraq.

     Thanks to his meticulous planning and foresight, Saddam's lieutenants
are now running the Iraqi resistance, including the Islamist groups.

     In August 1995, Saddam's son-in-law, Hussein Kamal, defected to Jordan.
Fourteen months into the U.S. occupation of Iraq, Kamal's testimony that
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed in the summer of 1991
has taken on new relevance, given the fact that to date no WMD have been
found.

     More important is Kamal's self-described reason for defecting: Saddam's
order that all senior Baath Party officials undergo mandatory Koranic
studies. For Saddam, this radical shift in strategy was necessary to his
survival, given the new realities of post-Gulf War Iraq.

     The traditional Baathist ideology, based on Iraq-centric Arab
nationalism, was no longer the driving force it had been a decade prior.
Creating a new power base required bringing into the fold not only the
Shiite majority - which had revolted against him in the spring of 1991 - but
also accommodating the growing religious fundamentalism of traditional
allies such as key Sunni tribes in western Iraq.

     The most visible symbol of Saddam's decision to embrace Islam was his
order to add the words "God Is Great" to the Iraqi flag.

     The transformation of the political dynamics inside Iraq, however, went
largely unnoticed in the West. It certainly seems to have escaped the
attention of the Bush administration. And the recent "transfer of
sovereignty" to Allawi's government reflects this lack of understanding.

     One of the first directives issued by Paul Bremer, the former head of
the CPA, was to pass a "de-Baathification" law, effectively blacklisting all
former members of that party from meaningful involvement in the day-to-day
affairs of post-Saddam Iraq. The law underscored the mindset of those in
charge of Iraq: Baathist holdouts loyal to Saddam were the primary threat to
the U.S.-led occupation.

     Senior Bush administration officials recognized their mistake - though
a little too late. In April, 2004, Bremer rescinded his "de-Baathification"
order. The Pentagon today speaks of a "marriage of convenience" between
Islamic fundamentalists and former members of Saddam's Baathist regime, even
speculating that the Islamists are taking over Baathist cells weakened by
American anti-insurgency efforts.

     Once again, the Pentagon has it wrong. U.S. policy in Iraq is still
unable or unwilling to face the reality of the enemy on the ground.

     The Iraqi resistance is no emerging "marriage of convenience," but
rather a product of years of planning. Rather than being absorbed by a
larger Islamist movement, Saddam's former lieutenants are calling the shots
in Iraq, having co-opted the Islamic fundamentalists years ago, with or
without their knowledge.

     One look at the list of the 55 "most wanted" members of the Saddam
regime who remain at large reveals the probable chain of command of the
Iraqi resistance today. It also underscores the success of Saddam's
strategic decision nearly a decade ago to disassociate himself from Baathist
ideology.

     Keep in mind that there was never a formal surrender ceremony after the
U.S. took control of Baghdad. The security services of Saddam's Iraq were
never disbanded; they simply melted away into the population, to be called
back into service when and where they were needed.

     The so-called Islamic resistance is led by none other than former Vice
President Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, an ardent Iraqi nationalist, a Sunni Arab
and a practicing member of the Sufi brotherhood, a society of Islamic
mystics. His deputy is Rafi Tilfah, who headed the Directorate of General
Security (DGS), an organization that had thoroughly penetrated Iraqi society
with collaborators and informants during Saddam's regime.

     As a former UN weapons inspector, I have personally inspected the
headquarters of the DGS in Baghdad, as well as the regional DGS headquarters
in Tikrit. The rooms were full of files concerning those who were working
with or on behalf of the DGS. There is not a person, family, tribe or
Islamic movement in Iraq that the DGS does not know intimately - information
that is an invaluable asset when coordinating and facilitating a
popular-based resistance movement.

     I also interacted with the former director of the Special Security
Organization, Hani al-Tilfah, on numerous occasions during 1997-98, when he
was put in charge of riding roughshod over my inspections. Today he helps
coordinate the operations of the Iraqi resistance using the very same
officers.

     Tahir Habbush headed the Iraqi Intelligence Service that perfected the
art of improvising explosive devices and using them to carry out
assassinations. In the months prior to the U.S.-led invasion, he was ordered
to blend his agents back into the Iraqi population so as to avoid detection
by any occupying force.

     The recent anti-American attacks in Fallujah and Ramadi were carried
out by well-disciplined men fighting in cohesive units, most likely drawn
from the ranks of Saddam's Republican Guard.

     The level of sophistication should not have come as a surprise to
anyone familiar with the role of the former chief of the Republican Guard,
Sayf al-Rawi, in secretly demobilizing select Guard units for this very
purpose prior to the U.S. invasion.

     The transfer of sovereignty to the new Iraqi government of Iyad Allawi
is a charade that will play itself out over the next weeks and months, and
with tragic consequences. Allawi's government, hand-picked by the United
States from the ranks of anti-Saddam expatriates, lacks not only a
constituency inside Iraq but also legitimacy in the eyes of many ordinary
Iraqi citizens.

     The truth is that there never was a significant people-based opposition
movement inside Iraq for the Bush administration to call on to form a
government to replace Saddam. It is why the United States has instead been
forced to rely on the services of individuals tainted by their association
with foreign intelligence services, or drawn from opposition parties heavily
infiltrated by agents of Saddam's former security services.

     Regardless of the number of troops the United States puts on the ground
or how long they stay there, Allawi's government is doomed to fail. The more
it fails, the more it will have to rely on the United States to prop it up.
The more the United States props up Allawi, the more discredited he will
become in the eyes of the Iraqi people - all of which creates yet more
opportunities for the Iraqi resistance to exploit.

     We will suffer a decade-long nightmare that will lead to the deaths of
thousands more Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis. We will witness
the creation of a viable and dangerous anti-American movement in Iraq that
will one day watch as American troops unilaterally withdraw from Iraq every
bit as ignominiously as Israel did from Lebanon.

     The calculus is quite simple: the sooner we bring our forces home, the
weaker this movement will be. And, of course, the obverse is true: the
longer we stay, the stronger and more enduring this byproduct of Bush's
elective war on Iraq will be.

     There is no elegant solution to our Iraqi debacle. It is no longer a
question of winning but rather of mitigating defeat.

     Scott Ritter, a UN weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, is the
author of "Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the
Bushwhacking of America"
--
Robert J. Berger - Internet Bandwidth Development, LLC.
Voice: 408-882-4755 eFax: +1-408-490-2868
http://www.ibd.com




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