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THE ROVING EYE
The Saddam
intifada
By Pepe Escobar
The
Iraqi Intifada already has a starting date: July 27. And
guess who's the rebel with a cause in charge? None other
than Saddam Hussein. He seems to be alive, well and in
hiding.
This is the crux of an intelligence
report received by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
and confirmed by a number of sources in the Middle East
to the website Free Arab Voice. According to sensitive,
formerly secret information, Saddam's new
leadership-in-hiding - where the number 2 is former
defense minister Sultan Hashim Ahmad - is getting ready
to launch what had been largely advertised before the
Iraqi invasion, by once deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz
and minister of information Mohammed al-Sahaf, among
others: a guerrilla war supposed to bog down the US in a
replay of Vietnam. For this undertaking, Saddam can
count on an army of 40,000.
Why July 27?
According to the magazine al-Watan al-Arabi, because
this is the anniversary date of the Ba'ath Party coming
to power, and the day that Saddam became president of
Iraq in 1979 - information also confirmed by the
al-Bayan newspaper, published in the United Arab
Emirates.
No one
inside and outside Iraq has produced firm evidence that Saddam
has been killed - be it in the famous
"decapitation strike" in Baghdad that started the war, or
afterwards. As of the end of April, sources were telling
Asia Times Online that he never left Iraq, and might be
around the Tikrit region, or in Taramiyya, 30 kilometers
northeast of Baghdad. There have been a wealth of rumors
regarding his family in the past few weeks, including
one that son Uday was ready to give himself up.
Will it be a guerrilla war, a jihad, or both? No
one knows for sure. But the new information suggests
that Saddam may already posses all the ingredients
necessary for waging a guerrilla war. He may still
exercise some kind of power, and some kind of command
and control over a number of his (disappearing) troops,
and he has managed to access his network of hiding
places in a number of central provinces. He and his new
leadership may have access to weapons, ammunition,
military supplies and foodstuffs, scattered in urban and
also rural bases. And his new Iraqi jihadis may be
totally enmeshed in the local population, acting like
dormant cells, waiting for attack orders while carrying
out reconnaissance missions and bringing intelligence
from the leadership to the base. There's a possibility
that they are being helped by retired Russian guerrilla
experts.
No Ba'ath Party or Iraqi army personnel
are in the new secret, revamped leadership. It seems to
be a very tight group. It includes of course the two
sons, Qusay and Uday. It also includes Abdul Hamud and
the notorious Ali Hasan al-Majid (none other than
"Chemical Ali", who may have succeeded in escaping from
Basra and later disappeared). Other notable members are
longtime Saddam ally Taha Yasin Ramadan, former defense
minister Sultan Hashim Ahmad, and Latif Nasif Jasem.
Vice president Izzat Ibrahim has disappeared, as well as
the commander of the Middle Euphrates, Mazban Khidr
Hadi. The new secret leadership basically draws from
Tikrit, Samarra and Mosul, and still seems to be
Sunni-dominated.
Why July and not now? Saddam's
timing seems to coincide with what many Shi'ite clerics
and leaders have been saying all along: we will give the
Americans something like two months, and then we will
draw our own conclusions. The Shi'ites are already
losing their patience with what is widely considered by
Iraqis as American arrogance, indifference or
foot-dragging.
Take for example Ayatollah
Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim, who returned to the holy city of
Karbala for the first time after 23 years in exile in
Iran. Hakim heads the Supreme Assembly for the Islamic
Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI), a former anti-Saddam
opposition group that is arguably the strongest
political force in post-war Iraq. The SAIRI holds one of
the seven seats on the leadership council which the US
is supposed to work with to set up a post-Saddam
government.
Speaking at the Imam Hussein golden
domed mosque, the holiest shrine of the 12 Shi'ite
imams, Hakim asked, "Why is the running of the country
and the government not transferred to Iraqis? Are they
still minors who cannot govern their country?" Hakim is
in favor of a government "representing all Iraqis" to be
set up as soon as possible. "We reject occupation. We
want and are working for an authority, an administration
and a government which does not play with words." He
blames the Anglo-Americans for the still rampant
lawlessness. In his view, the unfinished war "allows
American and British soldiers to kill Iraqis at any
moment under the pretext that they feel threatened. If
they are not able to bring security, these young men can
do it", he said gesturing to his followers in Karbala.
Saddam will certainly be betting on unrest all
over Iraq concerning the American occupation, but he
will also be betting on new developments in the struggle
between Sunni and Shi'ite forces to get more say on the
new Iraqi government. Saddam's strategy for his
reemergence would be to keep the Americans guessing,
while exploring breaches in their security machine, in
the manner of legendary Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen
Giap, a favorite of Iraqi strategists.
It's
possible that the new secret leadership itself leaked
some crucial data that ultimately led to former Ba'ath
officials being arrested or surrendering to the
Americans. From Saddam's point of view, this
surrendering en masse also keeps the Americans busy and
diverts their attention from planning the immediate
future of Iraq (not that Washington is in a terrible
hurry to get things going).
The intelligence
report received by the CIA describes a secret Monday,
April 7 meeting chaired by Saddam - the day that
American forces penetrated beyond the outskirts of
Baghdad. At this meeting, Saddam apparently confirmed
that he had been betrayed by the leaders of the
Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard.
According to Free Arab Voice, "He spoke of a
high-ranking military personality with deep hatred, and
said that this person had known all the secrets, the
methods of issuing orders, and their secret codes. This
person was the one who led the act of treachery and
issued the orders for the forces to withdraw, as if they
had come from Saddam Hussein personally. It was in this
way that immediate and sudden withdrawals took place
from all positions at one stroke, their weapons being
taken away. The withdrawal covered the Republican Guard,
the Special Forces, and all the regular and semi-regular
forces, leaving no one to defend Baghdad except a few
hundred Arab volunteers who were not included in those
orders and who were not integrated into the leadership's
chain of command."
This matches what Asia Times
Online reported on The Baghdad Deal on
April 25, and
the buying off of Iraqi generals so they would not fight
has also been recently admitted on the record by General
Tommy Franks, who headed the war in Iraq.
And
the news agency Agence France Presse, in a report dated
May 26 from Paris, citing a Le Journal du Dimanche
report, says that Saddam was betrayed by one of his
cousins, General Maher Sufian al-Tikriti, head of the
Republican Guards, who, along with a 20-strong entourage
of other Republican Guards, left Iraq aboard a US
military transport aircraft on April 8, the day before
US forces swept into Baghdad.
Seemingly, the
"master of betrayal" - whether al-Tikriti or not - knew
all of Saddam's secret passwords and thus was able to
issue the fake orders for the troops to abandon what
would have been the Battle of Baghdad. One of the plot
participants may have been the husband of Saddam's
youngest daughter, Halla, Jamal Mustafa al-Umar, who
surrendered to the Americans. Saddam apparently now
hates him with a vengeance.
A handwritten letter
dated April 28 (Saddam's birthday), said to have been
written by the former president, addresses "the Iraqi
people and the sons and daughters of the Arab nation and
the Islamic world community, and to honorable people
everywhere" and in effect calls all Iraqis to engage in
an intifada against the American occupation forces,
saying that it is the foreign occupation and not Sunni
or Shi'ite that is the "only issue that your great Iraq
is living today".
The letter was
authenticated by the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper.
As Saddam is living underground and in secrecy, all he
can do, for obvious security reasons, is send letters.
And to dream of a revolution. Taliban leader Mullah Omar
in Afghanistan promised and delivered: the US is
actually confronted by a guerrilla war in the Afghan
Pashtun belt. What about Saddam of Arabia: is it
delirium or just wishful thinking? The answer on July
27.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd.
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