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THE
ROVING EYE
What is
the US really up against?
By
Pepe Escobar
CAIRO - Whatever the spin, whatever
the rhetoric about "liberation", whatever the wishful
thinking of a Japan rising in the Middle East, whatever
the battle plan one subscribes to, this will be a war
essentially against the Iraqi people. It won't be a war
in the first place. It will be a one-sided massacre.
Iraq has no air force. Iraq has no navy. Iraq has no
satellite network to coordinate military action. But
Iraqi Trade Minister Mohammed Mahdi Saleh is the latest
in a flurry of regime officials to swear that the
country is preparing as if war could happen tomorrow.
Let's try to find out how.
In Iraq, the Ba'ath
Party controls the army and the clans control the
Ba'ath. Iraqi historian and sociologist Faleh Jaber, a
researcher at the University of London, notes that in
the 1960s the Iraqi armed forces consisted of a regular
army plus the Republican Guard. When the Ba'ath Party
regained power in 1968, it upgraded the Republican
Guard: the army still had the responsibility to defend
the country, but the guard's responsibility became to
defend the regime. When Saddam Hussein took power in
1979, there was not a single army official in the
Revolutionary Command Council. Another Iraqi historian,
Majid Khuduri, says that Ba'ath was the first regime to
subordinate the army to civil authority.
The
young Saddam Hussein, heavily influenced by his maternal
uncle, was a big fan of Adolf Hitler's system. Then he
became a huge fan of Josef Stalin. Jaber says that
Saddam's system follows these influences, but with
original features: "Like the German model, the Ba'ath
system in Iraq has four supporting bases: a totalitarian
ideology, a single party, control of the economy
[so-called socialist], and control of the media and the
army." Ilios Yannakakis, a Greek historian based in
Paris and a Middle East specialist, arguably has the
best definition of the Ba'ath Party: "The social and
socialist branch of fascism."
Unlike the Nazi
model, the Ba'ath model is all about tribes and clans
supporting the state. Since the early years it has been
a sort of state tribalism, limited to the ruling elite's
tribe, the Albu Nasir. The core of this tribe is the
very important al-Beijat clan. The fact that Iraq
literally floats over a sea of oil enabled the Ba'ath
Party initially to invest heavily in public services and
many forms of social protection. Jamal Salman, professor
of economics at the University of Baghdad, confirmed to
this correspondent last year that the Iraqi middle class
became prosperous in the 1970s not because of
Western-style capitalism, but thanks to state contracts
and jobs. In the 1970s, tribal groups ruled: what Jaber
calls "class-clan" controls of the party, the army, the
bureaucracy and business. Ba'ath operates a complex
balancing act as it applies its recipe of merging army
control with tribal solidarity. It describes itself as
an Arab socialist party - and that is something
certainly at odds with tribal solidarity.
Many
surviving victims of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war also
confirmed to this correspondent how the social fabric of
the country was destroyed because of that disastrous
conflict. The state lost control over many important
tribes. Iraq was left with a US$50 billion debt. At the
end of the 1980s, Iraq had a million-strong army. For
the war generation, it was impossible to go back to the
good life of the 1970s. Jaber is clear: the invasion of
Kuwait on August 2, 1990, happened as an attempt to
re-establish internal stability. But Iraq has been mired
in a logic of war for too long.
The defeat in
the Gulf War - which is still known inside Iraq as the
"Mother of all Battles" - caused a profound structural
adjustment. The state was terribly weakened - as well as
the security services. The army was reduced to a third
of its original size. There were rebellions in Kurdistan
and in the Shi'ite south. The United States - illegally,
without United Nations approval - imposed no-fly zones.
Professor Salman in Baghdad stresses some of the
terrible consequences of two totally useless wars: the
Iraqi economy, based on oil wealth, collapsed; market
forces began to emerge; and the middle class - a very
important base for the Ba'ath Party - was smashed by
hyperinflation.
Jaber says that Saddam's regime
managed to survive the 1990s by meticulously applying a
five-point strategy: imposition of order in the main
tribe; reorganization of the army; co-option of tribes
around the country so that they could replace party
organizations; more ammunition to the ideological
arsenal; and new forms of economic control.
State tribalism at the top used to be based on
an alliance of Sunni clans around the very important
al-Beijat clan. The al-Beijat clan has 10 branches. The
center of power was changing among all 10, so seven of
them were thoroughly smashed. The predominant clan
became the Albu-Ghafur, Saddam's sub-clan. The al-Majid
clan was also in the ascendancy in the 1990s. Key
members such as Hussein Kamel and Saddam Kamel - both
married to daughters of Saddam - and Ali Hasan Al-Majid
controlled the arms industry, the Jihaz al-Khas (Special
Services) and the Defense Ministry. At the same time,
Saddam's sons, Udai and Qusai, were also in the
ascendancy. A conflict was inevitable. Hussein and
Saddam Kamel went into exile in Jordan. But then,
foolishly, they returned to Baghdad and Saddam ordered
them to be shot along with their families.
In
the late 1990s, Saddam finally cemented his power based
on his sub-clan, the Albu-Ghafur, and he chose Qusai to
be his successor. A Republican Guard talking to Asia
Times Online last year confirmed that this caused a
tremendous rift between Saddam and his wife. They were
said not to have been sleeping in the same bed, or room
for that matter, for years. Udai, Mama's favorite, was a
playboy. But Qusai was the brainy one. Saddam ordered
Qusai to reorganize the intelligence services and
internal security. He was named supervisor of the "Army
of the Mother of All Battles" - which later became the
Republican Army. Since 2000 he has been interim
president and in 2001 he was given regional control of
the Ba'ath Party.
The two strongmen of the
regime are now Qusai and Kamal Mustapha, a paternal
cousin of Saddam who controls the Republican Guard, the
de facto praetorian guards of the regime. It's all in
the family: Kamal's brother, Jamal, is married to
Saddam's youngest daughter. In fact, Iraq is now run by
a triumvirate: Father (Saddam), Son (Qusai) and Holy
Ghost (Kamal Mustapha).
And it's still all about
state tribalism, plus social tribalism, but now combined
with Iraqi patriotism - thus the frequent references to
the glorious history of Mesopotamia - and of course Arab
patriotism. As can easily be attested in Basra in the
south of the country, Saudi Wahhabism has infiltrated
the country, but it has been tolerated by the security
services because it functions as a counterpower to
militant Shi'ites.
But the ultimate tool of
social control in the regime is in fact a contribution
of the international community: sanctions and the "oil
for food" program, or UN Resolution 986, adopted by Iraq
in May 1996. People receive their meager state rations
through certificates. Suspected dissidents, of course,
never see such certificates. This is what Jaber calls
the "politics of famine". As to the upper middle class,
it continues to support the regime because of market
deregulation. These are the smugglers who can be seen in
Baghdad driving posh German cars with tinted windows,
eating gourmet pizza in flash cafes and throwing parties
in million-dollar houses next to Saddam's main
presidential palace, near Saddam Tower.
So the
regime survives thanks to a mix of tribalism,
nationalism, patriotism and Sunnism. As many as 80
percent of senior army officers are related to Saddam's
Albu-Ghafour sub-clan. So it is a cohesive army, at
least as far as the Republican Guards are concerned.
The Iraqi army today has seen no improvement
since 1990, except for air defense systems - which have
been the targets of relentless strikes by US and British
planes for months now. But the reduced military budget
served a purpose: the regime was able to concentrate on
reinforcing clan alliances. Today the Iraqi armed forces
have four divisions: as many as eight regular regiments
of the Republican Guard; another division from the
Republican Guard; the regular army (four armored, three
mechanized and five infantry regiments); and an array of
tribal militias specialized in smashing civil rebellion.
These militias will be key in the event of urban warfare
once the US bombing starts.
This will be an
extremely political war. Washington's obsession is
regime change. So the main prize is Baghdad. Republican
Guards will not chicken out, and there will be no coup
d'etat: as we have seen, a big, extended family's
survival is at stake. An entire division of the army -
as many as four regiments - would be necessary for a
coup, and with essential input from the president's own
sub-clan. Out of the question. This means full-scale
invasion and occupation of Iraq is inevitable.
The regime fights two huge imponderables. Its
own structure by definition is extremely vulnerable. And
absolutely nobody, inside or outside Iraq, can estimate
how substantial is the gap between the official,
nationalist, patriotic rhetoric and the feelings of the
Iraqi population. There are wild rumors in Baghdad that
Saddam is secretly negotiating oil for his survival. For
many Iraqis, and for quite some time now, Saddam is not
a Saladin fighting against American imperialism: he
remains an American agent. And Americans are widely
perceived not as "liberators" but as an occupation
force. There's intense speculation that the regime will
eventually fall, but what will be the price to pay?
The regime is taking no chances, and it has
adopted a variety of tactics. The Ba'ath propaganda
machine is reinforcing the notion that all members of
the ruling elite face death, so there's only one way
out: to fight for survival no matter what. The
government is also playing the religious card by
persuading Shi'ite spiritual leaders to issue
fatwas against Shi'ite opponents of the regime.
The overall strategy of defense is concentrated
in the cities, especially Baghdad, which could magnify
the political nightmare in terms of Western and Arab
public opinion as there will be high "collateral
damage". And as the Central Command in Qatar will
welcome those who want to follow the war by remote
control, the regime will also play the media, although
there are rumors in the Middle East that the Americans
will bomb any satellite phone signal that is not
registered with them.
Two key bridges over the
Tigris in Baghdad were bombed by the Americans in 1991.
According to the latest echoes from Baghdad, people
suspect all six bridges will be bombed this time, so
everybody will have to use boats or motorboats to get
from one side to the other. The US forces will certainly
divide the city to confine the defense to certain areas.
This means that civilians will also be confined to their
neighborhoods. Local Ba'ath Party members in each
neighborhood are now mostly housed in schools. Their
fundamental mission during the war will be to distribute
stocks of water and alcohol - essential for heating and
cooking. Order will be maintained by a party official in
each and every street (that's how it already works
anyway). People won't be allowed to leave their homes.
This could also mean that many wounded won't be
able to go to hospital, and aid agencies will have a
nightmare trying to distribute food. The regime says
that rations that could last until June have already
been distributed, and Iraqi TV every day alerts that
they should not be resold because everyone will need
them. And residents fear above all the hellish rain of
fire already promised with glee by many a Pentagon
official. Ordinary Iraqis, naturally fatalistic, expect
to be the main targets, as they have been the targets of
sanctions for the past 12 years.
US forces may
not disable Iraq's command and control systems because
the army-as-an-extended-family simply will not be
relying on high tech. There will be suicide martyrs
everywhere, according to the Ba'ath leadership, and
civilians in some neighborhoods seem to be prepared to
defend the city in house-to-house fighting. Indeed,
Kalashnikovs have been distributed to certain sections
of the population. It's unlikely that the Americans will
know how to deal with the extremely complex tribal and
clan structures already pre-positioned for a new
redistribution of land, water, arms and prestige in case
there's a new central power. Anyway, these clans are
heavily armed already, and they will not help the United
States during the war. They have nothing to gain by
betraying Saddam: he can always survive and his revenge
would be devastating. Iraqis, with a keen sense of
history, remind anyone that Saddam has survived endless
assassination attempts, coups, US presidents and a war
against a 33-nation coalition.
Saddam is betting
on a replay of the siege of Stalingrad. His key strategy
is to maintain the control of the population for as long
as possible. He might even be betting on a popular
revolution against the invader.
And Saddam may
escape alive. He has as many as nine doubles. Like Osama
bin Laden, he could vanish into virtual reality - cynics
with a wicked sense of humor even advance that this may
be part of the whole deal.
One thing is certain.
It's absolutely impossible for anyone who hasn't been to
Iraq even to imagine the tremendous frustration, anger,
humiliation and terminal desperation caused by 12 years
of sanctions. When the United States stops bombing, and
if the security apparatus disintegrates, the
decomposition of the regime will be beyond brutal.
Iraqis are convinced chaos is inevitable. Even with the
fall of the regime, there will be violent popular
opposition to an invasion. Few may heed a call to arms
to defend the regime. But many would not hesitate to
force the invader out. Especially because very few in
Iraq seem to be convinced that the US wants to invest in
a Marshall plan and mold the country into a "beacon of
democracy", as well as prosperity, in the Middle East.
The fact is, the whole country could be easily engulfed
in a bloody mix of civil war and liberation struggle
that no Douglas MacArthur and no occupation force will
ever be able to control.
(©2003 Asia Times
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