Mideast Roundup

July 5, 2002

US Vs Iraq

Tentative Date Set

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Washington reveal that September 11, the day burned in the American psyche, is also US President's preferred date for launching the awaited offensive against Iraq in 2002.

In another unique disclosure, those sources report that White House war planners have added the Turkoman minority of north and central Iraq to the Kurdish militias scheduled to fight alongside the Americans against Saddam Hussein, with both gaining autonomy at the end of the road.

1. Jumping off Sites Located on Red Sea

The first, exclusive details of the advancing American preparations for its campaign against Iraq have reached DEBKA-Net-Weekly.

According to our sources, President George W. Bush has told a select group - secretary of state Colin Powell, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz and General Tommy Franks, chief of the US central command and senior staff members - that he favors the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks on America as launch date for the US assault on Saddam Hussein.

He qualified this by making it clear that D-Day depends first and foremost on the military's readiness to go. Everything must be in place, the command centers and forward bases, the troops' training and placement, the advance preparations inside Iraq and precise intelligence on the whereabouts of the campaign's primary target, Saddam Hussein. This intelligence must also evaluate the chances of capturing or killing the Iraqi ruler and the top military chiefs at his side.

Bush stressed that if September 11 is ruled out by operational considerations, he is willing to pick another date.

Our military sources say General Franks, who has been placed in command of the Iraq campaign, reported to the president that the chain of US command centers and bases was now in place. Without specifying field particulars that could jeopardize American lives, DEBKA-Net-Weekly reveals that the Americans managed to avoid calling on any Arab country, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to host forward bases. They quietly and speedily built their main command center for the Iraq offensive in Eritrea, together with jumping off points for the US air force and navy. Their new home now is the strategic Eritrean port of Assab, which is located near the Bab el Mandeb Straits linking the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the mouth of Persian Gulf. Travelers to this remote corner report that its dusty streets have suddenly filled with white American vans dashing around without license plates but recognizable as military vehicles from their sprouting antennae. In Assab's harbor, docks and storage facilities have been renovated and closed off as a US military zone. Rooftop aerials and satellite dishes mark out a major US command post.

Just to the north of Assab, the Americans have whipped a small local airport into the largest air base in the Horn of Africa, partly compensating for the sophisticated Prince Sultan air force base denied them in Saudi Arabia. Its new, wide runways can cater to heavy bombers, transports and fighter-bombers taking off for missions against any target in southern Iraq or the Baghdad area with the help of in-air fuel feeds.

Still further to the north, another cluster of US air and naval bases has risen on the Dalak archipelago on the western side of the Red Sea, across from Saudi Arabia's Farasan Islands.

The US presence on Dalak gives it control of the full length of the Red Sea and the eastern approaches to the Suez Canal and the Sinai Peninsula, linking up with the giant American air base at Sharm el Sheikh. From either base, the US air force reach extends to any point in Iraq - from Baghdad to the northern oil cities of Kirkuk and Mosul.

The largest concentration of US bases is located on the big island of Dalak Dist; some installations have gone up in the small eastern town of Deba Alawa and a town on the western side of the island of Jamil. In these locations, the US forces can avail themselves of Soviet port facilities, landing strips, headquarters and structures built there in the 1970s when the USSR maintained a large naval presence on the archipelago; later, the Israeli navy and air force used the sites as their forward base in the Red Sea.

Northern Iraq, including its oil cities, will be under the purview of US bases in southern Turkey and Tbilisi, Georgia. The new Red Sea bases, along with American aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean, will round off US coverage of all Iraqi airspace.

This blanket air control does not imply, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources caution, America's intention of placing the brunt of its offensive on air assault, on the pattern of the 1991Gulf War and the Afghanistan campaign, where US air force planes dropped tons of ordnance, missiles and bunker-busting bombs. For the present, the plan is to employ the air force mainly as cover for American ground invasion forces, most of whom will be detached from US Oceania bases.

Our military sources describe the present plan as being for a US-UK force of up to 75,000 troops attacking in three synchronous bridgeheads.

Force One

This first contingent, also the smallest - no more than 30,000 to 40,000 troops - will attack from the north, setting out from US installations in southern Turkey, mainly the large air base at Incirlik. They will link up with US special forces already present in northern Iraq, US commando-trained Kurdish forces, Turkish special forces positioned near Mosul and Kirkuk and Turkish-trained Turkomans

Its primary mission will be to "cleanse" the Syrian-Iraqi Western desert on the frontier with Syria of Iraqi missiles, especially the ones capable of carrying chemical and biological warheads. Its second objective will be to seize all of northern Iraq and drive out Iraqi forces, before going on to capture the oil towns of Kirkuk and Mosul. After the fighting, two autonomous regions in northern Iraq are planned, one Kurdish and the other Turkoman.

Force Two

This one will drive across from Jordan. DEBKA-Net-Weekly was the first to report last year the presence of US and Israeli special forces in the Hashemite kingdom on a twin mission: to defend Jordan against an Iraqi invasion and to ready Jordanian bases and airfields for use in the US offensive against Iraq. Ferried in by airplane or helicopter, or parachuted in, the task of Force Two will be to seize three or four main air bases in western and central Iraq, after they have been thoroughly pounded in a US air-cruise missile blitz. The captured bases will be converted for the use of American bomber and fighter squadrons, some diverted from the Persian Gulf and Red Sea. This action comes under the overall plan for the US military to operate from inside Iraq - unlike the doctrine followed in Afghanistan, where the US army operated from outside bases. A large contingent of engineering units is standing by in Kuwait and Qatar ready to move in and prepare Iraqi installations such as H-3, H-4 and the massive al-Baghdadi air base for the influx of US warplanes and troops.

Force Three

This force will push into Iraq in two waves, the first, comprised mostly of US special forces, from bases in Eritrea, Jordan and the Sinai and from US navy ships, will fan out across central Iraq, including Baghdad; its paramount mission being to strike and seize the headquarters and habitations of Saddam Hussein, his family and close associates, as well as the country's hidden depots of missiles and chemical and biological weapons systems.

The second wave, having captured and occupied bases inside Iraq, will advance from there to take on the heaviest and most dangerous combat assignment: destroying the Iraqi leadership and its military power base. Washington's military planners calculate that Saddam, rather than throw in the sponge, will throw his entire arsenal, including nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, against this force, an escalation that could bring forth an American nuclear response to take him out.

Persuading the Iraqi Army Not to Resist

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources, General Franks has no intention of pouring 200,000 to 250,000 troops into the Iraqi campaign, as has been widely reported. On the contrary, he is thinking in terms of a far smaller invasion force numbering no more than 75,000 including several thousand members of the British armored brigades and Royal marines. Their mission will be essentially to capture five or six installations in Iraq and transform them into American bases of operation.

Above all, the US general is counting on the Iraqi army holding back from the battle to keep Saddam in power. US military planners have noticed that, with the exception of the 1980-1987 Iran-Iraq conflict, Saddam's troops have rarely stood up to an invading army.

During the 1991 Gulf War, US intelligence recruited hundreds of American and European nationals of Iraqi descent who were in touch with relatives in Iraq. Those relatives were asked to persuade Iraqi officers from their hometowns to refrain from resisting the overwhelmingly superior US-led allied assault forces. This ploy worked. On January 16, 1991, Day One of the assault, whole Iraqi units with their commanders laid down arms and surrendered, offering pre-arranged signs to keep them safe from bombing and shelling.

This time, ethnic Iraqis were not employed, but DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources report that CIA undercover agents who entered Iraq managed to make contact with several unit commanders, including senior ranks of elite contingents of the Republican Guard stationed in and around Baghdad. The agents spread the word that the United States has no quarrel with the Iraqi army and would prefer to keep the Iraqi military out of harm's way. Washington's only objective was to displace Saddam and his regime. Unit commanders were promised handsome cash bonuses for themselves and their men for staying clear of the fighting. In fact, when the hostilities were over, America would replenish their equipment and earmark budgets to keep those units militarily operational.

This sensitive intelligence operation is believed by Franks's staff officers and the CIA field agents who conducted it to have won over an important section of the Iraqi military, who agreed to sit on their hands when the fighting breaks out. They believe that no more than five or six Iraqi armored divisions, roughly one-third of the Iraqi army, will remain loyal to Saddam and fight to the last man. This discovery obviates the need for a large army of hundreds of thousands to defeat the Saddam regime.

Conversely, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources say Saddam is perfectly aware of the US divide and conquer plan and is weighing preventive steps. One would be to throw the US timetable and tactics out by taking pre-emptive action. Iraqi officers and soldiers would not dare to refuse to take part in such combat lest they be court-martialed and executed for disobeying orders or for treason.


2. Iraq Emulates America's Small But Deadly Combat Units

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources find Iraq's operational war plans remarkably similar to the ones drawn up in Washington for toppling Saddam Hussein. A senior US officer familiar with the plans said: "You might have said Saddam Hussein had the US operational plans before him when he drafted Iraqi counter-measures."

Like the Americans, Saddam is not planning to deploy large-scale units, since he does not trust the loyalty of the bulk of his army and knows American agents are subverting some of his elite units. Appreciating that he cannot win a conventional war against the United States, he does not propose to be drawn into one.

In mid-June, therefore, according to our military and intelligence sources, Saddam reached three strategic decisions:

1.
His tactics against an American assault will be to hit the attackers with suicide units, kamikaze pilots, short-range cruise missiles and Scud missiles loaded with a wide range of nuclear, biological and chemical ordnance, including nuclear or radiological - "dirty" - bombs. The nearer the moment for military decision-making on the Iraqi front, the closer US intelligence comes to believing that Saddam has nuclear bombs or a large quantity of radiological bombs that can contaminate wide areas with radiation.
Washington also estimates that Iraq has bombs, warheads or artillery shells, for delivering mustard and other nerve gases, such as sarin, tabun and VX, as well as biological agents that include botulinal toxin, anthrax, ricin and aflatoxin, which is a natural carcinogen.

2.
These weapons systems will also be unleashed against Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf states that support the United States.

3.
Iraq will attack Saudi Arabia in the event of a US offensive, a decision Saddam made just recently after receiving intelligence information indicating the United States may be planning to wrest Iraq's southern and northern oilfields from Baghdad's control. (This plan is referred to in the Turkoman Strip <outbind://31-00000000368A5D69C0964C46BD94F65F95DF066304B33000/#1-3>article.)

Against Saudi Arabia too Iraq will wield its suicide units, kamikaze aircrews and missiles carrying nuclear, biological and chemical warheads. They will be launched mainly against the oil fields of the Saudi kingdom and such Gulf countries as Kuwait, Qatar and Oman. Saddam aims to put most of the Persian Gulf's oil fields out of commission and contaminate their surrounding environments for years to come, to pay America back for laying hands on Iraqi oil resources.

Iraqi weapons of mass destruction - nuclear and chemical - will also hit broad regions of the Middle East, from the Mediterranean to the Gulf, including Iraq itself.

In case he decides to beat the Americans to the punch - thereby throwing off the American timeline by at least six months - Saddam is concentrating his army in three main areas:

Iraqi armored divisions have been deployed in the north along the eastern banks of the Big Zab and Little Zab Rivers across from the border with Turkey.

A second force is arrayed around Saddam's hometown of Ikrit and Samara. Saddam suspects the word the Americans are spreading that they intend focusing on Baghdad is intended to divert attention from proposed US attacks on those two towns. Striking Saddam's family clan in Tikrit would spell his eclipse and provoke the rest of Iraq's Sunni Muslim tribes into withdrawing their fealty from his regime in Baghdad. He is therefore determined not to let the Americans cut this ground from under his feet.

The third area in which Saddam has disposed military strength is Baghdad and its environs: the Azimiya and Kadhimaih regions to the north and the satellite towns of Salman, Shaikh Bagir and Zaidan to the west and Khan Azad to the south.

He is also buttressing his defenses on the Euphrates and Tigris river banks lest US Marines land at strategic invasion points for jumping into the Iraqi heartland. Saddam is now weighing ordering the armored divisions, he has positioned on the Big Zab and Little Zab river banks, to cross those waterways and reach the Turkish border zone, there to wipe out the US special forces and CIA personnel training anti-Saddam Kurdish units - as well as those units.

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources, Iraqi intelligence has gathered enough data from the optic fiber equipment the Chinese installed in Iraqi air defense systems early last year (and first reported in DEBKA-Net-Weekly No. 4 on March 8, 2001) to convince Saddam that neither the Americans nor the British can muster enough air power to halt an Iraqi armored thrust.

The optic fibers provide real-time information on any intrusion of Iraq's air space by planes or missiles. By tracking US and British over-flights of no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq, Iraqi air force commanders discovered that neither has the resources for round-the-clock surveillance. They break off patrols for 16 to 24 hours several times a week. At first, the Iraqis used these breaks for secret movements of men and equipment. Now Saddam proposes to use these gaps for surprise operations against the Americans.

All eyes are therefore fixed on the Iraqi divisions in the north. If they are ordered to move, the war with the United States could flare before September.


3. Iraq's Turkoman Strip

US war planners have decided that their most useful strategic asset for the coming offensive against Saddam Hussein is the Turkomans of north and central Iraq - even more than the Kurds.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and intelligence sources explain their reasoning:

1.
The Turkomans control a vital strip separating Baghdad and central Iraq from its oil regions in the north. After the war is over, Turkoman and Kurdish autonomous states in the north and a Shiite territory in the south will keep the federal regime in Baghdad chronically weak and ineffective. This post-war maneuver programmed into the war planning will lead to Iraq's partitioning - not into three regions as Washington first planned - but four, the Shiite region centering on the holy cities of Karbala and Nejef, the Kurdish region in the northern mountains, the Sunni region centering on Baghdad, and the Turkoman Strip including the oil cities of Mosul and Kirkuk as well as Arbul.

The oilfields will be left with the Turkomans and the Shiites.

2.
At the end of May, Turkey came around to joining the US offensive against Iraq. While the Iraqi Turkomans regard themselves primarily as Iraqi, the Turks regard them as brethren. However, with the prospect of gaining the oilfields, the Turkomans were willing to accept Ankara's tutelage. America did not therefore object to the Iraqis building a new pumping station on the Iraqi-Turkish pipeline running from Kirkuk to the Turkish terminal of Ceyhan. When it becomes fully operational this summer, the station will almost double the pipeline's capacity to 1.6 million bpd, a bonanza for the future masters of northern Iraq.

Turkey joined the US alliance against Iraq for compelling strategic reasons of its own. One, the eventual disseverance of Iraq will weakens both Iraq and its military ally, Syria. Two, the nagging Kurdish problem will be subdued once and for all by the presence of Turkish military forces in the autonomous Turkoman region, leaving the Kurds clamped between Turkey in the north and the Turkoman Strip in the south. Three, Ankara will acquire direct access to Baghdad for the first time since the Ottomans were thrown out in 1924.

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources Turkey followed up its consent by inserting special military units and military intelligence agents in Turkoman towns, with the sanction of the local Kurdish authorities, who were promised lavish US economic aid to better their living standards.. The Turkish presence there is equivalent to the US presence in the Kurdish regions.

Turkish agents have also been planted in the Turkoman community in Baghdad.

Their task is to assist the American effort to undermine and subvert the Saddam regime from within to reduce the need for large-scale military action.

The Turkish officers are training small Turkomen units in the arts of guerrilla warfare for use against the last Iraqi military remnants who may survive in their autonomous strip. The guerrillas and the Turkish and US special units present in the two autonomous regions will be able to cut the supply lines from Baghdad to the Iraqi forces positioned on the Turkish and Syria borders.

The new name to watch for when the US offensive is launched is Sapr Oketene, the Turkoman national leader chosen by the Americans and Turks.

Background Note

Iraq's 2.5 million Turkomans are one of the Saddam Hussein's ruling Baath party's darkest secrets, expunged from the national constitution since 1972, although - or rather because - their ancestral lands are situated in some of the most strategic space in the Middle East.

Added to the routine trampling of rights suffered by Iraq's diverse minorities, Kurds, Shiites, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Yazdis and Christians, the separate ethno-linguistic Turkoman communities have additionally been subjected to systematic displacement and eviction from their oil-rich territories, a Turkic-speaking strip that runs from the Turkish-Syrian borders in the northwest to the Iranian border southeast of Baghdad and include Kirkuk, the largest city, Mosul, Arbil - or Irbil, Diala, Salah-e-din and Altunkopru. The last is an island-town on the Little Zab River. There is also a large community in Baghdad.

The forcible relocation of the Turkoman communities and their replacement by Arabs began in 1925 when the British first set up the Iraqi oil company in Kirkuk and Mosul. This policy of changing the demography of the oil rich sectors of Kirkuk by deporting ethnic Kurds and Turkomans is still going on, including seizure of their lands.

Since the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq's Turkomans - who despite their misleading name are closer to the Turks and Azeris than to the Turkmen of Turkmenistan - also complain of a policy of ethnic cleansing by the dominant Kurdish authorities of northern Iraq. The Turkomans, who ruled Iraq from the ninth century until 1924, find themselves backed into a corner between the Kurds and the Saddam government. For centuries the Turkic Strip was a buffer separating the southern Arabs of Iraq from the northern Kurds. The "safe havens" created by the UN in 1991 after the Gulf War divided the Turkomans into two separate communities, part living above the 36th parallel which is dominated by the Kurds and part living below and dominated by the Iraqi regime.

The so-called Washington Agreement of September 1998, which aimed at reconciling the warring Kurdish Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurds, was partly at the expense of the Turkomans. Under its terms only Turkomans living in Kurdish-controlled areas can take part in parliamentary elections to an autonomous Kurdish parliament, whereas the Turkomans northern community has been severely eroded by dislocation and persecution.

But the Washington agreement did spur them into belated political action. Their political organization is recent - the Turkmen Front was established on April 24, 1995 to unify the many Turkoman political structures and parties. Responding to the Washington agreement, the Turkmeneli Party leader, Riyaz Sarikahya, called for the formation of an autonomous "Turkmeneli Region" between Mosul and Kirkuk that would transect Kurdish lands.

The strategic importance of the Turkoman Strip derives from:

A.
Geography: A commercial and cultural crossroads, it borders on Iran, Turkey, Syria and the Baghdad province. Across this strip runs a pipeline from the Caspian Sea basin via Iran and Syria to the Mediterranean.

B.
Oil and Gas Resources: According to Joseph P. Riva, oil expert of the US Library of Congress: "The large Arabian-Iranian downwarp sedimentary basin contains by far the richest petroleum province in the world."

C.
Fertility: Situated in the middle part of the Tigris basin, it embraces the mild and highly fertile catchment area of the Great Zab and the Little Zab, with abundant water and rich agriculture.

D.
Source of Monotheist Faiths: Sanctuaries of the three great world faiths. Kurdish scholars attribute claim the walls of ancient Arbil are the vestiges of a ziggurat. They are convinced that the entire region was a part of the Biblical Garden of Eden.

Considered the third largest ethnic group of Iraq, the Turkoman settlement started at the foot of the mountains of northern Iraq with two incursions of nomadic tribes from present-day Central Asia and Azerbaijan in the seventh century. Early eighth century Turkomans were recruited as soldiers and officers for the Abbasid Army and palace guards. This recruitment increased sharply in the ninth century during the reign of the Abbasid Caliph Al-Mu'tassim, himself born of a Turkish mother. The mid-13th century Mongol invasion brought a fresh wave of Turkish migrants into northern-central Iraq as recruits from Central Asian tribes. These warriors caused great devastation before settling in the area.

In the early 16th century, the Azerbaijan Turks invaded Baghdad, bringing a Turkoman incursion to the Iraqi capital. In effect, Turkomans ruled Iraq from 833 to 1924.

Most are Muslim, Sunni and Shiite, although a small number are Christian, and speak a southern Turkic dialect, which they jealously preserve. Under the 1925 constitution of Iraq, Turkomans retained the right to use their own language in schools and have their own press. In 1972, the Turkish language was banned. The community was not mentioned in the 1973 Interim Constitution and in the new constitution promulgated in 1990, the Iraqi people was said to "consist only of Arabs and Kurds".


Israel Vs Palestinians

Gaza Offensive Soon

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources report that Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon ordered Maj.-Gen. Moshe Yaalon, the incoming chief of staff already unofficially in the top chair, to launch a counter-terror offensive in the Gaza Strip.

Since March, Israeli has carried out two major terrorist cleansing operations in West Bank Palestinian towns, but none in the Gaza Strip, where the radical radical Muslim Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups maintain command and political centers. The headquarters of both are located in the Syrian capital of Damascus.

Sharon's operational orders call for the liquidation or arrest of the heads of the two groups. Yaalon was also told to apprehend - not kill - any Hizballah operatives caught for interrogation on the Shiite group's intelligence and military activities in Lebanon and its terrorist cells elsewhere.

Israel is fairly cagey about captured Hizballah operatives. A very senior Hizballah man with US citizenship was nabbed during Israel's big offensive in the Palestinian security headquarters in Hebron last week, before Israeli forces blew up the fortress-like complex in two thunderclap blasts. Information about his capture caused great excitement among Israeli intelligence chiefs. Sharon telephoned US President George W. Bush with details about Israel's American Hizballah prisoner. He also relayed the news to US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz and secretary of state Colin Powell.

According to a number of Israeli counter-terrorism sources contacted by DEBKA-Net-Weekly, Sharon, outgoing army chief Lt.-Gen. Shaul Mofaz and the head of military intelligence, Maj.-Gen. Aharon Zeevi, cautioned interrogators of the Hizballah operative that they would be held personally responsible if any detail about the American terrorist investigation leaked out.

All that has been hinted is that his contacts in the United States are under investigation to find out if they are family or terrorist-related, or both.

In addition to eliminating the Gazan Muslim terrorist infrastructure, Sharon ordered the Popular Intifada Committees, which coordinate the operations of the various terrorist factions in the Gaza Strip, to be disbanded. They are run by associates of Mohammed Dahlan, former head of the preventive security service in Gaza. His deputy, Rashid Abu Shbak, is their chief. Sharon aslso directed Yaalon to break the back of the preventive security service in Gaza in the same way as its sister organization in the West Bank led by Jibril Rajoub was cut down.

Additional targets in the Gaza Strip are the dozens of small Palestinian workshops manufacturing heavy Palestinian weaponry: anti-tank missiles, Qasam 1-6 rockets, explosive charges - used to blast Israeli tanks and extra-large civilian targets, mortars of various calibers and anti-personnel and anti-vehicle mines. Although the factories are primitive, they manage to produce an impressive array of operational weaponry.

The army will also mark down the local paramilitary gangs roaming Palestinian towns in the Gaza Strip, a departure from its operations in the West Bank, which were confined to quasi-military organizations and known terrorist groups. These Gaza gangs number between 50 and 300 members each and maintain underworld connections in Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. They deal mostly in the smuggling of drugs, weapons and prostitutes, but volunteer their services to Palestinian terrorist groups for free, whether as gunrunners, spies and informers or even terrorist operatives as needed.

Around 25 of these gangs have the operational competence of small militias. They are most heavily concentrated at Beit Hanoun, a small town in the northern Gaza Strip, in neighboring Beit Lehiya, in Gaza City's Jabalya refugee camp, Khan Younis in the south and the divided town of Rafah, part of which is Palestinian, part Egyptian. These Palestinian gangs operate on the Egyptian side of Rafah and also in the northern Sinai town of El Arish.

Mirroring its current long-running West Bank operation against terrorists, the Israeli army is waiting for final orders to go into Gazan cities, towns and villages, once controlled by the Palestinian Authority, and stay there for as long as it takes to purge the territory of terrorists.


China

Secretly Builds an Aircraft Carrier Fleet

To lull suspicions, Chinese intelligence spread the word that the former Soviet aircraft carrier Varyag steaming from the Black Sea to its shores some weeks ago was designated a floating gambling casino in Macao.

The ruse worked. DEBKA-Net-Weekly sources in China report now that the aircraft carrier was never intended for anything so frivolous. In the hands of the Chinese Liberation Army's Navy (PLAN), the craft is being quietly turned back into an air carrier. In fact, the Dalian Shipyward is working under tight security to refit and modernize the huge vessel to raise it to operational status as China's first aircraft carrier.

Not only that. The Chinese Navy is already busily building its second. A large dome-like structure is being constructed adjacent to the Varyag, beneath which work has begun on a sister to the Varyag.

China promised the Russians from whom it bought the aircraft carrier (one of two Kuznetsov-class carriers dating back to the early 1980s, originally planned for the former Soviet Navy and about 70-80 per cent complete) that it would not be recommissioned. The Russians removed most of its sub-systems, but the propulsion system is apparently intact. Photos indicate that the ship's exterior is in good condition.

Since at least 1992 there have been reports that China's Central Military Commission had decided in principle to support the development of a blue water fleet that would include up to three aircraft carriers as early as the end of the decade. Evidence of support for this position was provided by strategic assessments attributed to Chinese military thinkers and planners, who are said to be concerned over the lack of a power projection capability for operations directed against US and Japanese regional forces, Taiwan, the South China Sea and the Strait of Malacca and beyond, to the Indian Ocean.

During May 1999, the China Science and Technology Association issued a statement that said: "The fact that China is the only permanent UN Security Council member with no aircraft carrier battle group is a handicap which fails to match China's status."

The Chinese were not idle, even before they bought Varyag. A simulated flight deck with catapult and arrester wires is said to have been copied from the decommissioned Australian light aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne, which China supposedly bought for scrap during 1984 and rebuilt at a northern Chinese air base. 
Yet various earlier reports this year from Chinese sources appeared to indicate that Beijing had indefinitely postponed aircraft carrier development in favor of the development of advanced submarines; these reports were clearly Chinese intelligence disinformation exercises.

A May 1998 report cast doubt that the US$20 million sale of the Varyag would proceed with the Macao firm Agencia Turistica e Diversoes Chong Lot Limitada. This firm was registered in August 1997 under a fictitious local address and controlled by Hong Kong residents Cheng Zhen-shu and Chong Lap-cheung, who have strong connections to PLAN shipbuilding interests. Furthermore, the contract with the Russian arms export agency Rosvoorouzhenie was to have prohibited the use of the vessel for direct military purposes, although the ship's design and technology render it unsuited to anything else. Nonetheless, Chong Lot applied to the Macao government within a month of its formation for permission to dock the carrier in local waters as a floating hotel or casino. This proposal was at least initially rejected.

In any event, the 67,000 ton Varyag, which was actually owned by the Ukraine as part of the joint Russia-Ukraine Black Sea Fleet, was believed to be in poor, stripped-down condition, difficult to renovate to an operational status at a cost of upwards of US$2 billion.

However, the UK's Marconi Electronic Systems and France's Thomson-CSF are reported by some sources to have jointly offered to refit the Varyag for flight operations, navigation, testing and logistics, all co-coordinated through Paris-based trading agent P.J. Masson's firm IBC 500 and perhaps funded through a barter arrangement with Chinese state-owned enterprises.

While Marconi and Thomson have denied this allegation, they are prime candidates for providing sophisticated technical systems for an indigenous Chinese aircraft carrier program. Both companies are currently thought to be supplying the PLA with other advanced defense technologies ranging from naval destroyer upgrades and AWACS systems to fighter aircraft fly-by-wire, avionics and radar systems.

It is now unclear whether foreign firms will be part of the Varyag refit and the development of new carriers, or whether China will conduct the developments on its own. With its 300 meter flight deck with ski jump, the Varyag should be able to accommodate new generation Chinese aircraft such as a navalized version of the J-10 fighter (possibly with two aero-engines), Chinese versions of the Su-27 fighter-bomber series, and the JH-7 fighter-bomber, as well as helicopters used for resupply, AWACS, ASW, EW, etc. Chinese aircraft carriers may not require conventional steam catapult aircraft launching systems because of the use of the ski-jump system or an innovative electromagnetic system China is believed to have recently developed. Chinese carriers will also likely carry large numbers of surface-to-air, anti-submarine, anti-ship cruise, and land-attack cruise missiles, likely launched from a vertical launch system (VLS).

The Dalian Shipyard ('Red Flag Number Seven'), Dalian, Liaoning Province, is a state-owned enterprise under the China State Shipbuilding Corporation. It is well equipped to refurbish and construct large warships such as modern aircraft carriers.

It has over 10,000 workers, including some 2,000 technical personnel, occupies an area of some 420,000 square metres, has three shipbuilding slipways for ships of up to 80,000 tons, two slipways for 15,000 dwt ships, a bulk goods dock of 1,475 metres, 22 cranes, one 100 ton revolving floating crane, large hydraulic presses and rollers, and widespread computer-controlled systems, including management information systems and numerically controlled machines.

The Dalian Shipyard built China's first ocean-going supply ships for dry and liquid supplies, and has build shuttle oil tankers of up to 118,000 tons.

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

29 June: The surprise resignation of retired Army General Wayne A. Downing as deputy national security adviser to the president for combating terrorism, on Thursday, June 27, is bad news for the road ahead of America's war on terror, according to DEBKAfile's intelligence sources.

According to DEBKAfile's Washington sources, the general left because he strongly disapproved of the way the Bush administration is handling the anti-terror offensive, and more particularly its intelligence side.

In the beginning, he beat the intelligence bureaucracy down over the creation of a new data fusion center capable of keeping a 24-hour watch on terrorist activities and tracking all related interagency intelligence. Downing had begun assigning staff to the new center when word came down that it was to be swallowed up in the proposed Homeland Security Department.

As this veteran general saw it, the center's function should have been to bring together all the incoming data on terror and make it instantly available for operational uses. For instance, US Special Forces encountering al Qaeda activity out in the field in Afghanistan, Pakistan or the Persian Gulf would be able to access the identities of its leader and participants by hitting a few keys on their mobile computers. By the same process, they would file back to the center any new data garnered by surveillance in the field.

Damascus international airport would have been a perfect example, since it has become the primary transit hub for al Qaeda operatives traveling back and forth through the Middle East and on to the Balkans and watchers at certain Damascus hotels could provide the center with running updates.

At present, raw intelligence comes in as fragments scattered among the 6 - 8 different US intelligence bodies engaged in tracking and fighting terrorism. Downing proposed cutting through this bureaucratic blockage in the intelligence flow with his centralized data pool. He tendered his resignation significantly on the day that CIA director George Tenet and FBI director Robert Mueller 3rd made a rare joint appearance before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.

Both directors made an effort to demonstrate that their agencies could work together in the new Homeland Security Department. Yet their cautiously worded statements showed there is still a long way to go for real cooperation in fighting terror.

Without mentioning the World Trade Center attacks in 1993 and 2001, the CIA director obliquely responded to charges against his agency (leveled in a series DEBKAfile ran in May "How Much Do US Presidents Know about Terror?"), when he told the Senate committee that America could not move from threat to threat in the future without putting in place "security procedures that prevent terrorists from returning to the same target years later."

However, nearly 10 months after the 9/11 trauma, America has still not set up a central data bank with updated rundowns and assessments on terrorist tactics, methods, targets, timelines and threats. In an interview Friday, June 28, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld informed the Washington Times that al Qaeda has obtained fresh supplies, including advanced weapons systems, for fighting the United States in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Clearly, al Qaeda is not only alive and well, but kicking again. The lesson here is that al Qaeda may have lost its territorial base but has acquired instead a light-footed mobility.

DEBBAfile's military and intelligence sources names the two governments which have taken charge of the financing, purchase and transfer of fresh weapons supplies to al Qaeda: Saudi Arabia and Iran, with Pakistani acquiescence.

No combat force on earth can fight these flourishing terrorist resources without first-rate, real-time intelligence. America, withal its technological prowess, is weighed down by an unwieldy intelligence bureaucracy, holding it back from meeting the intelligence challenges posed by a spreading terrorist enemy.

Israel has offered a certain amount of data on a regular basis to the as yet unborn Department for Homeland Security. Minister of Internal Security Uzi Landau and Brig-Gen David Tzur were in Washington this week to discuss with US officials the creation of a joint anti-terror office, mainly as a communication hub, for the new department.

29 June: A 33-year old Chinese software engineer, Zhu Rong Gong, has duplicated the secret fire-control software and systems integration for Russia's Su-27 series of aircraft, giving his country's drive towards the fully autonomous production of this potent weapon a sharp spurt.

DEBKAfile reports this feat of Beijing's commercial-military intelligence from its exclusive Chinese sources.

China is currently believed to operate 100 or more of these state of the art fighter aircraft, which parallel the Russian Mig-29 and US F-15C. In February 1996, Russia sold full Su-27 production rights to China for US$2.5 billion, but withheld the production secrets of certain key technologies, such as the software used to control the aircraft's sophisticated integrated fire control system, which were supplied only in "black box" form. Initially, China completed its first domestic production of SU-27s, which the Chinese air force designates J-11, in late 1998, from imported components. By the end of this year, its output is expected to reach ten aircraft and then rise to 15 annually. The Chinese estimate eventual domestic production going up to 100 per year, although Western estimates put this total at no more than 10 to 20 aircraft per year with substantial Russian assistance.

During August 1999, Beijing and Moscow signed an agreement for the purchase of 40 or more Su-30MKK (i.e. modernizirovannyi kommerchesky dla Kitaya, or 'modernized commercially for China') fighter-bombers from the Irktusk Aircraft Production Association in a contract worth up to another US$2.5 billion. A co-production agreement was subsequently made for an additional 250 aircraft, most likely at the Shenyang facility, and the purchase of a second batch of 40 constructed aircraft.

The Su-30MKK is a sophisticated long-range attack version of the Su-27 that can deliver a wide variety of ordnance.

The Russians counted on their "bans and restrictions", coupled with China's practical limitations, to hold Beijing back from modernizing and exporting non-licensed versions of the SU-27 and SU-30 variants without their help. They relied on the fact that the AL-31F engines and all the sets of radio-electronic equipment for these planes had to come from Russia.

However, Chinese intelligence has actively pursued the secrets of the aircraft sub-systems Russia is withholding.

30 June: No climb-downs are likely on any side from the position laid down by George W. Bush in his landmark Middle East speech on June 23. Two days later, at the G-8 Summit in Canada, Bush said (if Arafat dug his heels in) he did not rule out military action against him. He did not specify by whom, whether America, Israel or, under a US plan outlined in the past in DEBKAfile, by Egyptian and Jordanian security forces taking charge, respectively, of the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

The Palestinian suicide campaign has slowed down in the last eight days - but not at Arafat's behest, but because Israeli forces are slicing through Palestinian towns and villages on the West Bank to finish the frequently interrupted task of destroying terrorist bases. They are rounding up wanted terrorists and their controllers, destroying manufacturing facilities for bomb belts and explosives, often apprehending would-be human bombs as they leave base. The British-built fortress complex, symbol of the Palestinian Authority's control of the Hebron area, was blown up early Saturday, June 29, removing an important terrorist stronghold and hideout in the southern West Bank. Still, successive terror alerts keep Israeli security on their toes in one town after another.

As for Bush, every leader in the region, still stunned by his unequivocal bluntness, is watching for the slightest weakening in his demand for Palestinian regime change. First, Iran's hardline spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his terror chiefs. Then, Saudi crown prince Abdullah, mention of whom Bush omitted from his speech after he was caught out extending financial and logistical assistance to al Qaeda and his peace proposals exposed as a feature of his phony fa?ade of moderation.

Saddam Hussein will have interpreted Bush's tough stance on Arafat as a signaling that time is getting short for him to decide whether to pre-empt an American offensive by striking at US forces in the Middle East, at Washington's allies, Israel and Jordan, and trying to save the Palestinian leader - or wait for the American hammer to fall.

Bashar Assad in Damascus and the Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon are keeping a wary eye on the White House, after the Syrian President was told his double game was no longer acceptable. The Hizballah chief responded to the Bush ultimatum with typical manipulative ploys.

This abundance of openness, disclosures and leaks since the Bush speech can be seen as probes by the US, Israel and the Hizballah to test the ground, before moving forward to the next steps. That there is no going back was quickly understood by secretary of state Colin Powell, who turned away publicly from his separate path and fell in solidly behind the president.

1 July: The international war crimes court was born in The Hague Monday, July 1 amid serious challenges to its authority. A few hours earlier, Sunday June 30, the United States announced its withdrawal from the international peacekeeping force in Bosnia without safeguards for the immunity of US troops from prosecution.

Three Security Council permanent members, the United States, Russia and China, as well as Israel, are among the half of the 130 UN members states who have declined to ratify their signatures on the 1998 Rome Statute that established the court. They fear its judgments will be politically tainted. They also question the right of European nations to judge the rest of the world.

The Europeans, led by Britain and France, say they will not let the Bush administration undermine what they view as a historic advance in international justice and human rights.

Israel withdrew its signature because it claimed it had been treated unfairly from the outset by a tribunal whose charter addresses a wide range of war crimes, but not terrorism. On the other hand, the establishment of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza is judged a priori a war crime.

In endorsing the court four years ago, former President Bill Clinton believed the new tribunal would be useful for advancing his administration's two prime foreign policy objectives:

1.
Promoting the national aspirations of ethnic Muslims in the Balkans, especially in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia, at the expense of the Serbs. The Milosevic regime was to be discredited and smashed and Serbia, then considered the sharp edge of Russian and Chinese influence in the Balkans, reduced to a strategic nonentity hemmed in by four strong Muslim states

2.
The Balkan precedent was to have provided leverage against the Israeli political camp opposed to a Palestinian state and acted as an inhibitor for Israeli military operations against the Palestinians. Behind this thinking was the assumption that holding the IDF on a tight leash would lend Israeli policy-makers the freedom to make profound and sweeping concessions to the Palestinians.

Eager to meet Clinton's expectations, the Israeli prime minister of the day, Ehud Barak, signed on to the Rome Covenant in December 2000, two months after the outbreak of the Palestinian armed confrontation. He did not heed attorney general Elyakim Rubinstein's warnings that he was making Israeli officers and men fighting Palestinian terrorists and Israelis living on lands not included in the 1947 UN partition resolution liable to prosecution. Since the new court is not subject to a statute of limitations, Tel Aviv University (built over a pre-1948 Arab village), no less than the Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem's French Hill, could be charged as war criminals.

There are enough similar applications in other parts of the world to awaken a whole pack of sleeping dogs.

Sunday, June 30, the Sharon government, sheltering behind America's broad back, heeded the advice of attorney general Rubinstein this time and recalled Barak's signature. In any case, the 9/11 terrorist atrocities and subsequent US anti-terror offensives in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Philippines and Somalia have made an international war crimes court that fails to recognize terrorism as such outdated and irrelevant.

Last week, America and Europe locked horns at the G-8 summit over whether Yasser Arafat was fit to lead the Palestinian people. The US-EU confrontation over the international war crimes court and the peacekeeping force in Bosnia is the second transatlantic set-to in as many weeks.