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Iraq-inspired terror: The odds of
reprisal
By B Raman
The large-scale movement of United
States and British troops towards the Persian Gulf
and the stepped-up American rhetoric against the Saddam
Hussein regime indicate that despite repeated American and
British statements that a war is not yet inevitable, these
two countries may soon find themselves in a situation where
they have to invade and overthrow Saddam Hussein or lose face.
If they decide to attack Iraq, the
ability of the Iraqi army to withstand their onslaught
or to organize a series of suicide attacks
by individual suicide bombers against the allied troops,
as suggested by Hamas, is doubtful. What is most likely to
happen is that after making a pretense of fighting
fiercely against the invaders, Iraqi military formations
will cave in. Even more than in 1991, it would be a
war dominated from the beginning by the US ability
to disrupt and destroy, even before setting foot in
Iraqi territory, the command, control and
communications capability of the Saddam regime, thereby forcing
the individual formations in different parts of the
country to meet the allied onslaught without coordination
and without direction from Baghdad. Saddam's ability
to maintain the morale of his forces would be
seriously damaged from the beginning. The possibility of a
popular uprising against the invading troops, with the
armed people starting a people's war against the allied
forces, does not appear very high.
What could
possibly (the possibility is rated as low or medium, not
high) save Saddam Hussein is a series of spectacular
terrorist strikes by bin Laden's al-Qaeda and other
components of the International Islamic Front (IIF)
against US and other Western nationals and interests in
different parts of the world, to create public pressure
on Washington and London to avoid any misadventure in
Iraq when they are not able to protect their civilian
targets from such terrorist strikes. The possibility of
a conflagration of terrorism should be a matter of
serious concern, but the ground indicators so far do not
speak highly of such a possibility.
Apart from
giving sanctuary in Iraq to some Palestinian terrorist
elements in the past, the Saddam regime restricted its
assistance to terrorist groups, whether Islamic or
ideological, to financial contributions and avoided
giving them sanctuaries, training or arms assistance.
Among terrorists and terrorist organizations thus
financially helped by the Iraqi intelligence in the past
have been Carlos the Jackal and his organization,
al-Zulfiquar of the late Murtaza Bhutto of Pakistan, the
Sunni extremist and anti-Shi'ite Sipah-e-Sahaba of
Pakistan, and the anti-Tehran Mujahideen-e-Khalq.
After the explosion in New York's World Trade Center
in February 1993, there was speculation that Iraqi
intelligence might have played a role in it since it
coincided with the second anniversary of the end of the
Gulf War of 1991 and Ramzi Yousef, one of the principal
accused and who has since been convicted, was,
according to Pakistani sources, a Pakistani of Iraqi
origin. This speculation, however, could not be proved.
After the explosions outside the US embassies in
Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in August 1998, there were
credible reports that an emissary of Saddam had visited
Kandahar and offered sanctuary in Iraq to Osama bin
Laden, if the US pressure on Pakistan and the Taliban
forced him to leave Afghanistan. Bin Laden reportedly
declined the offer.
Even though bin Laden,
al-Qaeda and the IIF have been strongly supportive of
Iraq and its people in their struggle against US
hegemonism, their support for Saddam himself has not
been whole-hearted due to the following reasons:
He is perceived by them as a secular leader who has
violently suppressed fundamentalist influence on his
people.
His unqualified support to India over the years on
the Kashmir issue. Apart from the erstwhile USSR, Iraq
is the only country outside South Asia which had, in the
past, supported India's contention that Jammu and
Kashmir is an integral part of India.
As the US
and the UK step up their campaign against Saddam and
prepare to overthrow him either through covert means or
through direct military intervention, they have been
alleging that he has given shelter to some of the
al-Qaeda dregs who escaped from Afghanistan and Pakistan
after (or just before) the fall of the Taliban. There is
no evidence in support of this.
The overthrow of
Saddam, if it comes about, is likely to lead to an
aggravation of anti-US anger in the Islamic world and to
stepped-up acts of terrorism against Western and Israeli
targets. The tightening of physical security measures
and the strengthening of the intelligence apparatus in
the US, Canada and West Europe may make such strikes in
those countries difficult. But there is a possibility of
more terrorist attacks against Western and Israeli
targets in Asian and African countries, particularly
Southeast and South Asia.
While there could be
large civilian casualties similar to what happened in
Bali, there is unlikely to be an uncontrollable
terrorist wave or conflagration in support of Saddam.
There is a greater danger of such a conflagration should
anything happen to Yasser Arafat as a result of the
Israeli operations against the Palestinian terrorists.
The reaction to the overthrow of Saddam in the Islamic
world is likely to be more political - possible
weakening of pro-US governments and consequent
instability - than terrorist. The Islamic world could
face a situation similar to what it had faced when the
UK and France invaded the Suez Canal zone in the early
1950s.
Simultaneously with the moving of troops
to the Gulf region for a possible invasion of Iraq, the
US and its allies have stepped up their anti-terrorism
measures to prevent the possibility of any major
terrorist strike before, during and after the war in
Iraq. These include:
Intensified searches to
identify and round up possible sleeper agents of
al-Qaeda and the IIF in their territory. It was in the
course of these searches that some residents of Yemeni
origin were arrested near New York and many North
Africans rounded up in France and the UK.
Intensified searches in Pakistan to
locate bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a top IIF
operative, who is a Pakistani supposedly of Iraqi origin
and related to Ramzi Yousef, and other dregs of al-Qaeda
and the IIF.
Intensification of electronic surveillance of Yemen.
Intensification of naval patrolling to
prevent the movement of terrorists by sea.
A
similar intensification of anti-terrorist precautionary
measures is necessary in South and Southeast Asia.
B Raman is Additional Secretary (ret),
Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, and presently
director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai; former
member of the National Security Advisory Board of the
government of India. He was also head of the
counter-terrorism division of the Research &
Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency,
from 1988 to August, 1994.
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