Mideast Roundup

April 11, 2003

Iraq War

Secret US Deal with Iraqi Republican Guards Commander

Just before closing this edition, DEBKA-Net-Weekly received first fragmentary reports from its intelligence sources that shed some light on the ease with which the US 1st Marines Expeditionary Force was able to reach the heart of Baghdad on Wednesday, April 9, without encountering substantial Iraqi resistance. Those reports also explain why the Republican Guards supposed to defend the Diyala bridges and prevent American forces from entering east Baghdad suddenly stopped shooting and deserted their posts.

These otherwise inexplicable happenings were the outcome of secret discussions between US special forces and CIA officers deployed undercover in the Iraqi-controlled parts of Baghdad and the high commander of the Iraqi elite Special Republican Guards, General Maher Safiyan Takriti, who is one of Saddam Hussein's cousins.

General Takriti agreed to let US forces roll into central Baghdad unopposed, across bridges that were not blown up, in return for an American guarantee that his troops would be allowed to exit Baghdad unscathed and without pursuit.

Twenty-four hours after the American troops entered Baghdad, American B-52 bombers carried out a "bunker-buster" raid against the presidential bunker command system underneath the Dora district of southern Baghdad. It was the US bombers' second sortie against the same site. The first raid was the war's opening shot, carried out on March 19. It was the first US "raid of opportunity" against a leadership target, after which there was much speculation about whether Saddam Hussein was hit or not. The second bombardment of the same site took place after American bomb experts grasped that Saddam's subterranean edifices can only be destroyed by repeated pounding which eventually make the walls crack and cave in.

American bombing experts have become much more knowledgeable than they were on March 19 about the vulnerabilities of these underground command posts and the movements of senior Iraqis through these subterranean fastnesses. The question is does this knowledge come from data gathered by US special forces teams operating on the ground? Or was it procured as a result of deals, ad hoc or not, with Iraqi commanders?

The secret deal with General Takriti raises two important questions:

1.
Was the Baghdad transaction the first one to be closed with this high Iraqi commander? Or were there others? And is he the only Iraqi general to deal directly with the Americans?

2.
Were this and any other trades approved by Saddam Hussein or his sons? If so, what did they get in return?

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence experts, one suggestive fact hints at a possible answer. Until this moment, the only major Iraqi highway kept open by US forces is the route heading north from Baghdad to Tikrit, onto Mosul and thence across the Syrian border to Kishmali. We hear that this highway is to be closed some time on Friday, April 11. Up until now, it was under the control of Iraqi forces, who were neither bombed nor attacked. In other words, both the Americans and the Iraqis took care that throughout the hostilities one road-link would remain open between Iraq and Syria.

It may also be presumed that there was a limited or tacit understanding between the warring sides as to who would use the road and in what way - for two-way trips or only as an exit route?

The fact that this unique route will be shut down now signals the approach of the next crucial battle for Saddam's heartland which lies north of Baghdad between Tikrit, Samarra and Al-Ramadi, a triangle under which Saddam has tunneled his deepest and most heavily fortified fortress centers. The time for partial deals would therefore seem to be past.

As for the final battle, a last question presents itself:

Did General Takriti deal with the Americans with the knowledge of Saddam and his sons or did he betray them? - and not merely to save his men and officers, but to save the town of Tikrit and his clan's homes. His treachery, if that is what took place, would mean that Tikrit, like Najaf, al Kut, Karbala and Baghdad, will not have to endure any real fighting.

1. Washington-Moscow Blowout over Saddam's "Jihad" Underground

It may be overstating the case to assert that Moscow-Washington differences over Iraq have raised the specter of a revived Cold War, but the Old Guard of the KGB which thrived on the global conflict between the US and the Soviet Union is again on the ascendant in the Kremlin's corridors of power. What is more, these veteran counterintelligence experts are busy helping Saddam Hussein's long shot for his own comeback - by fashioning a "jihad" underground for pushing American forces out of Iraq by remote control - either by himself or, if he has not survived, his sons - from any secret outside hideout or place of exile.

Call it Afghanistan in reverse.

The Russian hand in this potential turn of the Iraqi wheel brought President George W. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to Moscow Sunday, April 6, for a showdown with Russian president Vladimir Putin, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Moscow and Washington.

In her three-hour head-to-head with Putin, Rice is said to have confronted him with the sensitive information reaching Washington showing that Russia's federal security service, or FSB, had recently sent a team of intelligence officers to Damascus to confer on the project with top Iraqi officials, including General Ali Hassan Majid and Iraqi vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan, both very much alive despite premature reports of their death.

Since August 2000, Iraq has maintained military liaison offices with Syrian military intelligence in the Syrian capital, as well as similar legations in Moscow and Minsk.

None of DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources Moscow, Washington or the Middle East can put their finger precisely on how deep Putin is in the scheme which is still on the drawing board, or even privy to it. He does have a serious grievance against his erstwhile partner in the Afghanistan War against the Taliban, accusing Bush of not making good on the pledges he made in return for Russian military collaboration, chiefly to collaborate with his war partner Putin in leading the world oil market. This alleged lapse, he said, had played into the hands of the Old Guard of the former First Directorate of the KGB which had run Cold War counterintelligence, given them a stick with which to beat him over the head and put him very much on the defensive.

This was bad news for Rice. The task the Bush team had assigned her for the Iraq War was to deliver Putin and Russia to the US-led fighting coalition. This was no simple task but, as she faced Putin in the Kremlin, she realized it was well nigh impossible, although her standing in the Bush team depended on its success.

Putin Sidelined at Home

In DEBKA-Net-Weekly Issue 101of March 14, we recounted an important telephone conversation between Bush and Putin (under the heading: Putin is back on-line to Warn Bush of Security Council Trap).

In that conversation, we quoted the Russian president as offering two important pieces of information: One, he was disinclined to be lumped with Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder in the same anti-US bloc on the Iraq issue. Two, Moscow's national policy-making processes on Iraq have been appropriated by Russian foreign intelligence, the SVR - in particular the faction still ruling the counterintelligence bodies once known as the KGB's First Chief Directorate, which ran the Cold War and dominated the Soviet war in Afghanistan.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources add that, since that phone conversation, Putin and Bush have held frequent exchanges through Rice in which the Russian president progressively sharpened those two points.

In one communication, he coined a phrase, when he said he was willing to institute a policy of "Iraq without Chirac", by which he meant Iraq with Bush and Putin. In another message, he warned that the old KGB counterintelligence faction had gained so much ground in the Kremlin that it had become almost a self-sustaining decision-making center on Iraq, the Middle East and the global war on terror. Putin was not even sure that he was being clued into all its decisions. He found he had to ask them for information to find out what was going on.

What had happened, he told the Americans, was that this ageing group, which had faded into the background after the Soviet Union lost the Cold War, was defeated in Afghanistan and sidelined by the Putin-Bush pact in the Afghanistan War of 2002, was now opportunistically sidelining him to recover its old prestige and clout.

Oil Could Restore Putin's Standing

In a third message to the White House, the Russian President explained that the only way he could recover center-stage in these matters was for Bush to demonstrate that there was no truth in the allegations that he had had let Putin down after the Afghan War on promised deals that would lead to shared and coordinated control of the international oil export market, both by piping Russian oil to America and joint exploitation of Caspian regional reserves

The US president must use all his influence to bring these schemes to fruition so as to restore the credibility Putin lost both in intelligence and financial quarters in Moscow.

The Iraqi crisis and war provided the counterintelligence veterans with an opening for a comeback. Arguing that by helping the Americans to win the Iraq war, Moscow would forfeit its traditional positions of influence in the Arab world and Middle East, they resolved to throw their support behind Saddam Hussein in order to defeat the American war effort - with or without Putin's approval.

The Old Guard's retort to Putin's premise of "Iraq without Chirac" was "Iraq without Putin". This faction has carefully preserved its conduits and spheres of influence.

Putin warned Rice that this group if given its head could exacerbate frictions with the United States to a dangerous degree. The White House must extend a hand to pull Putin out of the hole.

The response Putin received from his American visitor was that all these oil projects would eventually materialize - it was only a matter of time. As for the collaboration on Caspian oil, that too would happen. Bush was a man of his word. But first, he would like to see the Kremlin amend its policies on Iran, Central Asia and Iraq - more cooperation and less confrontation would bring forth a matching response from Washington, given patience.

Bush's adviser had no hope of integrating these irreconcilable positions. In fact the conversation ended on the harsh note of ultimatums from Washington to Moscow.

(Details of those ultimatums in next article)

2. Russian Intelligence Vets to Saddam's Rescue

For the new-old Russian counterintelligence faction, Moscow's and Saddam Hussein's interests coincide at important points. If he is alive, these Cold War experts may be planning to organize on his behalf an Iraqi "jihad" underground that will spread round the Middle East. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Moscow and Washington, it looks like taking form of a hostile, antithetical companion to the Bush team's project for re-designing and democratizing the entire region and stamping out fanatical Islamic terror. Saddam could run the Jihad underground and its overseas branches from a distance. If he turns out not have survived after all, the anti-American project will be handed to his sons. The Russian counterintelligence veterans believe that American technological military might, which was demonstrated so stunningly in the first three weeks of the Iraq War, can be impaired if not defeated nonetheless by the asymetrical tactics of guerrilla and paramilitary warfare, suicidal terror and an active underground, for which the Russians will design special weapons. Assassination would be the weapon used against figures willing to help the Americans build the New Iraq.

Joint advance planning

Much of the plan was drafted in meetings Russian intelligence agents held in Baghdad before the war with Saddam and his sons Uday and Qusay, which would explain some of the war's subsequent enigmas. One decision was for Saddam to leave Baghdad and head for Syria as soon as the first invading American troops set foot in Iraq. From there, he would manage the war out of a newly-established military and intelligence command post. Television footage of his own and his various doubles' appearances was taped in advance for broadcasts to muddy the trail.

The second part of the Russian-Iraq team's plan was designed to undermine American control in post-war Iraq, a version of the American-supported local guerrilla resistance in Afghanistan that kept the Soviet occupation army bleeding for years.

Surviving Republican Guards elite troops were given orders to back away from direct confrontations with the coalition troops, shed their uniforms and go home to await further instructions. And indeed the streets of Iraqi cities were littered with abandoned Iraqi military uniforms in the third week of the war. Upon receiving their "jihad" orders, the elite soldiers would form into small guerrilla bands and spread out across Iraq to fight the Americans. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources, Saddam signed off on the Russian strategy. He decided not to defend Baghdad or blow up any major bridges over the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, counting on drawing the US military as deep as possible into a Vietnam- or Stalingrad-like quagmire.

Last December, the Iraqi-Russian-Syrian intelligence trio was already raising an army of volunteers in the Arab world to fight for Saddam in Iraq. They crossed into Iraq through Syria in a controlled flow of would be fighters prepared to martyr themselves for the sake of turning Iraq into a living hell for the infidels. Some traveled through Jordan, where the authorities turned a blind eye to the traffic and open palms to bribes.

Under Diplomatic Escort

Yevgeny Primakov, former Russian prime minister, intelligence veteran and old friend of Saddam Hussein, would be a leading candidate as senior coordinator of the Russian side of this project.

Russian ambassador Vladimir Titorenko would be the faction's point man in Baghdad.

This is the background of the attack on the ambassador's convoy on it way out of Baghdad to Damascus on April 6.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources confirm that the convoy, billed as evacuating the senior Russian diplomatic staff from the embattled Iraqi capital, was in fact attacked by the CIA - not by an F-15 warplane but a Hellfire missile shot by a Predator drone.

It was no mere chance that brought the fleeing Russian ambassador back to Baghdad 48 hours later. In fact, he was flown from Damascus by a special SVR plane directly to Moscow together with his three closest intelligence aids and the precious cargo they were escorting - speculation ranges from one of Saddam's sons, the Iraqi ruler in person, or his private intelligence archives - and returned to Damascus by the same flight. Titorenko and company then drove in convoy from Syria to Baghdad via Kamishli and Mosul, passing Tikrit en route. By Tuesday, the four were back at the embassy. Saddam's sponsors in Russian intelligence realize they are playing a dangerous game and do not rule out the possibility of the Americans "mistakenly" bombing their embassy in Baghdad, just as they hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo war.

In Moscow, the US president's national security adviser Condoleezza Rice coldly informed President Vladimir Putin the United States was onto the fact that Russians in authority had promised to provide Saddam Hussein with the wherewithal for keeping the American military on the run after his army was defeated.

She went further. She accused Moscow of being in direct communication with the Saddam at his hideout in Syria through the former prime minister and ex-KGB chief, Yevgeny Primakov. He is the only foreigner whom Saddam trusts completely. Rice demanded bluntly that Primakov be sent to Saddam with a message from Washington. He was given one last chance to go into exile, declare his weapons of mass destruction and call off his planned "jihad" against America. His alternative option is to be hunted to the death. The Americans are determined there will never be a second Osama bin Laden-type disappearance. Whatever it takes, they will never let up. They will come and kill him even in the middle of the Kremlin.

Rice Delivers Last Warning

On top of that warning to Saddam, Bush's adviser had a stern caution for the Russian leader: "You are playing with fire. Stop or we will lie in wait for you at every turn - and not only in Chechnya but against Russian interests wherever they may be.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources report that Putin was unabashed. Neither confirming or denying Rice's allegations, Putin recalled that during their last telephone conversation on March 6 (reported in detail in DEBKA-Net-Weekly Issue 101 on March 14, 2003) he implored Bush not to go to war in Iraq, warning him certain elements within Russian, French, German and Iraqi intelligence were preparing a trap to lead the US military into a dead-end situation that would last for years. Putin asked Rice to make sure the US president understood that he could not stand up to Russian intelligence without risking his own neck.

As Rice headed to Northern Ireland to brief Bush before his April 7-8 summit with British prime minister Tony Blair, a high-level gathering at the Kremlin decided not to kowtow to the Americans over Iraq - according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources. As Bush and Blair were winding up their two-day meeting before the media, Russian defense minister Sergei Ivanov informed the United States he was canceling his scheduled April 13 visit to Washington.

That way, the Russian minister sidestepped additional American allegations that Russian companies broke the 1990 UN arms embargo by supplying Iraq with prohibited weapons. Those weapons were listed in the production document Rice handed Putin and included 270 tank engines shipped to Syria before the war, night vision equipment from the Russian military industry PPS, gear that found its way to Iraqi tanks and Special Republican Guard and Fedayeen Saddam units, now fighting in tunnels linking underground command centers in Baghdad.

US troops are combing through the secret Iraqi biological warfare facility at Salman Pak, some 35 kilometers (21 miles) southeast of Baghdad, for traces of Russian equipment and material that were ostensibly used to produce animal feed but which US intelligence experts believe were used to manufacture weapons of mass destruction.

Intelligence officials describe as monstrous the quantities of non-conventional weapons still in the hands of large contingents of Iraqi forces deployed in wide areas untouched by the US military. The arsenal has been kept in reserve for the planned "jihad" guerrilla war. This week, DEBKA-Net-Weekly reports the US war command began preparing for chemical attack against American troops.

The remainder of Iraq's non-conventional stockpile, biological and radiological weapons, is concealed in Syria.

3. Is Time Running out for Assad?

Syrian president Bashar Assad came in for another, especially sharp, caution this week from Washington, the burden of which was: "You'll be hearing from us soon."

The Syrian president should not be too surprised, say DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources, if the American-Kurdish assault developing in northern Iraq - the oil-rich town of Kirkuk was captured Thursday, April 10 and Mosul is next - just happens to slip over the border to strike at targets in Syria.

America's reckoning with Assad gets longer every day. He has been generous with strategic backing including arms sales for the Saddam regime, provided the Iraqi leader, his family and hierarchy with an escape hatch and alternative command post, opened up a corridor for pumping Arab volunteers into Iraq, supplied hidden locations for Saddam's unconventional weapons, and willingly sponsors and provides bases for terrorists.

The Americans therefore can pick and choose their targets in Syria. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources believe they may opt for strikes against the Damascus-based headquarters of the Palestinian Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist groups, as well as the Syrian army and intelligence units integrated in the Iraqi-Syrian-Russian "jihad" infrastructure. US forces may also deal a side-swipe to the Shiite Hizballah terrorists in Lebanon.

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources, the US war command may be hurrying along the deployment of the US 4th Infantry Division in northern Iraq in order to strike out at Syria in the days to come. The Fourth and its tanks, which are now offloading in Kuwait, are needed to boost the units posted in the Baghdad area. Yet the tanks are on their way north to join their crews, who landed earlier at new airstrips laid by American military engineers at Harir and Bakrajo airfields in northern Kurdistan.

And additional airlift is ferrying US military units from bases in Germany into northern Iraq via Turkey since the diplomatic standoff between Washington and Ankara ended after delaying the opening of the northern front. Turkey has secretly opened its borders to transiting US forces, albeit without their heavy equipment, and made its air bases available for US warplanes, including B-52's formerly based in the UK, to fly missions over Iraq.

Hizballah - Chief "Jihad" Recruiter

DEBKA-Net-WeeklyÎs military sources add that the Hizballah is to be co-opted to Saddam's "jihad" guerrilla war against US forces. On April 5, the fiery Hizballah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah told a meeting of the group's leadership: "We must step up warfare in Iraq and the resistance to the American and British occupation. And we must keep up the pressure on Arab regimes by inflicting heavy, heavy, heavy US and British casualties."

Nasrallah's deputy, sheikh Naim Qassem, briefed the session on the discussions Hizballah's security officers have been holding on the Iraqi jihad plan with Iraqi and Syrian representatives.

The Shiite group has already been useful as a recruiting agent for fighters around the Muslim world. The United States has received information that Syrian and Hizballah intelligence agents, organized by the Palestinian Jihad Islami's Damascus-based leader, Ramadan Salah, are going round the Persian Gulf and the Middle East recruiting local political leaders and militia chiefs.

Salah has the right background. Last May and early June, he spent time in Iraqi vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan's Baghdad offices when they handed out tasks for Iraqi intelligence officers to train jihad recruits in the use of chemical weapons. According to intelligence assessments, some 1,200 of these Islamic Jihad fighters are already in Iraq.

Saddam and his sons, Uday and Qusay, plan to keep the "jihad" operation fully under their control. They have set up command headquarters in Syria, but the two young Husseins and Saddam's senior commanders certainly slip in and out of Iraq as needed for secret meetings. It is not yet clear if they have been able to muster sufficient organized strength to get their "jihad" campaign running. Saddam and his boys were almost certainly out of Baghdad when a B-1 warplane dropped four 2,000-pound bombs on Monday on a restaurant where the United States believed they were meeting top aides.

Like the Viet Cong

Saddam prepared himself thoroughly to lead a guerrilla war. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources report that according to information reaching Washington, he was tutored by experts over the past year in the lessons of the ill-fated German invasion of Russia in World War Two and Viet Cong tactics against US troops in Vietnam in the 1960s and early 1970s. He is sure he can conduct as successful a guerrilla war of attrition as the Viet Cong once the Americans consolidate their hold on his country.

The Syrian president is as eager as Saddam to see the rough jolts the Iraqi "jihad" inflicts on the Arab governments, a punishment for being too impotent to induce the United States to call off its invasion of Iraq. They trust that regime changes in the Arab world will eventuate quite quickly in response to the upsets in Iraq. The "Arab street" they believe will join up with Saddam's guerrilla campaign in Iraq in droves to become the carriers of a popular revolution spilling over throughout the region.

In all this uproar, one terrorist voice is thunderously silent, that of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda group.

Deep inroads have been made in the organization. Last month's capture in Pakistan of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged to have organized the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, undoubtedly disrupted al Qaeda's plans for a wave of terrorist strikes. But the al Qaeda has also been focusing its efforts and aspirations on a particular target: the staging of a fundamentalist coup in Saudi Arabia. Sensing Saddam's "jihad's" potential as a formidable rival network, al Qaeda is strengthening its foothold in the oil kingdom. Even if it fails to overthrow the al-Sauds, al Qaeda's leaders believes limited control of some Saudi regions would restore the territorial base lost in Afghanistan, making it possible to continue its international terror campaign and compete on improved terms with Saddam's legion for pride of place in the Arab world.


Iraq's Shiites

Tough Nuts to Crack

The following article was written three hours before the assassination of the Iraqi Shiite cleric, Abd Al-Majid Khoei, whose father, the Grand Ayatollah Khoei, was persecuted by Saddam Hussein as the spiritual leader of Iraq's 12 million Shiites.

Abd Al-Majid returned to Iraq from exile under coalition protection to take up a key role in the future federal government in Baghdad. He died on Thursday, April 10, when a melee that broke out in the Imam Ali Mosque of the holy town of Najaf was exploited by Baath agents in the crowd to commit the murder. A second Shiite cleric died with him.

Chirac Challenges Bush through Iraq's Shiites

Directly after the assassination, the Shiite community of Iraq was pulled in another unexpected direction - this time the outcome of a challenge France had decided to mount against the United States through a Shiite group.

Thursday night, April 10, a small Paris-based Shiite opposition faction published a call to Iraqi Shiites to rise up against the American occupation of Iraq with all their strength, including force of arms. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Paris sources have found that this group, which is headed by Dr. Abd Rikabi, is sponsored directly by the French intelligence DGSE service. It has a sparse following in most of Iraq's Shiite centers. This group would never have taken so extreme an initiative without DGSE sanction, which would have required approval from the President, Jacques Chirac. The inference here is that Chirac, using the Shiites as proxies, has embarked on a course of military confrontation against the American presence in Iraq. This course was predicted by the Russian president Vladimir Putin in a warning to President George W. Bush - as revealed on March 14 by DEBKA-Net-Weekly Issue No. 101.

Here Come the Warlords

Reporting on the battle for Basra, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military experts judge it to have been much more than a fight for control of the southern city. It was all about securing the coalition's fragile eastern front, where Iran's influence is prevalent in a predominantly Shiite area likely to be fertile ground for the coming guerrilla war against the Americans in Iraq. Already, Iranian agents are pouring into the Faw Peninsula, Umm Qassar, Basra and al-Amara, bringing in weapons, money and fighters.

Local tribal leaders watched from the sidelines as US armor rumbled towards Baghdad, leaving them free to take the opportunity of setting themselves up as warlords after American military might had gone by. Already, they are staking claims to patches of territory and establishing militias with Iranian largesse and encouragement. Lawlessness reminiscent of the Pakistani-Afghan border is swiftly taking over and could soon threaten Iraq's southern oil fields.

The old British colonial power that once ruled Iraq is back but failed to take hold of the Faw Peninsula where Iraqi deserters are congregating and rearming for the next round of hostilities.

Neither have the British 7th armored division (Desert Rats) and 16th assault brigade, deployed along a line east of the Shatt al-Arab, been able to prevent Iran from asserting control over the strategic waterway and threatening to turn it into the lawless militias' main logistical supply and communication channel. Like coalition forces elsewhere in Iraq, the British were only partially successful because they simply did not have enough forces on the ground to do any more.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources report that, along with the looting, militias are sprouting in all Iraq's main cities. The first turf wars are erupting over the control of urban districts.

The militias are set up on religious and tribal lines, a contributing factor to the American nightmare of wholesale slaughter in the cities. Isolated "pockets of resistance" could turn in an instant to a volatile brew of Shiite and Sunni Muslim militias at each other's throats, a constant thorn in the side of US forces as they battle Saddam's "jihad" guerrilla bands.

Over the past week, the United States has gone to great lengths to win over the largely secular Shiite population of the big cities. Six out of 10 Iraqis are Shiite, according to US estimates. Iran puts the figure at 75 percent of Iraq's population of 22 million.

The Americans are racing Iran and Saddam for Shiite hearts and minds. The United States made intense efforts this week to persuade Grand Ayatollah Sistani, the senior Shiite authority in Iraq, to publish a fatwa, or religious edict, calling on Shiite believers to cooperate with coalition forces. US sources insisted that Sistani agreed in a secret meeting in Najaf with Colonel Chris Hughes of the US 101st Airborne Division and Shiite agents of the CIA to call on his people not to resist American troops.

Two days later, Sistani's office in London disavowed this call.

Adding to US dismay, the next day Iraqi television broadcast what it said was the voice of a senior Shiite clergyman reading a fatwa issued by five religious leaders calling on the Shiites to fight US and British forces to the death.

But the United States has another card up its sleeve - Abd Al-Majid Khoei, its main Shiite ally and leader of some 3,000 Shiite fighters funded by Washington and based in Kuwait. Khoei was in Basra at the beginning of the war some three weeks ago and informed US General Tommy Franks, the supreme coalition commander, the city had fallen. That was premature and the Americans hustled him out of Basra. He is now in Najaf where he has been trying unsuccessfully to be received by Sistani or the ayatollah's associates and request a favorable fatwa.

Undeterred by Sistani's snub, Khoei made the rounds of Shiite adherents living in Najaf and Karbala, lobbying them for greater cooperation with the US military. He has met with only partial success, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in the area, but in Najaf managed to reopen Shiite shrines shut down by Saddam Hussein, including the Imam Ali central mosque. The Republican Guards had taken possession of the shrine and was preparing to use it as a firing position, when the local populace forced them to drop their plan.

American officers in Najaf and Karbala have found the local populace deeply concerned with the situation of their fellow believers in Baghdad. They offered assurances that the Shiites in the capital should have no fear of being harmed any more than their coreligionists in Najaf and Karbala.

Besides Khoei, the Americans are attempting to influence the population through two other prominent Shiite clerics - Sayyad Bahar el-Olum and Ayatollah Hussein Sadr. They are also courting the Ayatollah Sheikh Mohammed Bshaq Bayat.

A secular Shiite, Ahmed Chalabi, the London-based leader of the opposition Iraqi National Congress, was also asked by Washington to help out. The United States flew him along with some 300 to 400 fighters and 250 people whom he believes will be part of a new Iraqi government from the northern city of Dohuk to Talil, the main US base of air operations in Iraq. From there, he moved to Nasiriyah in the south to spread word of the prominent role the United States is promising the Shiites in post-war central government, if they show their support for the American action in Iraq.

A Destabilizing Wind from Lebanon

The Lebanese Hizballah's terrorist-ideologue, Sheikh Hassan Fadlallah, member of the Lebanese group's Politburo and the Ayatollah Sistani's foremost rival as religious authority in the Shiite world, has already thrown himself into the creation of Saddam's "jihad" guerrilla underground. Sistani by refraining from throwing his support behind the United States implicitly adds his weight to Saddam's schemes.

Tehran is continuing to push its candidate, Mohamad Baqr Al Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution of Iraq, for a senior government position in post-war Baghdad against the candidacy of Majid Khoei. The Iranians threaten to stir up Iraqi Shiites against the Americans if they do not get their way. Before launching the war, the Americans welcomed Al Hakim - but have discovered since that his influence in the Shiite community of Iraq is marginal, and are brushing off Iran's threats.


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

From DEBKAfile's Special War Diary

Day 18 of war- April 6
Even amid crucial battles in Iraq, US President George W. Bush has made the gesture of leaving his capital again this week for a second attempt to shore up his foremost war ally, British prime minister Tony Blair, in the fight for his political life at home.

Blair believes he can win support by persuading Bush to allot the United Nations and Europe a major role in Iraq's post-war administration and the disposition of its oil resources. He thinks Europe will be impressed if he can win the US president round to their perceptions of Middle East peacemaking. He is unlikely to get very far with Bush on either.

The Bush administration has set in train its post-war blueprint for Iraq without turning to partners. Three developments are worth noting:

1.
The US President's choice as head of the interim government in Baghdad is retired Lieutenant General Jay M. Garner. According to DEBKAfile's Washington sources, a plan is in place for the creation of 14 "departments", each headed by an American soldier, technocrat or diplomat supported by a staff of eight senior local officials representing Iraq's religious-tribal-ethnic makeup. An advance group of American diplomats and technocrats is already standing by in Kuwait to start setting up the new authority.

2.
Bush has still to decide between the opposing views of the leaders of the Pentagon and the State Department on the final shape of the interim administration, namely the ratio between its American and international personnel.

3.
The governments who opposed the American war in Iraq will be barred from partaking in its fruits. France, Germany, Russia and the other nations are seen as having fought the United States every inch of the road to the war, placing obstacles in every international forum, including the UN and NATO, and continuing to place cogs in the war wheel.

The same world leaders are just as unlikely to be afforded the lead role they seek in the diplomacy for settling the Israel-Palestinian conflict and forging a peace, a process allotted a space in the same broad scheme charted by the Bush presidency.

DEBKAfile's Palestinian sources report a showdown last Thursday, April 3, between Yasser Arafat and the first Palestinian prime minister-designate, Abu Mazen.

Back from a few day sin the Gaza Strip, Abu Mazen asked to be relieved of the appointment. Arafat told him angrily he could not accept an historical appointment one minute and drop it the next. Sources close to Abu Mazen reveal that he has despaired of making inroads on Arafat's powers and acquiring any real authority. And, as long as Arafat is in charge, Palestinian terrorism will continue to surge, closing the door to reform, an accommodation with Israel and any change in the fortunes of the Palestinian people.

At present, Israel lives with between 50 and 60 suicide terror alerts per day! Most are only averted by the presence of Israeli forces in every Palestinian urban center and constant round-ups, searches and surprise raids against terrorist strongholds.

Even if President Bush had decided to meet Tony Blair, the Arabs and the Europeans halfway by forcing the Quartet's road map un-amended down Israel's throat, Arafat and his terror machine would sabotage any progress towards a settlement.

Day 19 of war- April 7

While the world's gaze is fixed on the sensational developments in Baghdad and Basra, US weapons of mass destruction specialists are using a toothcomb to go through one of the grimmest sites of the Saddam era: Salman Pak, center of biological weapons development and training ground for foreign Islamic terrorists. The site, 25 km southeast of Baghdad, was captured by the American 1st Marine Expeditionary Force last Friday, April 4.

Its situation on a 20 sq.km area inside a curve formed by the Tigris River made it easier for Saddam's Directorate of General Intelligence to isolate the site, which was fenced off and patrolled by a large guard force. The American soldiers found the buildings of this dreaded place intact, like so many other locations in this war, as though its owners thought they were coming back soon. Two of those buildings are luxury private villas owned by Saddam and his half-brother Barazan al-Tikriti.

Salman Pak is where, up to 1991 at least, the Iraqis developed their biological weapons. Dr. Rihab Taha, known to US intelligence as "Dr. Germ", engaged in research on a massive scale on anthrax, botulinum toxin, ricin and other poisons to man. Its facilities are expected to yield promising leads to hidden WMD locations around the country.

DEBKAfile's military and intelligence sources report that as soon as the advance forces ascertained that there were no guerrilla, suicide or sniper forces in Salman Pak, they sent in special US units created and trained since mid-2002 for the purpose of ferreting out and identifying unconventional weapons. The force made up of American military intelligence, CIA and FBI experts includes some of the finest scientific brains specializing in biological weaponry. Within hours of their arrival, they dove in with their science fiction equipment, attired in what looked like space suits and threw a huge plastic dome over the buildings.

The same swat team when finished at Salman Pak will move its operation to other similar unconventional warfare locations known to exist in Iraq. Their biggest task is likely to be the research facilities and WMD stores thought to be concealed in Saddam Hussein's underground bunker labyrinths once they are exposed to the light of day.

Day 19 of war - April 7

One of US war commander General Tommy Franks' favorite aphorisms for his troops is that speed can kill the enemy. He was as good as his word Monday morning, April 7, when he sent an armored column made up of two brigades of the 3rd Mechanized Division on a lightening thrust from the Dora district in the south into the heart of Baghdad on the west bank of the Tigris River on what was first described as a mission to probe enemy defenses.

Interviewed outside Saddam's official Northern Palace, an American officer said his troops were securing the palace and moving on to additional government centers and symbols of Saddam's regime.

Their real objective, according to DEBKAfile's military sources, is not visible on the surface of Baghdad at all. It is to find a second entrance to the underground system of tunnels leading to Saddam Hussein's command and control bunker fortress believed to be located about 20 km away to the west. US war commanders are convinced that members of the Iraqi leadership still present in the country and its high command are running the war from this underground headquarters.

That command fortress is also linked to the international airport now in American hands. The opening to one passage was discovered Saturday in Saddam's opulent guest suite at the airport. So far, American forces have not been able to reach the secret command post from this opening, whether because its passages are blocked up or turning into false alleys. The American 3rd Mechanized Division troops were sent to raid Saddam's official palace in Baghdad Monday morning to seek out a second entrance. DEBKAfile's military sources add that the resistance to the US advance was relatively light because the bulk of Iraqi's leadership's defending forces, especially Saddam's Fedayeen commanded by Uday Hussein, are hunkered down at this command headquarters and three other underground command bunkers spaced out in and around Baghdad. No one knows where Saddam is or from where he or a stand-in - his sons or other regime officials - may be conducting the war. Last week, there was evidence he had left Baghdad and that top members of his government had landed at Latakiya in Syria. Saddam himself is thought by US war command circles to be determined to fight on. He may be in Tikrit or somewhere else in Iraq - or even returned to the Baghdad region through the underground tunnel labyrinth revealed first by DEBKAfile.

Day 20 of war - April 8, 2003

Just as crucial is the war of wits and words between the coalition and the Iraqi war commands which ran on into Tuesday, April 8 - although a US military spokesman said: "The war of words is over." He must have realized that the verbal battle was giving the Iraqi side a useful platform on which to challenge American statements and was not doing their credibility much good.

The Iraqis gained some propaganda mileage Tuesday from the US tank shell that hit the media center at Hotel Palestine in Baghdad, killing two TV cameramen and injuring two more journalists.

DEBKAfile's intelligence sources have discovered that the shell did not come from a US tank. The explosion that hurt the correspondents occurred on an upper floor and was rigged and planted by Iraqi military intelligence. To avoid a row with the press corps covering the war and nip the incident in the bud, the US command assumed responsibility and apologized before it went any further. This is unlikely to work.

On Saturday, April 5, hours after the first American tanks rolled into Baghdad, Saddam and his sons went underground, cutting themselves off from most of the Iraqi leadership and observing total electronic hush. There was therefore no chance of the American bomb finding him in a restaurant in Baghdad on Monday, or of a tip-off on his whereabouts from any of his associates.

Neither is there any real proof that his cousin, General Ali Hassan Majid, "Chemical Ali" was killed in Basra, notwithstanding the assertions of local British commanders.

Beneath the heavily exposed surface battles, a fierce secret war is raging in the subterranean tunnels linking Saddam's four of five command and control fortress-bunkers spread out under the Baghdad region. DEBKAfile's sources reveal that US Special forces are locked in hand to hand combat with Special Republican Guards and Saddam's Fedayeen commanded by Uday Hussein. All that we know about the battle of the tunnels for the moment is that American forces uncovered two or three secret entrances to the underground labyrinth - two of them at the international airport of Baghdad after its capture. At least one of those entrances led to a broad underground highway system with roads some 12 meters wide through which two armored personnel carriers can pass each other comfortably. Some of these passageways are designed as blind alleys to lead interlopers astray; the ones leading to the command and control bunker-fortresses are guarded by Iraqi commandos.

Day 21 of war, April 9, 2002

The redeployment of the 1st Marines Expeditionary Force and the 3rd Armored Division at the center of Baghdad with very little resistance quickly bisected the city, restricting movement between the northeastern and some of the southwestern districts. US forces will endeavor to keep to the security zone running down the center and, barring extraordinary situations, off the city streets. When the town settles down in a few days, US forces will re-divide the two sections, drawing security belts between the four parts - and so on, city block by city block, until every corner has been cleared.

This unique tactic is designed to secure Baghdad without causing large numbers of casualties -either among the incoming troops or the civilian population. Operation Baghdad promises to be the largest and most significant American military feat after the capture of the international airport - at least on the surface.

DEBKAfile's military sources stress that the secret military operation taking place underground and out of sight since the beginning of this week may be as important and audacious. It is there that US forces are fighting their way through the bunkers and tunnels honeycombing subterranean Baghdad, some four to six tiers and buried 60 to 90 ft deep.

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