Mideast Roundup
January 19, 2004
Al Qaeda
Midaat Mursi: Dirty Bomber on the Loose
US intelligence agencies fighting al-Qaeda have launched a manhunt in the US, Mexico, Canada and elsewhere for Midaat Mursi, the Egyptian who, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s counter-terror sources, is chairman of al-Qaeda’s WMD committee. He is believed to be traveling with one or two other people, carrying dirty bombs.
The exploits of Mursi, also known as Abu Khabab, and his companions are one of the main immediate triggers for the raising of the terror alert in the US from elevated (yellow) to high (orange) at the end of December. The alert was again lowered to yellow last week, but our terror experts say that this does not mean that the danger is gone. Rather, it means that the Americans are not sure these days whether Mursi is in North America, Europe or the Middle East.
But reports about him being sent by his commander, al-Qaeda’s number-two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to carry out radioactive attacks in a big Western city are being confirmed by intelligence sources. To avoid jeopardizing the manhunt now in process, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s counter-terror sources can’t reveal all the details about where this information comes from.
What we can say at this stage is that American special forces are engaged in a number of operations inside western Europe, Chechnya, and in Palestinian cities and refugee camps in the Middle East. In addition, for the first time, there have been secret raids inside the US itself.
These undercover operations have netted several dozen of Mursi’s collaborators and accomplices who were arrested and moved to undisclosed places where they are under interrogation. In the past few days, these interrogations have revealed more details about the radioactive attack that was planned for New Year’s Eve.
They have also produced evidence of Chechnyan and Palestinian involvement with al-Qaeda — the first direct link to be discovered between Chechnyan and Palestinian terrorists at the operational level.
On the WMD game since before 9/11
On November 17, 2001, DEBKAfile wrote in the article entitled Entire Taleban-al Qaeda heads for mountain refuge:
“Our intelligence and military experts also discount the ‘documents’ discovered in a base south of Kabul which claimed to bear instructions on how to build nuclear weapons and missiles. Crude red herrings, the instructions turn out to be translations of material available in any bookshop or internet site. The only member of the al Qaeda network aside from its top leaders who knows the truth about the group’s weapons of mass destruction resources is a chemical engineer called Midhat Mursi, or Abu Khabab, a member of the Egyptian Jihad Islami.
“At the Tora Bora base near Jalalabad called Al Badr or Abu Kebab Camp, less than 20 km east of Kabul (Ed. rebuilt on the site of a camp first constructed by the CIA in the early 1980s; the whole complex surrounding the camp known as Darunta), Mursi built and managed the network’s facilities for the manufacture of nuclear, chemical, biological and toxic weapons and trained agents in their use. In Western terms, Abu Kebab (variant spelling) may be regarded as the director of bin Laden’s nuclear program.
“As of September 9, two days before the suicide attacks against the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the facility was evacuated and Mursi transferred to a hideout near bin Laden in the Hindu Kush Mountains.”
Mursi’s name surfaced when the US captured the Darunta camps in October 2001.
On March 1, 2003, Khalid Sheik Mohammed was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, in a house owned by Abdul Quddos Khan, a Pakistani biologist who had access to biological, chemical, and nuclear production materials. Quddos managed to escape. In the rooms of his house, American special forces found hand-written documents and computer hard drives to do with al-Qaeda’s efforts to build dirty bombs. In some of these documents, the name of Abu Khabab was mentioned.
On Friday, January 9 2004, we got a glimpse of the complexity of the al-Qaeda terror machine and how everything, people and events, are interconnected from back in the pre-September 11 period. In a laconic official announcement, the Swiss federal police said that they had arrested eight people in connection with terror attacks on westerners in Saudi Arabia last May. They say that those arrested are being held on suspicion of providing logistical support to criminal organizations.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s counter-terror and intelligence sources report that the arrests were made from information gathered from hundreds of Swiss phone cards used in Rawalpindi from Khalid Sheik Mohammad’s apartment. After US special forces found these cards, a secret investigation began to find the people who Sheik Mohammad spoke to from Rawalpindi. It took 11 months to unearth those in Switzerland.
According to our intelligence sources, the January 9 raid on five Swiss cantons by Switzerland’s federal police supported by a state police task force, led to 20 Arabs being investigated, of whom eight were detained, seven of them Egyptian and one Saudi. According to our sources, they formed the main logistical body that supplied intelligence, explosives, money and forged documents to the al-Qaeda cells operating inside Saudi Arabia as well as to Midaat Mursi and his people.
Our sources understand that the center of the network worked from at least five different houses in Lucerne. In addition, the Swiss authorities, following an American request, seized active bank accounts belonging to al-Qaeda. In one of them, they found 50 million Swiss francs.
A thorough investigation of the eight detainees is now going on in an urgent bid to extract from them all they know about Mursi and his people. American terror experts believe that at least one of the eight detainees should know something about his recent movements and destination.
Hot Used Weapons Mart
T-72 for Sale, One Owner, Good Condition
There were no giveaways, balloons or barbecues, but business was booming this week at a bizarre Syrian bazaar — a used tank lot at al-Qamishli, located at the point where the borders of Syria, Iraq and Turkey meet. On sale: Russian T-72 tanks.
No, not in mint condition, hardly top-of-the-line merchandise, refurbished with state-of-the art, computerized target and firing systems and night vision equipment. The tank on sale was a Soviet product purchased by the Syrian army in the 1980s. As used tanks go, the ones on offer at a rock bottom price of $3,000 apiece, were well enough maintained in good running condition and battle-ready.
This arms market has sprung up, as DEBKA-Net-Weekly's exclusive intelligence and counter-terrorism sources have discovered, in back of the large train station at al-Qamishli, a forward point whence freight trains laden with oil and other products picked up at Syria's Mediterranean ports once set off for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
Monday, January 12, in the middle of the night, our sources sighted a tank transporter, its lights extinguished, pulling into the railway station, loading up a number of tanks and heading toward the Iraqi border. The buyer's identity is unknown, and US military intelligence is working on the problem on the premise that an Iraqi guerrilla or Baath party group has little use for medium-sized tanks. The most likely proposition examined by intelligence officials is that the buyers are US-allied Kurds who are engaged in establishing an autonomous border police force in northern Iraq.
(See separate <#3-2>article on Kurdish efforts to establish a state.)
Iraqi guerrilla forces may not be in the market for tanks but, in the second week of January, their agents purchased US-made 106 mm recoilless cannons in another Syrian city, Dayr az Zawr on the eastern banks of the Euphrates River. The cannon, mounted on jeeps, sell for about $900 to $1,000 apiece.
How did these American tools of war end up in Syria?
The long arm of Middle Eastern arms merchants could be to blame. It stretches from the Middle East to Pakistan in the north, the Persian Gulf in the east and Jordan in the west, a country whose border is only a hop and a skip from Dayr az Zawr. The arsenals of all the countries in the region are packed with masses of recoilless guns made in the USA. Any emergency store might overlook 200 to 300 missing weapons filched for the Syrian black market.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources, the purchases on behalf of the Iraqi insurgents are made by agents of Iraqi mafia groups and “imported” into Iraq by several multi-forked routes.
(See separate <#3-1>article on reorganized guerrilla movement after Saddam’s capture.)
Some of the guns and ammunition are floated down the Euphrates River aboard rafts under cover of dark. At dawn, the rafts are hidden in the tall reeds growing on the banks. Smugglers jump in the water and tow them with heavy ropes to hideouts out of sight of reconnaissance aircraft, drones and satellites. A second route for the recoilless guns is overland from Dayr Az Zawr south to the al-Qaim region, where they are disassembled and piled on pickup trucks for their next destination, the Iraqi cities of Anal and Al Hadithah.
The route splits again here, heading east toward Tikrit and Samarra or south to Ramadi, Falluja, Habaniyah and Baghdad.
According to our sources, the weapons emanating from al-Qamishli, mainly tanks, are smuggled along two routes into Iraq — directly into Mosul and via the Iraqi towns of Sinjar and Tall Afar.
As long as $100 bills are not counterfeit
The transactions for the sale of tanks and recoilless guns in northern and eastern Syria are carried out with no questions asked. All that matters is that the $100 bills for payment are not counterfeit. According to our sources, a whole region of Syria — running from al-Qamishli in the north southward to Dayr az Zawr - is one big arms bazaar. All of the dozen or so villages and towns in the region are in on the traffic, each specializing in a particular type of weaponry, from explosives to AK-47 rifles. Larger items like 60 mm machineguns or rocket-propelled grenade launchers, can be purchased at gas stations in the area. The concept of convenience store acquires a whole new meaning in this corner of the world.
According to our sources, prices have begun climbing at a dizzying rate. As recently as November, a Kalashnikov assault rifle sold on the Syrian arms market for a mere $10. The same weapon — ammo not included — is now selling for $100. A crate of Russian grenades that cost from $17 to $22 is now going for $52 to $58, depending on year of manufacture.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources attribute the rise to heavy demand - not only on the part of anti-American Iraqi guerrilla forces but also their sworn rivals, the Kurds as well as the pro-American militias. The militia forces are in the process of being organized in the Mosul area by former Iraqi defense minister Hashem Sultan and in the al-Anbar region by the US 82nd Airborne Division.
Officers in charge of creating the new militias say the illicit traffic in fighters and black market weapons into Iraq cannot be choked off without the cooperation of local tribal leaders. Every tribal chief controls a swathe of territory and has his price for directing his men to report on cross-border movements. Some of the tribal leaders demand arms, some cash - either a steep one-lump sum or monthly payment. Payoffs may be in the six-figure dollar range, depending on the size of the region and its topography, most extortionate for tribes controlling sections of the Euphrates. Other chiefs want guns — lots of them. Some require as many as 500 Kalashnikov assault rifles, apparently to shift them at a profit. New cars and machineguns are also on their wish lists.
That's where the Syrian black market comes in. It is close at hand, available, reliable and well-stocked. Americans and Kurds may very simply place their orders with local smugglers and delivery in Iraq is made within two to three days.
No one knows how much Syrian president Bashar Assad is pocketing out of this thriving trade. After all, the weapons bazaars are located in his country and much of the wares on sale come from the Syrian armed forces' own stocks. He and his family are almost certainly clearing a cut of the profits.
Washington is now waiting to see when and where Iraqi guerrilla forces start firing their US-made recoilless guns against American troops. Intelligence officials expect them to be used for long-range attacks on US military convoys.
Iraq
1. Saddam’s Capture Prompted Restructure of Guerrilla Forces
DEBKA-Net-Weekly has obtained exclusive information about the new set-up and deployment of Iraq’s guerrilla forces in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s capture.
Iraq’s armed opposition is divided now into three main groups, and several smaller ones. It is the three big groups that are responsible for the great bulk of the attacks on American forces and their coalition and Iraqis allies.
1.
Group led by Hani Tikriti, a colonel in Saddam’s Special Republican Guard, and by his brother Rafahi Tikriti, head of Saddam’s SSO secret service. A third commander is Sibaawi Tikriti, a half-brother of Saddam’s and full brother of Barzan Tikriti, the intelligence chief also captured by the Americans. The group operates in the Sunni Triangle, between Tikrit, Falluja and Ramadi.
2.
Group led by General Rawi Seifallah, one of the top commanders of the Special Republican Guard. Many of the fighters in this group are drawn from the big Seifallah tribe. It is also the only group that has fighters from the Saddam Fedayoun Special Forces.
3.
Group led by Mohsen Khafji who this week appointed himself acting chairman of the Iraqi Baath Party. He worked in the foreign department of Saddam’s intelligence apparatus and therefore has good connections in France, Iran, Algeria and with the Palestinians. The group operates mostly in the Baghdad area.
In addition, three much smaller guerrilla groups are active. These are: Ansar al-Sunna, operating mainly in Falluja and Baquba; Lagnat al-Islam; and Nasser al-Islam, which is believed to have al-Qaeda connections. There also several criminal gangs joining in anti-American and anti-Iraqi operations.
Americans stay on, and call the shots
Though the guerrilla groups remain active, the wave of violence besetting Iraq over the past six months has lost much of its force since Saddam’s capture and as a result of American action. This, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources in Baghdad and Washington can report, is what Paul Bremer, Iraq’s US administrator, told the White House in his latest report. Bremer spoke of the inner collapse of the terrorist apparatus, and of a dramatic increase in Iraqis informing on the guerrillas.
Because of this new situation, Bremer recommended the administration agree to two new steps.
The first, and most important, is that the US should immediately make it clear to all and sundry, including Iraq’s interim Governing Council, that American forces would not only be staying on beyond June 30, when a new Iraqi government is scheduled to assume power, but that they would continue to have a completely free hand to act as American military commanders see fit. It was important, Bremer urged, that this demand for freedom of action be made crystal clear to the Iraqis before June 30, and not just afterwards.
Secondly, taking a line from Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the top Briton in Iraq, Bremer recommended that, in a bid to win hearts and minds, American troops in many Iraqi cities should follow the example of British troops in southern Iraq and dispense with heavy protective equipment, like bullet-proof vests and helmets. They should also consider ending the intimidating habit of wearing dark sunglasses. DEBKA-Net-Weekly has to point out that American officers in the field, especially ground forces commander Lt-General Ricardo Sanchez, are vehemently opposed to this suggestion.
2. Iraq Kurds Are Pushing Hard for State
While US planners continue to deliberate over transfer-of-power elections in Iraq and whether pivotal Shiite leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani will play ball, Iraqi Kurds are on the move.
Jalal Talabani, head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and arguably the most powerful member of Iraq’s US-appointed governing council, led a large Kurdish delegation into secret talks with US administrator Paul Bremer last weekend. Representatives of the Kurdish Democratic Party, headed by the second most influential Kurdish leader in northern Iraq, Massoud Barzani, also took part. This meeting was supposed to be a pacifier after their last encounter ten days ago when Bremer scolded the Kurds for harking back to the pre-war American near-independence plan for their region instead of concerning themselves with the next stage of the Iraqi republic’s future after Saddam Hussein.
After that meeting, Talabani pulled some wires in the White House and asked for Bremer to be put on notice to pull his punches with the Kurds. This time, instead of falling into line behind Bremer, Talabani and his colleagues, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources in Kurdistan and Baghdad, raised three explosive points touching vitally on Iraqi territorial integrity:
A.
No Iraqi forces, including those the Americans are training, will be permitted to enter Kurdistan under any condition. The new Iraqi army will be able to deploy only up to the Kurdistan border fence.
B.
The 85,000 Kurdish soldiers controlled by Talabani and Barzani will be unified into a single “Kurdish Border Patrol”. The force will be Kurdish-led and any contact with the new Iraqi general staff limited to exchanges of messages on cooperation and joint operations.
(See “Talabani’s Fallback Plan for his own Kurdistan”, DEBKA-Net-Weekly 140, January 2, 2004).
C.
There will be no Iraqi administrative offices in Kurdistan.
Bremer reserved comment on these demands. But the Kurdish leaders appear convinced that Washington will not stand in the way of what they are calling an “independent Kurdish state in camouflage”, spanning northern Iraq. The Kurds and DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s experts believe the United States will agree to such an arrangement because:
1.
Washington has abandoned any hope of Syrian president Bashar Assad indeed ceasing his country’s involvement in the guerrilla war against US troops in Iraq. Consequently, the United States will not oppose the establishment of a strong Kurdish state or entity that will deploy forces to block the flow of arms and fighters across the Syrian-Iraqi border.
(See separate <#2>article in this issue on Syrian arms bazaar on the Iraqi frontier).
2.
A Kurdish state will stand in the way of Turkish ambitions to take over northern Iraqi oilfields around the cities of Kirkuk and Mosul. The United States is not interfering in Turkey’s campaign to join the European Union but it does not want Ankara to feel it also has a green light to establish a presence in Iraq. That represents a dramatic departure from Washington’s policy of just a year ago, on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq. As far as the Bush administration is concerned, the Turks will have to make do with control over pipelines from Iraq, Central Asia and the Caucasus that carry oil to the Mediterranean.
3.
The Kurds see a parallel between their situation and intensive US efforts to establish a pro-American government and a strong US military and political presence in the former Soviet republic of Georgia following the overthrow of president Eduard Shevardnadze. A pro-American Georgia north of Turkey and a pro-American Kurdish state to its south will complete the US military ring around Turkey.
POW Saddam Hussein
Daughter Allots a Dictator’s Ransom for His Defense
The Pentagon’s decision on January 9 to label Saddam Hussein a prisoner of war is puzzling in that it fails to answer a great many questions about his fate, most of all when and where he will be brought to justice in the next stage.
In the meantime, DEBKA-Net-Weekly can reveal that his daughter Raghed Kamal, who lives in Jordan under the protection of the government, has consulted a group of lawyers about arranging his defense and placed her considerable fortune at her father’s disposal.
Proclaiming Saddam Hussein a prisoner of war has one disadvantage for the Americans — which, however, is easily outbalanced by a huge advantage, say DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s diplomatic sources.
The disadvantage is that, as a POW, Saddam acquires certain rights under the Geneva Conventions: he may not, for instance, be made an object of “public curiosity” or subjected to coercive methods of interrogation.
On the first point, the US has probably squeezed all it can out of the demeaning footage taken of Saddam at the time of his capture.
On the second, the month’s delay in pronouncing on his POW status gave the Americans plenty of tough interrogating time. The Pentagon’s lawyers now say Saddam has been a POW since he was captured on December 14. How explain the delay in letting the world know? A couple of days before the announcement, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld commented that the Pentagon’s lawyers had “good reasons” for not declaring Saddam a POW.
However DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources reveal that the deposed Iraqi dictator has given virtually nothing away under CIA interrogation. Even the confrontation between him and Abed Hammud, his personal adjutant and repository of all his secrets, yielded no results and led to the ugly rumors of Hammud’s sudden death in confinement. The Americans may have decided that pressing on with an unprofitable business was outweighed by the importance of gaining a free hand in deciding what eventually happens to the former dictator.
There lies the advantage. Saddam’s POW status enables Washington to block any demand by the Iraqis in the immediate future to get their hands on him. As a POW, he is the responsibility of the occupying power. Under the Geneva Conventions, a POW may be tried for war crimes by an international tribunal or the occupying power. Even if the US is quite likely eventually to decide to hand him over to the Iraqis, the time will be of the Bush administration’s choosing.
The administration has added to the confusion by stressing that it has not taken a final decision, and still leans towards an Iraqi trial. At the time of Saddam’s capture, President George W. Bush said that only the Iraqi people should decide his punishment. But secretary of state Colin Powell said bewilderingly after the Pentagon lawyers had pronounced that he was still not sure about Saddam’s status. He added that the Iraqis should be “full partners” in what happens to him, but the administration has yet to decide when to hand him over.
It came as no surprise when Rumsfeld, a master of obfuscation, added to the vagueness. At a news briefing this week, he said Saddam would be regarded as “an enemy prisoner of war for the period up to May 1,” when President Bush declared major combat operations over in Iraq. He added, “And he has the potential for being prosecuted for activities after May 1 involving the insurgency and the killing of coalition troops.”
Rumsfeld, who may have been trotting out what international legal experts told him to say, put in: “The United States reserves the right to change his prisoner-of-war legal status.”
Enter Saddam’s daughter
The only clear thing to emerge from all this doubletalk is that Washington is intent on holding on to Saddam for the time being while keeping all its options open. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources, there are two reasons for this.
First, the Americans want to remain in control of the pre-trial process, to make sure they can regulate the information coming out and be in a position to hold back unwanted revelations. Second, the former ruler’s handover could be a valuable bargaining chip in dealing with the new Iraqi government that takes over after June 30.
In theory, at least, the 7,000 Iraqis detained by the Americans, and the 6,000 held by the British are all POWs. A US military spokesman, Commander Chris Isleib, told the BBC back in April, “We’re treating all prisoners as POWs until they receive further designation.”
If it was a fact, it was a fact not widely publicized.
Making a complicated story even more so, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources have received exclusive information about Saddam’s daughter, Raghed Kamal, applying to the Jordanian authorities at the end of last week for permission to move to Paris. She gave two reasons.
1.
The Jordanian government bars Arab journalists in Amman from contacting her ever since the interview she gave to the Dubai-based Al Arabiya TV station, when she attributed Saddam Hussein’s fall to the betrayal of people around him.
2.
More importantly, she wants to move her considerable wealth from Jordan to Paris. She retained the family fortune when her late husband, Hussein Kamal, head of Saddam’s military industry and WMD program, defected to Amman in 1995. He offered secrets to the Clinton administration in return for US backing for a coup against his father-in-law. This was denied. Kamal was finally lured back to Baghdad the following year by a promise of forgiveness and murdered after his return.
His widow told the Jordanian authorities she intends to devote her resources to financing and managing her father’s defense. Our sources understand that she intends to set up a group of international lawyers, mainly European, as Saddam’s defense team.
What she did not tell the Jordanians was that she simultaneously intends to rebuild the Iraqi Baath party, setting up a party in exile.
The Jordanians were deeply embarrassed by her request. They decided to ask the Americans what to do. They have not yet had their answer.
Baath also has plans for Saddam
As DEBKA-Net-Weekly went to press, our sources in Iraq reported the Iraqi Baath party had issued its own statement about Saddam’s POW status. Describing Saddam’s detention as temporary, the announcement appeared to contain a veiled threat by the Baath underground to attack the secret location where the Americans are holding him. The statement also expressed what it called the Iraqi people’s admiration of Saddam’s determination in facing down his US captors. It then listed four points chock full of threats but also indicating for the first time since May that attacks on American troops could cease if the US administration in Iraq resumed negotiations with Saddam and the Baath party. Those points are:
1.
Saddam should not be treated as a private citizen but as president of the Iraqi republic.
2.
Should the United States refuse to concede that point, Saddam would no longer be a POW but an abductee, and the Iraqi underground would respond accordingly.
3.
The only way to pursue an agreement restoring order to Iraq and enabling the United States to withdraw its troops is through a direct dialogue with Saddam — and the Americans know exactly where to find him.
4.
The Baath party is revoking all appointments to the US-backed Iraqi governing council and voiding, in advance, all results from the coming general election in Iraq.
Jordan — Syria
Monarch Wary of Assad’s Promised Red Carpet
Two Abdullahs got together in Riyadh last week. The Jordanian monarch put his head together with that of the Saudi crown prince in a private powwow to clear some ground before his forthcoming visit to Damascus.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Middle East sources have got the details of their exchange.
First of all, Abdullah of Jordan asked his Saudi namesake to use his influence to lessen Syrian-Jordanian tensions before he goes to Damascus to meet Syrian president Bashar Assad.
That tension centers on five points.
1.
Syrian military intelligence, with Assad’s approval, continues to send terrorists into Jordan through the Yarmouk River.
2.
Assad’s direct involvement in the war against America in Iraq.
3.
Musab al Zarqawi, a Jordanian citizen who is thought to be one of al-Qaeda’s key agents (the Turks recently said that they believe Zarqawi masterminded the attacks on Jewish synagogues and British buildings in Istanbul in mid-November) moves freely in and out of the Syrian capital. King Abdullah complained that he had information that Zarqawi, in the past six weeks, had visited Damascus a few times to talk to other al-Qaeda people.
4.
The Syrians are obstructing progress on the construction of a Jordanian-Syrian dam on the Yarmouk.
5.
King Abdullah told the Saudi crown prince that, according to information he had got from American intelligence, General Baihat Suleiman, the head of Syrian intelligence in Lebanon, told a US agent that if the Syrian army completed its withdrawal from Lebanon, it would create a vacuum in which nobody would be left to rein in the Hizballah. King Abdullah offered as his opinion to the Americans that this was nothing more than an excuse for the Syrians not to get out of Lebanon.
King Abdullah is reported by DEBKA-Net-Weekly sources as assuring the Saudi ruler that he would prefer not to take extreme action against Syria in the same way as his late father, King Hussein, once did. But if Bashar Assad continues in his present policies, he may be pushed to. In the 1970s and 1980s, King Hussein, sent Jordanian agents and activists of Jordan’s Muslim Brothers, to stir up trouble among the Druze of the Horan region of Syria. King Abdullah said, “I’m not going to play the same game as my father played unless I am forced to.”
Damascus takes note and responds
Within days of Jordanian King Abdullah’s talks in Riyadh, the Syrians — who received a report of his discussions — launched a charm campaign toward Amman. DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources report that, as a first step, the Syrian media stopped all its attacks on the Jordanian monarch. Since early this week, Syrian emissaries, mainly businessmen and academics with ties to Jordanians, have been arriving in the kingdom bearing promises of a red-carpet welcome for when the Jordanian king decides to visit Damascus.
Our sources say the king is not biting. He told the Syrians he wanted to send his prime minister, Faisal Al Fayez, to Damascus first as an advance guard to test the waters there.
Saudi Throne Embattled
1. Split in the Royal House
The fight against al-Qaeda has turned the splits in the Saudi royal family, already wide, into a gulf. Above all, as DEBKA-Net-Weekly can report, Crown Prince Abdullah, the effective ruler of Saudi Arabia, and his half-brother Prince Nayef, the minister of interior, are fundamentally at odds over the basic approach the royal family should take to the war on terror.
Abdullah and his inner circle believe that the struggle against terrorism can be won only if the royal family takes a much more positive attitude to the Saudis who cry out for social and political reform. They are aware that the result of this would be a weakening of the power and influence of the conservative Wahhabi clerical establishment.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly has reported that Abdullah, in the past, while appearing to sympathize with the reformists has, in effect, ignored them. But this is changing. Recently the people around him have been taking the reformists seriously, and encouraging them to prepare petitions for the crown prince.
This approach is vehemently opposed by Nayef.
Last year’s al-Qaeda attacks on Saudi Arabia have energized the interior minister. Before February 2003, he tended to be laid back; now he is outspoken and proactive. He and his full brother, Prince Nawaf, the head of Saudi intelligence, take the opposite line to Abdullah. They believe that the only way in which the royal house can defeat al-Qaeda is with the full co-operation of the conservative religious establishment, the moral police and the charity institutions.
Specifically, Nayef believes that fundamentalist religious co-operation is needed to persuade family members of suspected terrorists to hand them over to the authorities. Offsetting firebrand preaching in some mosques, Nayef wants religious figures to appear on television in order to persuade families that if they hand over their loved ones, the suspects will be treated fairly. Respected clerics, including ones who are not altogether out of sympathy with al-Qaeda’s philosophy, would announce on television that they were prepared to stand guarantors of such fair treatment.
Nayef threatens disaster if Abdullah’s line were to be followed. If the royal house distances itself from the conservative religious establishment, he claims, many fundamentalist clergy may turn instead to Osama bin Laden’s supporters.
Everything hinges on the succession
The war in the royal house is mirrored in the country’s daily newspapers. Al Watan, a paper published in the southern Asir region, champions the liberal line that reform, and a shrinking of Wahhabi authority, are essential if the ills of the kingdom and the royal family, are to be cured. Al Medina, a conservative newspaper, champions the opposite line. The two Saudi newspapers published in London, Al Hayat and Shawq-al-Awsat, both adopt a relatively liberal line.
Out of the blue last Thursday, January 8, Prince Nayef put the following sentence into a speech: “There are no disputes in the royal house”.
It is clear from this that rumors about the split have become so widespread, that the prince recognized the necessity of denying them openly.
As always in Saudi Arabia, the dispute touches on the troubling issue of royal succession. It is generally understood that when Abdullah formally succeeds to the throne upon the death of the long incapacitated King Fahd, he will appoint as crown prince his half-brother, defense minister Prince Sultan who is the senior member of the powerful Sudeiri clan. But the two half brothers are both octogenarians and DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Gulf sources report that Sultan is into the bargain seriously ill with the usually fatal Hodgkins Disease. This has spurred on Nayef, also a Sudeiri, to harbor monarchical ambitions of his own. And the argument on what to do about al-Qaeda, and the cultivation of the conservative clergy, plays a big role in his plans to advance those ambitions.
2. Turning up the Heat against Reformist Petitioners
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Gulf sources report that a new reformist petition is being prepared in Saudi Arabia. The authors claim that the situation in the kingdom is worsening and that the reformists are being persecuted by the authorities. As we have already reported, some petitioners are being threatened, told to stop their reformist activities, and barred from talking to the foreign media. Some reform campaigners even say that they have been banned from traveling abroad; a few, together with family members, are being told to report to the Saudi secret service.
The new petition under preparation is aimed specifically at Saudi interior minister Prince Nayef. He is accused of interfering personally to prevent reformists in Jedda and Riyadh gathering for meetings; his deputy, Amir Abed Aziz bin Fayed, is said to have telephoned some of the reformists and threatened them with reprisals if they did not stop their activities.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Saudi sources, on Sunday, January 11, Nayef invited 20 leading reformists from Riyadh, Mecca and Jeddah to come and meet him in Riyadh as soon as possible. The reformists declined, fearing they would not meet the minister but find themselves under arrest.
Sensing a sword hanging over their heads, all 20 signed a joint pledge: in case any are arrested, the others will guarantee the safety of their families, and do everything in their power to bring about their release. Some leading reformists began, for the first time in the kingdom’s history, to stage public demonstrations and hunger strikes in Saudi cities.
This week, however, the Saudi interior minister became the first senior royal to admit frankly and publicly that there is corruption in the regime, a hint that all is not lost for the reformist cause one of whose demands is to root out corruption in government. Speaking to reporters in Riyadh on Wednesday, January 15, after signing multimillion contracts for 36 projects, Prince Nayef urged contractors to keep away from corrupt practices. Seeking public support to fight bribery, he said, “It is the responsibility of all to fight this disease. We have to fight bribery because if it takes root in any society it would destroy everything.”
BRIEFS
Uzbekistan-based fundamentalists threaten Egypt:
Egyptian authorities have arrested members of a fundamentalist Islamic group called Hizb al-Tahri which is held responsible for the assault on foreign minister Ahmed Maher in the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem last month. The group, which is widely spread throughout Muslim world but is generally opposed to terrorist violence, has responded threateningly. Its leaders warn that unless Egypt stops arresting Hizb al-Tahri activists, it will take action in Egypt as it does in Uzbekistan, where it is the most powerful underground movement operating against the regime.
US Military Redeployment in Iraq
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources in Iraq report a new deployment of American forces. The 82nd Airborne Division has moved west from central Iraq and is now based in the Al-Anbar district. One of its main tasks is to fashion a new militia from local tribesmen to help block hostile infiltrations from Syria. The 101st Division, known as Screaming Eagles, has expanded its control from Mosul to an entire region extending from Mosul south to Tikrit. The 4th Infantry Division, which has the strongest firepower in the American army, has moved outward from Tikrit to occupy the whole area between Tikrit and Baghdad. The 1st Division, formerly posted in south-east Iraq, has taken responsibility for Greater Baghdad.
Feud Recurs over an Island
Relations between Kuwait and post-Saddam Iraq have been soured by the recurrence of an old territorial dispute over Bubiyan and Warbah, the Kuwaiti-owned islands blocking Iraq’s only access to the sea through the Shatt al-Arb. Gaining control of this vital waterway for its oil exports was one reason for Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Ahmed Chalabi and Mudhar Shaukat, members of Iraq’s Governing Council, are causing mischief by renewing Iraq’s demand for some form of control over the disputed islands, perhaps by leasing them from Kuwait. But Kuwait, which plans to build a port on Bubiyan, is not having any.
HOT POINTS
(that you may have missed in DEBKAfile Round-the-Clock)
A Digest of the Week’s Exclusives
3 January: Hours after a privately chartered Egyptian airplane crashed in the Red Sea on January 3, just after takeoff from Sharm el-Sheikh, French Justice Minister Dominique Perben asked prosecutors to open a preliminary inquiry for manslaughter, thus setting a legal framework for a joint French-Egyptian investigation.
There were no survivors of the 148 crew and French tourists aboard the plane, bound for Charles de Gaulle after a refueling stop at Cairo.
The Egyptians claimed that the crash of a Boeing 737, operated by the Egyptian company Flash Airlines, was not the result of a terrorist act but is linked to a technical failure of the plane. DEBKAfile’s aviation experts say the investigators will be called upon to consider a host of anomalies and enigmas before they reach any such definite conclusion:
1.
Was it a coincidence that the disaster occurred amid the heightened aviation alert that led to the cancellation of seven US-bound flights in the week from Christmas to January 2?
2.
Updated intelligence reports have revealed one or more trained al Qaeda pilots penetrating international airlines in the Middle East or Europe.
3.
Suggestively, the Egyptian plane vanished abruptly from radar screens before it had a chance to send out a distress call.
4.
The stricken aircraft plunged down very close to the Sinai coast. Yet, no survivors and no large wing sections or pieces of fuselage had surfaced.
5.
The Egyptian assertion of a mechanical fault does not accord with the initial response from French transport minister Dominique Busserau, who said: “The plane had a problem after take-off and then tried to turn and it was at that minute that it apparently crashed.”
6.
Another odd feature is the unusual lack of response from the Saudi, Israeli, Jordanian air forces and the American warships cruising in the Tiran Straits and the Red Sea. The plunging Egyptian airliner must have appeared on all their radar screens from the moment of its take-off.
7.
The Sharm el-Sheikh air disaster recalls the last Egyptian air disaster in 1999, when EgyptAir’s 990 Boeing 767 crashed opposite the American coast of Massachusetts shortly after takeoff, killing all 217 aboard. At the time, the Egyptian authorities attributed the disaster to unusual atmospheric conditions. In a subsequent federal probe, US aviation authorities established that the co-pilot, Jamil Batouty, took over the controls and put the plane into a sharp nosedive shouting Allah is Great! in Arabic.
8.
British prime minister Tony Blair was vacationing at the Sharm el-Sheikh resort with his wife and four children. If the tragedy was indeed staged by al Qaeda to coincide with the Blair family’s vacation, it would be further evidence of the terrorist group’s audacity and intelligence prowess.
5 January: This week the US launched its six-month race to hand formal power over to the Iraqis themselves. One of the many questions is whether the proposed new Iraqi government will be elected, selected or a bit of both. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the leading Shiite father figure has been holding out for elections to be held before the official handover. His reasoning is simple: Iraq’s Shiite majority could be expected to win such elections overwhelmingly, which would wipe out the Sunni vote in many multi-sectarian Iraqi districts.
But this week there were reports that Sistani may have yielded to American and other persuasion that “fair” elections before June 30 would not be possible. Another issue is the form of federation that Iraq may enjoy under its yet-to-be-designed constitution. The Kurdish parties have long been pressing for as loose a federation as possible.
They will have been helped by a crucial new pact, reported by DEBKA-Net-Weekly, between Sistani and Talabani. If these two leaders have overcome their traditional differences, they may be planning, in effect, to divide the spoils of a future Iraq between them, leaving the once-powerful Sunni Arab minority out of the picture.
6 January: Reformists seeking conversion of the Saudi ruling system into constitutional monarchy got a harsh response from Prince Nayef, the interior minister who leads the war against al-Qaeda. “The weak can’t challenge the mighty. We are not a regime that wants people to be satisfied with us. We are here in Saudi Arabia in order to rule,” he declared last weekend during two stormy meetings with two separate reformist delegations. In response, one participant remarked “We should understand from what you are saying that you are a regime that is working against the people.” This sharp exchange was followed by an outburst by a leading businessman who said, “We haven’t gone down this whole road (of reform efforts) in order to regress now because of the way you are talking. If you want to throw us into prison, do it now before we leave this meeting.”
Such straight talking has not been heard before at meetings between members of the royal house and influential citizens. The royal family now faces double pressure: the war against al-Qaeda and a fast growing domestic demand for reform. The absence of reforms, and the refusal of the royal family even to discuss them, is causing ever larger sections of the Saudi population to distance their support from the royal house. Young Saudis are encouraged to join radical and militant opposition movements, such as al-Qaeda.
Last week, the royal house organized a four-day seminar in Mecca to which reformist groups were invited. Courtiers promised that the crown prince would see them — and not for the first time. But our sources report that instead, they were invited to talk to senior officials of the royal house, who tried to divide the reformists on sectarian grounds, creating a Shiite and Sunni camp.
7 January: Libya’s intense efforts to improve its relations with the UN have led it to explore Jewish channels. Two senior Libyans, Saif el-Islam Qaddafi, the elder son of the ruler, Muammar Qaddafi, and Moussa Kussa, the head of Libya’s intelligence services, are seeking to establish communication with various Jewish institutions, including the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and pro-Israel lobby.
For the same reason, Libya is putting out tentative feelers about some sort of accommodation with Israel. DEBKAfile intelligence sources report that Saif el-Islam traveled to a Middle Eastern capital last June to meet five Israelis, at least three of whom have political or military influence in Jerusalem. His purpose was to explain his father’s ideas about establishing a single Israeli-Palestinian state to be called Isratin. He also emphasized that Libya had shifted its orientation from the Arab world to the African one.
On January 5, Muammar Qaddafi himself said that all people, including Jews, whose property had been confiscated during Libya’s revolution should be compensated. Next day, Al Siyassa, a Kuwaiti newspaper, reported that representatives of Mossad, Israel’s military intelligence, had met with a high-ranking official in Vienna. DEBKAfile can report that the Libyan was Najat al-Hajjaji, Libya's ambassador to the UN and the current chairperson of the Human Rights Commission in Geneva.
Senior sources in Jerusalem tell DEBKAfile that Libya’s only reason for any approach to Israel is its wish to improve relations with the US. Nothing of consequence is, in fact, going on. If Libya wants to make a move towards Israel, say these sources, it should do so through the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
10 January: In the secret talks that took place this week in Ankara, between Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, and Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s president, Erdogan told Assad that the Turkish leadership had decided to force Rauf Denktash, the Turkish Cypriot leader, to form a federation of two constituent parts, with a rotating presidency, to go into effect after Cyprus is accepted to the European Union.
Turkey is itself an applicant to join the EU.
DEBKAfile learns that Assad listened very intently and did not make any reply at all.
Assad agreed to sign a document of understanding on the Turkish proposal to set up a customs point on the border between Syria and Alexandretta, which was tantamount to Syrian recognition of Turkish ownership of the province, giving up Syria’s historic claims.
But DEBKAfile believes that the implications stretch from Alexandretta all the way to Golan. The Turkish leaders, in their report to Jerusalem, were well satisfied with their tactic.
Consequently, Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s finance minister, has been talking about the possibility of negotiating with Syria without having to hand back the Golan Heights, or large chunks of the region.
14 January: The Syrian leadership, in an urgent session on Sunday, January 11, resolved on a fresh initiative, after failing to make head or tail of Israel’s wordy and inconsistent responses to Bashar Assad’s feelers for the resumption of the peace talks that broke down four years ago. The Damascus meeting decided to seize the diplomatic high ground provided by Israel’s apparently negative response and bury the twenty-one-year old hatchet between the Assad regime and Yasser Arafat.
In an exclusive report, DEBKAfile’s Palestinian and Beirut sources disclose that the Syrians have now embarked on two reconciliatory steps:
1.
For the first time in 21 years, Arafat’s mainstream Fatah has been permitted by Lebanon’s overlord in Damascus to open up a base in the Lebanese capital.
2.
Arafat’s close confidant and emissary Hani al-Hassan, a member of Fatah’s central committee, has been received in Beirut to open a dialogue with pro-Syrian elements and Syrian military intelligence officers in Lebanon. DEBKAfile’s Palestinian sources say al-Hassan has just returned to Ramallah to make his report to Arafat. He will return to Beirut early next week to continue the interchange.
In Jerusalem, Israel’s military intelligence chief, major-general Aharon Zeevi, addressed the Knesset’s foreign affairs and defense committee on Tuesday, January 13, on another rift building up between Damascus, on one side, and the Hizballah and Iran, on the other. Zeevi held this fracture up as evidence that Assad’s avowed wish to start talks with Israel is on the level.
Not everyone in the Israeli military and security establishment agrees with him.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and defense minister Shaul Mofaz are particularly skeptical — to the point that a crisis of confidence is developing between Mofaz and his intelligence chief.
The creation of a new Damascus-Ramallah axis may be seen in Washington as an act of defiance rather than a pacific gesture. Assad may well be in the process of cutting down his involvement in one terrorist track — the Hizballah and radical Palestinian groups Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, even possibly shutting down their Damascus headquarters — in order to rebuild them on an alternative track - with Arafat.
http://www.debka.com