Mideast Roundup

February 28, 2003

An Unexpected Alliance

Saudi Prince Abdullah and Colin Powell Forge a Bond

The most 1dramatic development of the last two weeks in the Persian Gulf - revealed exclusively here by DEBKA-Net-Weekly - does not immediately touch on Saddam Hussein, although it will in the long run. It is about Saudi crown prince Abdullah, the kingdom's de facto ruler, and his secret approach to the Bush administration.

According to our sources in Washington and the Gulf, Abdullah, never a real fan of the Bush team and their policies for the Middle East and Arabia, decided in early February to create a direct, personal and private link to Washington for use in emergency situations. He consulted with his close advisers and in the end sent a personal emissary to establish that link with his chosen interlocutor, secretary of state Colin Powell.

According to the fragmentary information reaching DEBKA-Net-Weekly, the Saudi prince offered to let bygones be bygones and restore the once cordial relations and military cooperation between Riyadh and Washington on a regional level. He suggested going back to being military and strategic partners at once - even before the onset of the American assault on Iraq and expressed the hope that his relations with Powell would be mutually profitable to both nations after the war was over.

Powell hurried to lay the Saudi ruler's message before President George W. Bush. The president instructed Powell to send the Saudi Prince an affirmative reply and get down at once to building the private communication link on offer, so as to begin the job of repairing US-Saudi relations.

By this unexpected stroke, Powell found he had become President Bush's point man for Washington's relations with Riyadh.

The private interchanges between Abdullah and Powell have already had a positive effect on the soured relationship between the two governments. Saudi Arabia this week consented to US troops using its bases to fight Iraq.

Abdullah and Powell have also created joint American-Saudi task teams to chart their post-war cooperation when a new regime rises in Baghdad.

Word of the new channel of communication quickly leaked through intelligence channels to the Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and French President Jacques Chirac. The first two discussed the development when they met in Moscow on Wednesday, February 26. Chirac spent much of the week analyzing its implications for the French position with regard to US military action against Iraq.

The unexpected warming of Saudi-American relations is likely to have sweeping effect on the Middle East and Persian Gulf, the Iraq situation and US relations with the three leading opponents of the war on Iraq - France, Germany and Russia - as well as bearing on the domestic situation inside the oil kingdom.

In the last few days, Berlin and Moscow are showing first signs of seeking to distance themselves from the hard-line resistance in Paris to the Bush administration's policies on Iraq. Russian and German leaders quickly grasped that a rapprochement between Washington and Riyadh threatened to undercut their strongest argument against war, as well as denying them the chance of profiting politically and economically in the Middle East from their anti-war posture.

Inside the Saudi royal house, Abdullah's fellow princes were stunned by his initiative and its immediate rewards. His foremost rival, defense minister Prince Sultan and the Saudi Ambassador in Washington, Sultan's son Bandar, were caught napping. All their intelligence resources had failed to pick up the most sensational occurrence in Saudi politics in many a year. Most senior princes of the royal house perceive Abdullah's move as a grab to monopolize Riyadh's relations with Washington and to isolate them at home and abroad.

Last Minute Developments:

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and intelligence sources report from Saudi Arabia:

1.
Saudi armed forces were placed on battle preparedness late Thursday night, February 27, and deployed on two fronts: the Saudi-Iraqi and Saudi-Kuwaiti borders.

2.
Saudi military and security forces as well as Americans in the kingdom were also put on supreme alert for al Qaeda terror attacks. US and Saudi intelligence believe that al Qaeda teams will attempt to hit an American and a Saudi target simultaneously.


Iraq War Diary

1. Small-Scale Combat in Southern Iraq

The US-British special forces' operations around Iraq's southern oil fields, reported in our previous issue, continue. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and intelligence sources these forces are conducting limited operations to neutralize the Iraqi military and security strength posted in or near the Iraq's southern and eastern oil fields in the Khozistan area along the border with Iran and near the Iraqi city of Basra. Their purpose is to keep them safe from sabotage or fire by hostile elements acting for Iraq - or even by Iranians or Shiites.

US Apache and Black Hawk helicopters, together with US warplanes based in Qatar and Kuwait, are lending the ground forces air cover. For the moment, US special forces are in command of the oil fields by keeping them surrounded - albeit under orders not to interfere with production.

At the same time, as inimical forces crisscross each other's paths, southern Iraq is beginning to assumed a surreal patchwork aspect similar to that spreading over the northern region.

(See also separate <#3>article on the northern warfront and Turkish-Kurdish feud.)

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources, convoys of Iraqi reinforcements, mainly from the 4th army entrusted with defending the region, constantly cut through territory controlled by US and British special forces. For now, neither interferes with the other.

The Iraqi convoys are making for the Iraqi city and large naval base at Umm al-Qasar and the Faw Peninsula, at both of which the Iraqi High Command estimates US and British forces will stage large-scale landings by sea.

In addition to pouring troops non-stop into Kuwait, the United States has in the last ten days consigned large fleets of aircraft to four bases in Oman - Masirah, Thumrait, Seeb and Al Musnana. The aircraft include the first B-52 giant bombers to operate directly out of Gulf air bases away from home in the United States, except for those flying out of the shared US-British air and naval refueling facility on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia.

2. Northern Front Cannot Be Activated Yet

The US war command at Camp As-Sayliyah, Qatar, may have been somewhat premature in assuring Washington that the American war force is set to go to the last man.

US commanders in northern Iraq and Turkey, especially the 4th Infantry division, have put out word that their units will need another two or three weeks before they are ready to take on the battle for northern Iraq and the Kirkuk oilfields. Formidable political and diplomatic hurdles have held up the logistics of the war preparations.

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources, the 10 military camps US military engineers are erecting in southern Turkey to house troops in transit to Iraq have not gone beyond their preliminary stages of construction. Furthermore, only about eight of the 40 flights needed to ferry US troops to Turkey have taken off so far, and only on Monday, February 24, were the first of the division's tanks unloaded at the southern Turkish port of Iskenderun.

Tanks, self-propelled artillery and other heavy equipment are coming into Ankara by train from US bases in Germany, via Eastern Europe. From Ankara, the trains and their cargo head south toward the still unfinished US camps. Since the tanks cannot ride into Iraq on their treads or negotiate Kurdistan's mountain passes, US military planners intend to ship them to staging areas on existing Turkish and Iraqi rail lines. Some of those tracks will be upgraded or even rebuilt to handle the heavy armor.

In view of these and other difficulties, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources report the Pentagon and Iraq war headquarters as weighing putting off the opening of the northern front. Instead of coinciding with the start of the offensive in the south and west, the north will most probably be left till last.

The most troublesome impediment slowing things down is the antagonism between Washington's two leading war partners in the north, Turkey and the Kurds.


Washington-Ankara-Kurds Etc.

Turkey Wins a Stake in Post-War Iraq's Oil Revenue

The Turkish parliament is dragging its feet on the Gul government's request to approve the passage of US forces to northern Iraq and the deployment of Turkish troops outside the country, both crucial building blocks for the northern invasion front against Iraq. After two postponements, parliament in Ankara deferred its vote on the motion from Thursday February 27 to Saturday, March 1.

The government in Ankara sent the motion to parliament after closing a deal with the Bush administration that hinges on three main clauses, over and above the published multi-billion dollar financial package:

A.
The United States guarantees that any future Iraqi government will allot Turkey the annual sum of $2 billion from the sale of Iraqi oil produced in Mosul and Kirkuk. This sum will emanate from the oil transferred to Turkish ownership and pumped through Iraqi-Turkish pipelines. By agreeing to the arrangement, Washington recognized Ankara's argument that Turkey's rights over the Mosul and Kirkuk oil fields are anchored in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne that liquidated the Ottoman Empire after World War One.

A senior Turkish official, explaining why his government held out on this point, told DEBKA-Net-Weekly: "The Americans and the Arabs cheated us in the first Gulf war in 1991. Twelve years later, we will not make the same mistake."

B.
Turkish armed forces will confine themselves to two main objectives in northern Iraq: covering the rear and flanks of US troops when they head south from northern Iraq towards the central region; and making sure the Kurds do not establish an independent state. The Turks undertook not to send troops into Mosul and Kirkuk or into Kurdish-controlled cities. They would also refrain from meddling in the Kurdish administration of their enclave.

Those clauses were heavily colored by the need to placate the Kurds of northern Iraq.

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Washington, Masoud Barazani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, and Jalal Talabani, head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) secretly sent a joint letter to US President George W. Bush two weeks ago, setting out their sole condition for Kurdish support of the US war on Iraq: a guarantee signed by the American president that no Turkish forces would set foot in northern Iraq.

The Kurdish condition was rejected, but the controversy on this issue is not over. Neither Kurdish nor Turkish mutual suspicions have been allayed and are capable of erupting at the wrong moment.

Foes and Troublesome Friends

An additional harassment weighing down American planning for the northern warfront is presented by the fundamentalist Kurdish terror group, which strikes at targets in Talal Jalabani's territory from its northern enclave around the town of Baiar.

Ansar al-Islam - According to reports that appeared 10 days ago in Washington, a 5,000-man fighting force of the Iranian-backed Badr, which is comprised mainly of Iraqi and Afghan exiles, crossed into northern Iraq from Iran and joined up with Ansar al-Islam, the terrorist group linked to al Qaeda and Iraqi military intelligence. At first, Washington was alarmed, fearing the intruders would pose a serious nuisance to the US contingents due to operate in this part of Iraq.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources report that the US war command and Kurdish chiefs sent intelligence teams to assess the threat. They found it to have been exaggerated. The Badr fighters who had actually crossed over numbered no more than 1,000.

The US war command consequently provided Talabani and his PUK militia with heavy artillery. (The endless complexities of relationships in that crossroads region made it quite natural for the artillery to be supplied from the nearest source, Turkey).

American officers also drew up an operational plan for the PUK to mount a general assault on Ansar al-Islam to once and for all pry it out of the positions it has gained on Talabani's turf around the hub- towns of Halajba and Suleimaniyah.

But then, as the US-Turkish-Kurdish crisis flared, Talabani decided he was in no hurry to attack. He postponed the offensive on the pretext of heavy snowfall in the mountains along the Iraq-Iran border.

On Wednesday, February 26, Iraq's opposition groups gathered at the Kurdish town of Salahuddin - for the first time on Iraqi soil - to hear a speech by President Bush's personal envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad. As he spoke, an Ansar al-Islam suicide bomber blew himself up at a PUK military position outside Halajba.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terrorism sources note this was the second Ansar al-Islam suicide operation against Talabani this month. On February 8, representatives of the fundamentalist group arrived in Suleimaniyah offering to defect. Instead, they shot dead several of Talabani's most senior military and intelligence officers. The Ansar suicide bomber this week will have served as a symbolic warning from the group's sponsors, al Qaeda and Iraqi military intelligence, that the Americans and the Iraqi opposition should not be in too much of a hurry to create a post-Saddam administration, because the ruling Baath might not be their only foe inside Iraq.

As to America's friends in Iraq, they threaten to swamp the war campaign with domestic tribal rivalries.

Turkomens - Their leaders claim a large swathe of territory running from northern Iraq to its central heartland. Some 750,000 Turkomens are also said to live in the city of Baghdad - a figure there is no way of verifying. These assets, say the Turkomen spokesmen, entitle them to a militia to be set up by the American and Turkish governments on the model of the American-backed Kurdish tribal fighting forces. President Bush's envoy to the Iraqi opposition, Zalmay Khalizad, acceded to this request, promising Turkomen leaders and the Turkish government that Washington would establish, train and finance the costs and maintenance of a 15,000-strong Turkomen militia.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military experts remark that the last thing needed now on the disastrously complicated northern Iraqi military scene is the injection of yet one more fighting militia - or even less, two

Assyrians - This ethnic group, largely Christian, echoes the Turkomen demand for a militia, taking Washington, which had considered them too small to be taken them into account, by surprise. Their claim of a community numbering one million is probably inflated. It is unlikely that there are more than between 600,000 and 700,000 Assyrians in Iraq. But they cannot be brushed off. The Assyrian Democratic Party of Iraq has a strong lobby in Washington, spearheaded by a group of exceedingly rich Assyrian families. They are gaining the ears of senators and congressmen for their argument that Iraq's Assyrians need a militia no less than the Kurds and the Turkomens.


Military Vs. Diplomacy

Are American Prime Movers on Iraq at Cross Purposes?

Military experts consulted by DEBKA-Net-Weekly suggest that the endlessly complicated rivalries and cross motivations plaguing northern Iraq may be only a foretaste of the turmoil Washington can expect to sweep the country when the war offensive against Iraq begins in earnest.

They find some instructive lessons for Iraq in the Afghanistan Campaign - chiefly because they both share the same commander, General Tommy Franks, and the same US Presidential envoy for the opposition, Zalmay Khalidzad. In the run-up to the Afghan War in 2001, the two worked in smooth unison. This is not the case with Iraq. Not that they are in conflict, but the conditions under which each of them operates and carries forward American policy on the ground are totally different from their former experience. This difference has been the cause of "a certain lack of tactical coordination" between the two.

As one informed source put it to DEBKA-Net-Weekly, "In Afghanistan General Franks trod with extreme care when he ordered US military movements, because he had to deal not only with American troops but also with the Russian and Uzbek rapid deployment forces, who fought at the head of the Northern Alliance and its disparate militias. His support derived not only from the White House in Washington, but also from Russian president Vladimir Putin, Pakistan leader Pervez Musharref and a clutch of Central Asian rulers who supported the war.

By the time Khalilzad came on the scene to perform his job of laying the political groundwork for the post war period, all these alliances and understandings were already in motion.

Seen in retrospect, some of the tactical moves carried out in the heat of war between October 2001 to January 2003, prove to have been mistaken. In particular, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military experts point to the grave error committed by the war command in relying too heavily on the rapid pincer movement of Russian and Uzbek armored columns to break through from the northern town of Mazar-e-Sharif to Kabul in the south and on to Kandahar in the west. That tactic, better suited to the battlefields of the Second World War, allowed the Taliban and al Qaeda to effect a rapid retreat to the Pakistan border with only slight losses in casualties and arms and without being hindered by any force.

To this day, there is no answer to the riddle of why the American war command failed to deploy forces to cut off the enemy's line of escape. This failure enabled Osama bin Laden and his men to escape Afghanistan safely, thereby leaving the Afghan War without a clear resolution - at least in the eyes of the world.

Franks never offered a public explanation for this misstep. Privately, he is believed to have blamed the complexities of US-Pakistani relations for what happened.

Since Khalilzad only came on the scene after the capture of Kabul and the winding down of the main battles, no one found any reason to suppose that he and the general had not worked in complete harmony.

Iraq is a completely different case. Aside from British backing - which may be seen as analogous to Russia's supportive role in Afghanistan - Franks' war command's backing is mostly undercover and unacknowledged, as from Saudi Arabia or Jordan. But this time, Franks is said to be determined not to repeat the errors of the Afghan war. He is keeping his head down, the better to remove the hurdles in the path of his operational plans, in sharp contrast to his conduct in Afghanistan.

His response to the difficulties raised in Ankara derived from this attitude. If the American troops cannot use Turkish ports and air bases, he said the war could be managed - and won - without a northern front, which could be left to the end. When the Kurds threatened to oppose the entry of Turkish troops into their territory, he turned their national problems over to the National Security Council, the CIA, the Pentagon and the man on the spot, Zalmay Khalilzad.

The generals, he said, have their hands full preparing and fighting a war.

This was the moment that the falling out over northern Iraq flared, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources, among Washington, the Turks, the Kurds and the Iranians.

It was triggered by a mysterious flashpoint. To this day, no one in Washington or Ankara will admit to knowing who assured Turkey in the first week of February that the United States would not object to Turkish forces invading northern Iraq ahead of American troops.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly got wind of this assurance first and published it in its No. 96 Issue on February 7. The only other place it was reported was in an article by David Ignatius run by the Washington Post on February 14, under the caption A Whale of a Mess?

He wrote:

Another danger sign is the administration's invitation to Turkey a week ago to invade northern Iraq. That would allow Turkish troops to suppress Kurdish nationalists and perhaps exert future hegemony over Kurdistan.

Not surprisingly, the Kurds who had committed themselves to a war alliance with Washington felt they had been sold out to Turkey. They swore not only to fight Turkish troops entering Iraq, but to take the battle across the frontier onto Turkish soil.

Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran and the oil emirates were equally furious at what they saw as a breach of Washington's undertaking to preserve Iraq's territorial integrity during and after the war and not let Iraq's oil resources pass into foreign hands.

The entire edifice of secret accords and understandings procured by Washington in months of laborious bargaining - to take the place of an overt war coalition - threatened to keel over, together with the political and diplomatic arrangements Khalilzad had worked so hard to cobble together.

Our informed sources are given to understand that this mess and its fallout account for the zigzags in Ankara's approach to its role in the American war on Iraq, as well as the mistrustful faces turned to Khalilzad at the gathering of Iraqi opposition representatives in the Kurdish town of Salahuddin on Wednesday, February 26.

The imprint of that mishap has surfaced in various other subsequent incidents. It has strained the working relations between Franks and Khalilzad, as well as forcing the Bush administration into uncomfortable corners.

For instance, for the sake of its understanding with Ankara, Washington very reluctantly acknowledged the validity of the 1923 Lausanne Accords nullifying the Ottoman Empire, to support Turkey's claims to the oil fields of Kirkuk and Mosul. In respect of this claim, the Americans agreed to turn over $2 billion dollars every year from the oil revenues of post-war Iraq. This represented a short-term saving in the aid allocation to Ankara, but a potential time bomb in the long term.

Under the influence of the same "mess", Khalilzad's assurance that the United States would carry out a complete purge of Iraq's Baath bureaucracy after the war was received with deep skepticism by the Iraqi opposition leaders meeting in Salahuddin. Most were certain that only a small part of Saddam's party would be sacked and tried for war crimes, while the main body of the regime, including the army and intelligence services, would survive intact.


The Psychological Factor

US Gulf Troops: Waiting to Cut the "Daisies"

Among the roughly 210,00 troops the United States has piled up in the Middle East and Gulf within striking distance of Iraq, the estimated D-Day veers between March 10 and March 18. But, as one American officer in Kuwait put it: "The maneuvers in Washington, especially by the White House, are very hard to understand now."

The coalition troop breakdown to date is: Britain, 35,000; Turkey, 90,000; Gulf emirates - deployed for defensive purposes in Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait - 15,000; Kurds - members of the two main tribal militias that govern Iraqi Kurdistan, the Patriotic Union of Kuwait and Kurdistan Democratic Party - 90,000; another 5,000 special forces commandos and army, air force and naval personnel from Australia, Spain, Italy, Denmark and other countries.

In all, a little more 500,000 troops are massed in the target region, ready to close in on Saddam Hussein.

Tuesday, February 25, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources report allied commanders were placed on the ready for immediate action after US general Tommy Franks, the overall commander of the war on Iraq, arrived at his Camp As Sayliyah headquarters in Qatar. They were warned that invasion orders could come at any time between Friday, February 28 and March 18.

Franks arrived in-theatre from successful negotiations with Turkish leaders on the two thorny issues subsequently approved by the Turkish Cabinet and referred to parliament in Ankara: The use of Turkish bases as launching pads for the US invasion of northern Iraq and the deployment of Turkish forces in northern Iraq.

(See separate <#3>article below for more details.)

The second, imperative behind General Franks's the arrival in Qatar was concern that the long wait for action might affect the morale of the officers and men standing by.

On this subject, a senior US military source in Kuwait had plenty to say to DEBKA-Net-Weekly:

"The media constantly harp on the Security Council and the governments stalling US military action. No one reports on the feelings and thoughts of the commanders and forces, who are actually going in to fight Iraq. They should be the focus, now that combat operations are taking place and the big offensive is on the way. It's more important to understand what goes through their heads and emotions about the war ahead than to fixate on whether France or Russia will or won't use their veto in the Security Council."

"The war command is told that troop morale is high and the men are strongly motivated, eager to get going. But that doesn't mean they don't have questions or concerns - and it is only natural that as the waiting period drags on, they have more questions, especially - as we must admit - when the frontline men don't always get answers."

What are the most frequently asked questions?

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources canvassed American and British officers and troops at forward positions in Kuwait in the south, moving north to the Kurdish Iraqi town of Zakho near the Iraq-Turkish frontier, to discover their most pressing concerns:

A. Why is the war delayed?

The men in the field ask if the psychological pressure on Saddam Hussein may not have outlived its effectiveness - which would mean that time is now on the side of the Iraq leader, his forces and the al Qaeda plotters in the Gulf and Iraq.

An officer told DEBKA-Net-Weekly: "We have been asked to hold until the first days of March or until the Daisy needs cutting."

He was referring to the moment still in the future when US aircraft begin dropping 15,000-pound BLU-82 "daisy cutter" bombs - the most powerful in the American conventional arsenal -- on the Iraqi army and Saddam's hideouts.

The waiting is also affecting Iraq's front line forces.

While convinced of the inevitability of the war and the downfall of their ruler by the millions of propaganda leaflets dropped over their field units and American "black" television and radio broadcasts, they cannot understand why the tyrant is still sitting in his palace in Baghdad. Where is the promised US offensive to bring him down, they ask?

US military commanders are beginning worry about the mindset of Iraqi combat troops. They are no longer as terrified as they were at first by the prospect of a mighty US offensive, but turning apathetic. The jury is still out on how they will behave when the action starts. Will they surrender immediately, as the US war command hopes, or be prepared to fight, even for a short period?

As time goes by, American troops are uncomfortably aware of being watched by Iraqi military and al Qaeda spies who study their training methods and tactics and take note of their units' markings for future targeting. "These guys pop out of every hole; they are always around and with us," said one officer. "Every move we make is under scrutiny - and it is not friendly. We urgently need to shake these guys off."

B. Many US and allied troops wonder out loud whether assault by Iraqi chemical, biological or nuclear-radiological weapons is a real threat to them.

The odds of Iraq resorting to unconventional warfare are believed to increase the longer the UN Security Council deliberates and UN weapons inspections in Iraq drag on.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military experts say Saddam is up to his old tricks - only now he has come up with a new dodge.

Last week, Baghdad "found" for the UN inspectors 100 documents that appeared out of nowhere recording old stocks of chemical and biological agents. Iraq also suddenly "discovered" an R-400 bomb containing "liquid", amid strong hints of the presence of biological material. Furthermore, Saddam agreed to a rare interview with CBS anchorman Dan Rather for "60 Minutes II", in the same week also receiving Russian President Vladimir Putin's personal emissary, Yevgeny Primakov.

(More about the Primakov mission in <#Hot>HOT POINTS below).

The Al-Samoud-2 missiles which the UN inspectors gave Saddam until Saturday, March 1, to destroy, are seen by the US military waiting for orders to move as incontrovertible evidence of Iraqi violations. They know that fitted with a Russian-designed Volga SA-2 engine, the missile's range jumps from 183 km (which too is in excess of the 150km range permitted by the UN) to 600 km, bringing Saudi oilfields and Tel Aviv well within its reach.

The Iraqi dictator is making a show of taking his time. He has also opted for the path of bald-faced admission, taking a page out of the tactics practiced by Iranian and North Korean leaders, both of whom have told the world openly that they are capable of manufacturing enriched uranium and nuclear weapons.

Like them, the Saddam government has unashamedly pointed the UN inspectors towards what appears to be an Iraqi biological weapon, the R-400 bomb filled with "liquid". Although the Iraqi ruler has made the world community a gift of this coveted smoking gun, no one, including Washington, shows any sign of running with this proof and acting to halt the danger - any more than they counted the al-Samoud missiles as the last straw.

Some American and British officers and men waiting in the Gulf region for orders to attack ask if the international community's passivity in the face of these proofs and threats will not ultimately place them at risk.

Those who read Arabic were also rocked back by the message contained in the millions of leaflets dropped on Iraqi forces in southeast Iraq, including Umm al-Qasar, the main city and naval base protecting the Gulf entrance to the Shaat al-Arab waterway and the Faw Peninsula. Marked with the international emblem for nuclear material, these leaflets warn Iraqi commanders who obey Saddam's orders to launch nuclear, biological or chemical weapons against US forces they will be caught and face trial as war criminals.

Members of the US-led fighting force see this message as further proof that Iraq has such weapons and the willingness to use them - a direct threat to their own safety. After all, they reason, if the threat was not real, why would the US military command bother to issue this warning?

C. Will Saddam be allowed to get away like Osama bin Laden?

"That is what worries me most," said one officer. "Are we giving him time to get away? We must hope and pray that Saddam will not be allowed to disappear; after all, we've had plenty of time to make a study of his responses and his look-alikes."

Clearly, US military minds have been indelibly marked by bin Laden's escape with his family from the Tora Bora mountain cave complex in Afghanistan - as reported exclusively by DEBKA-Net-Weekly on December 12, 2001.

D. What military challenges await US and allied troops inside Iraq and its major cities?

Over and above the Iraqi army, US military planners and field commanders are preparing for extraordinary ordeals.

They are concerned about becoming embroiled in factional warfare in Iraq, such as vendettas among Shiites or Kurds, as well as being targeted by terrorists armed with unconventional weapons - operatives of Iraqi military intelligence, Kurdish extremist groups linked to al Qaeda and direct action by Osama bin Laden's men.

Serious tests would be posed by a decision by Saddam or his sons to throw child soldiers, organized in "Saddam's Children's Units", into the fray. US field intelligence has fresh data that Iraq has set up units deploying children aged from six to 10 at strategic battle sites, such as Baghdad and Tikrit. These children are said to have been trained and brainwashed from the age of four to attack any foe, regardless of origin, intending harm to the Iraqi leader or a member of his clan.

"If this is true," one source told DEBKA-Net-Weekly, "We face something more agonizing and horrible than even weapons of mass destruction. How can we morally come to terms with killing children in line with our orders to capture a target?"

The troops have no such moral dilemmas with regard to the Western civilians who went to Baghdad to volunteer as human shields against Iraq's enemies.

As one officer put it, "There's no such thing as a human shield. Any humans standing between us and our objective can expect to be treated as a hostile force."


HOT POINTS
(that you may have missed in DEBKAfile Round-the-Clock)
A Digest of the Week's Exclusives

21 February: After keeping everyone on tenterhooks until the very last minute, the Turkish government caved in on Friday, February 21. The Turks undoubtedly employed bazaar tactics to raise the American economic aid offer from the $6 b grant plus $20 b in loans for the use of their bases as launching pads to invade Iraq. But what decided the issue in Ankara was the realization that President George W. Bush was resolved to go ahead with the offensive against Iraq with or without Turkey. The Gul government was reluctant to be left out of fateful events in its next door neighbor.

22 February: Senior military sources in Kuwait, asked by DEBKAfile Special correspondent in Kuwait, source, did not deny that special operations might already be underway in Iraq's southern oil fields. The same source said any assault on Iraq will have to carefully balance 'hard strikes' with 'soft overtures' to Iraqis most likely to capitulate and ally themselves with US-led forces.

Going in softly, which is taken to mean a short massive air campaign to prepare the way for ground troops, would also let the US make good on promises of fair treatment for any surrendering Iraqis. Such promises have been spelled out in massive leaflet drops over the south in recent weeks and also given to Iraqi unit officers in contacts established by US and UK undercover forces in Iraq.

By leaving as much of the civilian infrastructure as possible intact, war planners hope to minimize the cost, in time and money, of rebuilding Iraq's' economy.

The source played down the role of climate considerations in battle plans. Contrary to press reports that US soldiers cannot fight in the high temperatures expected between April and September, he claimed the force gathering in northern Kuwait is well equipped to fight in adverse weather. He also pointed out that thermal imaging devices give American and British troops a distinct advantage when fighting at night, when conditions are much cooler.

Preparations for war are gathering pace in Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar, the three main staging areas for American and British forces in the Gulf.

23 February: The largest contingent so far of soldiers from neighboring Gulf countries arrived in Kuwait on Sunday, February 23. Despite snide remarks that troops from the oil rich sheikhdoms would turn up driving their own Jaguars and Ferraris, several hundred ground troops, sailors and airmen from the United Arab Emirates arrived at a number of locations around Kuwait City throughout the day. The overall impression one group gave when de-planing at Kuwait Int'l Airport was of a smart, brisk, British-style 'spit and polish' force. They are part of Operation Peninsula Shield, a mutual self defense effort in which all countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council participate.

Kuwait Armed Forces spokesman Col. Yussef Al-Mulla stressed the defensive nature of their deployment, "Their mission is not to take part in a US-led attack on Iraq, but to defend Kuwait against any aggression." It took a special meeting of GCC Defense Ministers in Jeddah two weeks ago to hammer out the details before orders could be signed. DEBKAfile has learned that they will be deployed in the tri-border area in the east of the country where the frontiers of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iraq meet. The full complement of personnel and equipment will be in place by the end of this week. It will eventually comprise a battalion of mechanized infantry, two guided-missile destroyers with support vessels and a squadron of Apache helicopter gunships. Vehicles, including German built Leopard tanks, arrived on board two chartered Dutch cargo ships at Kuwait's al-Shuwaikh port.

But Kuwait has other concerns beside the threat from Iraq. The shadow of Al Qaeda is never far away from any part of this region.

Kuwaiti officials are attempting to downplay reports that five of their citizens have recently been transferred from Pakistan to the Camp X-ray facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They join another twelve Kuwaiti nationals already in custody at Camp X-ray since the early stages of operation Enduring Freedom. Kuwait is making a big effort to appear as American as Disneyland.

Kuwaitis tell outsiders that ninety-nine percent of the population supports the United States in their efforts to topple Saddam. That leaves around 8,000 people who might feel motivated to take up arms or otherwise voice their displeasure at the US military build-up.

The authorities have stepped up security around the country and especially in places with high concentrations of expatriates. Units of the National Guard are very visible at major intersections and around hotels favoured by visiting businessmen and the media.

25 February: German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder makes a lightening, unscheduled trip to Moscow Wednesday, February 26, heading back home the same evening. What urgent business takes Schroeder to the Russian capital?

According to DEBKAfile's intelligence and Russian sources, Russian President Vladimir Putin has stepped into the bipolar crisis over Iraq between the US-led and French-led world blocs with a dramatic proposition for averting war.

First, he tried selling it to Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein. For this mission, he fielded one of Moscow's diplomatic heavyweights, Yevgeny Primakov. KGB chief Middle East resident in the 1970s, Soviet foreign minister and Russian prime minister under Yeltsin, Primakov is also a longtime close personal friend of the Iraqi dictator from the old days of the Soviet Union.

Primakov landed in Baghdad on Saturday, February 22.

The candy for Saddam in the Russian proposal was that it could provide him with a lifebelt to save himself from being obliterated; although he would have to leave Baghdad with his family and ruling clique, he need not be pushed completely off the Iraqi political map.

Primakov was understood by our sources to have spent 10 hours on Sunday, February 23 with Saddam Hussein at his palace in Tirkit, flying home Monday, February 24, after they met for a final conversation.

DEBKAfile's most exclusive sources accessed the Putin proposal for Iraq and reveals its high points:

1.
Acceptance of the plan by Saddam and Washington - with UN endorsement - will result in the United States calling off its war offensive against Iraq.

2.
Saddam will be required to immediately dismantle and destroy all his weapons of mass destruction, that arsenal being checked against Russia's lists and compared with American data. (DEBKAfile notes incidentally that Russian generals and intelligence chiefs have consistently claimed until now that Saddam does not possess a single WMD!)

3.
Saddam stays on as president for approximately one year.

4.
In the course of the disarmament process, a transitional government will be established in Baghdad with no affinity to the ruling Baath or Saddam's ruling circle. It will officiate one year under international oversight, draft a new Iraqi constitution and arrange a general election.

5.
The election over, Saddam will retire and make way for the newly-elected regime.

6.
He and his family, together with his top political and military circle, will move out of Baghdad and take up residence at an internationally protected palace compound near Tharthar Lake north of Tikrit. He will be allowed to move in and out of this palace under certain restrictions.

We have heard that Primakov made it clear to the Iraqi ruler that, despite some limitations on his movements and those of his entourage, he would not be a prisoner. He would be allowed to come and go under certain conditions.

The Russian emissary also emphasized that the fortune Saddam has stashed away in foreign banks will not be impounded or frozen. In short, Saddam was given to understand by his Russian visitor that while the regime would pass out of his hands and that of the Baath to fresh political forces, including leaders of the opposition who fought his rule, he, Saddam Hussein, would not be bereft of influence in the country and would retain the financial wherewithal for being a player in future Iraq politics.

DEBKAfile's sources have not revealed Saddam's reply to the proposal. They report that Primakov, on his return to Moscow, went straight over to Putin to brief him on his mission.

The next day, two Russian emissaries headed out of Moscow to Washington and Paris to brief Presidents Bush and Chirac and test the water for a sign that the Putin initiative was worth pursuing.

http://www.debka.com