BAGHDAD - The Iraq issue today may never have
arisen if it were not for the support former US
president Ronald Reagan gave Iraqi president Saddam
Hussein.
Reagan, who died on June 5 in his Los
Angeles home, served two terms as president that
corresponded roughly to the Iran-Iraq War, the longest
conventional war of the 20th century.
Saddam
invaded Iran on September 22, 1980, with the stated goal
of gaining control of the Shatt al-Arab, the river that
has formed a border between Iran and Iraq, and which
would give Iraq better access to the Persian Gulf.
The US government was then interested in
containing Iran, which had just become one of
Washington's major enemies after the Islamic Revolution
lead by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979. US hostages
had been taken, and Reagan had just been elected, partly
on the strength of criticizing president Jimmy Carter's
inability to free them.
"America and Saddam
thought the same way at that time, because America
wanted to destroy the revolution in Iran," retired Iraqi
Brigadier-General Zekki Daoud Jabber told IPS in an
interview in his Baghdad home.
When Reagan was
president, Jabber was in charge of communication and
radar for the Iraqi military. Almost from the beginning
of the conflict, US-manned Awacs aircraft leased to
Saudi Arabia were used to relay intelligence to the
Iraqi military. "It was very important to us," Jabber
told IPS, "because it allowed us to know where Iran's
planes were; where they would strike."
More
significant assistance for Saddam's regime would come
later, but it took Reagan some time to arrange that.
Reagan took the first step in November 1983 when he
removed Iraq from the US government's official list of
"nations that support international terrorism". That
opened the door to full diplomatic and economic
cooperation between Iraq and the United States.
The following month he sent an emissary to
Baghdad bearing a personal letter for Saddam. That
emissary was none other than current Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld. A declassified official note at
the time read: "Saddam Hussein showed obvious pleasure
with the president's letter and Rumsfeld's visits in his
remarks."
Rumsfeld also met Saddam's foreign
minister Tariq Aziz. According to a State Department
memo made available by the National Security Archives in
Washington, Rumsfeld told Aziz: "The United States and
Iraq share many common interests," and that the Reagan
administration had a "willingness to do more" to "help
Iraq".
In 1984, Aziz, now under arrest after
being on the list of Iraqis most wanted by the US
administration, travelled to Washington and met Reagan
at the White House. Following that meeting, the United
States made its intelligence in the Persian Gulf
available to Iraq on a regular basis, and set up direct
links between the Central Intelligence Agency and the US
Embassy in Baghdad.
Throughout this time, the
Reagan administration largely ignored reports that
Saddam was using chemical weapons against the Iranian
army and against domestic Kurdish insurgents. "While
condemning Iraq's resort to chemical weapons," a US
government press release read, "the United States finds
the Iranian regime's intransigent refusal to deviate
from its avowed objective of eliminating the legitimate
government of Iraq to be inconsistent with accepted
norms."
Jabber says the Reagan administration
never seriously tried to stop Iraq from using chemical
weapons. "Everything we did was checked with America,"
he said. "They knew our policy was to use chemical
weapons on the Iranian army when they entered our
territory. We told them that and they continued to help
us."
As the war dragged on, Saddam's tactics
became increasingly more brutal. He launched al-Anfal in
northern Iraq, a massive campaign of ethnic cleansing
against his own Kurdish population, which - tired of
Saddam's oppressive rule - was siding with Iran. That
campaign left tens of thousands of Kurds dead. Hundreds
of thousands were led out of their villages at gunpoint,
and their homes were bulldozed behind them.
"I
remember very well," recalls Rafat Abdel Mohammed Amin,
mayor of Benslawa, a Kurdish refugee camp outside Arbil
in northern Iraq. "They came one morning, Saddam's
soldiers. They brought the bulldozers to destroy the
house the moment we left it. Then they gave us a tent to
live in. We were completely surrounded by check-points
of the Iraqi army."
The Reagan administration
barely took note of the Anfal campaign. While US forces
did nothing to protect Iraqi Kurds, they began to fight
directly with Iran. On October 8, 1987, US warships
destroyed two Iranian patrol boats in the Persian Gulf.
Then, on April 18, 1988, US warships blew up two Iranian
oil rigs, sank a frigate and destroyed an Iranian
missile boat.
Amin is forgiving. "The USA
supported Saddam because they thought this relation with
Saddam would benefit them. Every country does this. Then
they changed their mind. They wanted to remove Saddam,
so they started a war against him."
But memories
of the Reagan administration's support for Saddam linger
in northern Iraq where 150,000 Kurdish refugees still
live in camps. Seventeen years after Saddam gassed her
home in Hallabja, packed mud and a canvas tarp still
serve as the roof of Aftow Khafood's home in Benslawa
refugee camp. "We would like to improve our situation,"
she says. "When it rains, we are afraid our house will
collapse over our heads. We want to return to our homes
and live like others in normal houses."
As the
eulogizing of Reagan continues, Khafood says the only
international help she has received has come from the
United Nations, which has provided her family with
toilet facilities and 200 cinder blocks, which she has
stacked into makeshift walls.
