Mideast Roundup

September 20, 2002

Hunting a President

To Be Captured - Preferably Alive

Three contingents of special forces - American, British and Israeli - are revealed by DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and intelligence sources to be in hot pursuit of Saddam Hussein, his sons Uday and Qusay, and other leading members of the ruling family. The commandos are under orders to catch the Iraqi ruler alive if possible, but kill him rather than let them escape.

US intelligence officials and military commanders are convinced that the capture or death of Saddam would be the cue for a swift coup d'etat to oust the ruling Baath party and render a US war offensive against Iraq redundant. A provisional military government would open negotiations with the United States on terms for removing the American threat of military action.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources note the three groups are not in contact with each other. They are coordinated at a senior level through British and Israeli envoys in Washington.

Each is armed with top-secret weapons developed especially for the Saddam mission. The existence of one such weapon was betrayed in 1992 immediately after the Gulf War. A missile designed to penetrate Saddam's presidential bunker, track him down and kill him, blew up accidentally during a training exercise conducted by Sayeret Matkal, the elite Israeli military intelligence unit for operations behind enemy lines, at the Tze'elim training facility in Israel's southern Negev desert. Five soldiers were killed and six wounded.

Ten years later, it would be fair to assume that Israel has since perfected a projectile custom-made for targeting Saddam in a fortified underground shelter. The United States is known to have built in the interim smart bombs and missiles that can bust deep bunkers and "sniff out" pre-determined targets, such as chemical or biological weapons. These tracking weapons detonate only upon encountering substances filed in their data banks. A missile programmed to destroy anthrax, for instance, would explode only after detecting stockpiles of the bacterium.

US military planners have long sought ways to locate and destroy stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons without releasing the deadly agents into the atmosphere. A concept developed by the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency and Office of Naval Research envisages the use of a high-temperature incendiary device with a "thermo-corrosive" filling adapted from the Special Operations Command's classified "Vulcan Fire" program. The weapon would burn at 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (540 degrees C) and create the type of pressure that prevents remnants of the biological and chemical agents from being ejected from the storage facility on detonation. Disinfecting gas would then be released in a second stage to destroy any remaining biological or chemical agents.

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and intelligence sources, the hunt for Saddam confronts all three special forces teams with the toughest and most perilous military operation any have ever faced behind enemy lines. Its success hinges on a given unit reaching Saddam's hideout undetected and staying on his tail without being caught, with the help of intelligence and electronic measures. The United States and Israel have dedicated their best satellite and aerial surveillance equipment to the chase, together with secret laser-operated sensor systems that react to sight, sound and smell.

Coincidentally, a group of high-ranking Iraqi officers is reported by our sources to have secretly put a proposal for Saddam Hussein's abdication to ruling Baath party leaders, for the sake of saving Iraq from the ravages of war and perhaps even the lives of the ruler and his family. Because word of the hunt for Saddam is known to have leaked in Iraq, security has been stepped in Washington for President George W. Bush, vice president Dick Cheney, top officials, armed forces chiefs and intelligence directors, lest Iraqi agents attempt retaliatory abductions or assassinations. This danger prompted Bush, in his UN General Assembly speech last week, to refer to the April 1993 attempt by Iraqi military intelligence to murder his father, President George H.W Bush, in Kuwait. He may have wanted to tell the world that America was not the first to opt for the course of presidential assassinations.

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Iraq War

Gone Too Far to Stop

The Bush administration has assembled a potent military coalition for the US-led 2002 campaign against Iraq that is far more down to earth than the alliance which joined his father in Gulf War I. Whereas the 1991 campaign was prepared outside Iraq, mostly in Saudi Arabia, the second thrusts military fingers deep into the targeted country in advance of a formal declaration of war. The assault is thus an accomplished fact. Baghdad's surprise offer on September 16 to re-admit UN arms inspectors thrown out four years ago came too late to slow America's military momentum. Six days earlier, on September 10, the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, and the head of the Central Command, General Tommy Franks, informed President Bush they had wound up the preparations for war and it was over to the president for the countdown to D-Day.

The latest date for the oft-postponed overt assault bruited in Washington is the first or second week of October - barring any unforeseen Iraqi pre-emptive move.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources report that special forces units from the the United States, Britain, Turkey, Jordan are operational inside Iraq. A steel ring furthermore encloses Iraq by land and sea, some of its links formed by bases in such countries as Saudi Arabia (despite its ifs and buts - as first revealed by DEBKA-Net-Weekly No. 71 on August 2), Egypt, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, and, up to a point, Syria.

Armed with authority from the US Congress, the Bush team easily brushed aside the diplomatic hurdles raised at the UN Security Council and continues to forge ahead in the field, stage by relentless stage. "It is a kind of modular exercise" - one high-placed Washington source put it to DEBKA. "It is structured so that when it is completed, the commander in chief can signal the transition to open war without further preliminaries on the ground."

One of those last preliminaries was cleared out of the way this week.

MORE IRAQI COMMAND AND CONTROL KNOCKED OUT

Sunday, September 15, US and UK warplanes, inching closer to Baghdad, blasted another Iraqi anti-air force and air defense command center - this one at Talil, 160 miles south of the capital. DEBKA-Net-Weekly 's military experts say that this latest stage in the destruction of Iraq's air defenses and air force command and control centers peels off another layer of protection from central Iraq. It lays its air space open to US flights all the way from Kuwait to Baghdad. Only two more command centers of this kind are left standing: Taj, in central Iraq and Kirkuk in the north.

The Taj command center lies only 23 miles north of Baghdad and 80 miles south of Saddam's home town and hideout at Tikrit. Its function is to defend these two key cities against attack from the north. Its destruction will therefore leave both exposed, together with all of central Iraq where Saddam and his top government and military officials are concentrated.

Disposing of the Taj and Kirkuk centers will deprive Iraq of central and regional operational control for launching its missiles, leaving decisions up to each individual missile unit commander who will have to depend on limited local data. The Iraqi air force and air defense units will likewise be denied of effective central command and control, operating largely in the dark without proper coordination from above.

Local command centers can be quite simply paralyzed by electronic means.

Once Saddam's air and air defense forces' command and control centers are demolished, US, British, Turkish and Jordanian special forces troops can strike deep into the country from the north, west and south.

Northwest Iraq

US, British and Jordanian special forces disposed along the Iraqi-Syrian border and in the western desert will have three missions:

1.
To sever Iraq's illicit oil export routes via Syria - border crossings, roads and railways - thereby bringing down Iraq's daily oil output from more than one million barrels per day to an estimated 700,000 bpd.

2.
To block off the deliveries of Baghdad's imported weapons and military spare parts through Syria's Mediterranean ports. Iraq made these war contingency purchases over recent months and weeks, mainly in East Europe and the Far East. Denied access to Syrian ports, Baghdad will have to fall back on precarious overland routes from Iran or use smugglers' planes and boats taking off from the Gulf, Central Asia or Pakistan to ferry supplies in. Already, Iraq is hard-pressed to locate big-time smugglers for this traffic, despite big financial rewards.

3.
To seek out and destroy surface-to-surface missiles batteries and the sites of kamikaze planes and gliders loaded with chemical or biological weapons that Iraq has spread out across the Western Desert and other parts of the country. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources say the latest intelligence information raises the possibility that Iraq has subdivided its missile batteries into smaller units of only one or two missiles for simultaneous multiple firings from scattered locations. It also suggests that the aircraft loaded with WMD are concealed in caves or natural folds, ready to be flown out by their suicide-pilots on low-flying night missions.

Turkish Contingents: DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources report the arrival of the command centers of at least three Turkish mechanized infantry in northern Iraq in the middle of last week. Over the weekend, they will be followed by the vanguard units of the main Turkish invasion force. The Turks aim to complete the transfer of their entire expeditionary force into Iraq by the last week of September, in full coordination with the US Central Command of General Tommy Franks, now in-theater. Their primary area of operation is central North Iraq, around the oil cities of Mosul and Kirkuk.

Western and Central Iraq

The recent bombing of the H-2, H-3 and al-Baghdadi airbases has opened the way, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources, for US and Jordanian special forces' landings on the Iraqi side of the frontier and their advance on the blitzed installations. Their first task is to cut off access to Iraqi reinforcements, including engineering teams, to repair the bases. Mostly they will be engaged in fighting their way into the bases and preparing them for large-scale allied landings for the next phase of the offensive. This will entail "leapfrogging" troops into the Iraqi heartland very quickly, in order to cut off Saddam's twin power centers, Baghdad and his clan's home town of Tikrit, from the rest of the country.

To accomplish this mission, General Franks intends fielding a division-strength US force, the largest US paratroop force deployed in battle since the Vietnam War.

British and Jordanian paratroops will also participate in the operation.

The force will be dropped complete with equipment over three centers.

The H2, H3, al-Baghdadi air bases, taking control of this complex.

The area around the three cities of al-Hadithah, al-Haqlaniyah and Bani Dahir, 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of Tikrit and 85 miles (135 kilometers) from the giant Iraqi air bases at al-Habbaiya.

The city of Dawr, on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) southeast of Tikrit. The unit, which will include crack US Navy Seals, has been assigned a three-fold mission:

1.
To cut off the road links between Baghdad to Tikrit.

2.
To capture an ancient aqueduct about eight miles (12 kilometers) east of Tikrit and some five miles (eight kilometers) east of Dawr that vanishes under the desert sands to the south. US and Israeli spy satellites and aircraft have discovered, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources, that sections of the aqueduct may be camouflaging the communications, coolant and ventilation systems of underground military facilities, where Saddam and his family are believed to be holed up along with Iraq's top political and military officials.

3.
The Navy Seals will patrol the river Euphrates against military movement or any attempt by Saddam and family to escape by water to the north or south.
The prevailing view at Franks' command center is that some Iraqi forces will not wait beyond the initial stages of the US drive into the country before switching sides and turning their guns on troops loyal to Saddam. Some of the officers of would-be rogue units are already in touch with the Americans in and outside Iraq, or with Jordanian army officers leading special units in the field.

The Southern Front

The US-UK air raids over al-Nukeib on August 5 - and Talil on September 16 - strengthen the estimate voiced by DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military experts that the main American invasion thrust will come from Kuwait in the south and split up between two main routes - the eastern arm heading for Basra, the south Iraqi oil fields and Khozistan; the northern arm pointing north, first reaching the Shi'ite Moslem cities of Najef and Karbala, then on to Baghdad. US and British troops have plunged into intense activity along the eastern axis.

The Eastern Axis

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources say forward intelligence and reconnaissance units of the US and British special forces are scoping out this "Eastern Axis" route, cleansing it of the sparse Iraqi forces still there and preparing the ground for the main allied drive.

These commandos are occupied at three locations:

A.
The environs of Jabiliah, south of the Hawr al-Hammar lake and marshes. As soon as the invasion force arrives, the commandos will rope off the southern Iraqi region and prevent Iraqi contingents deployed north of Najef and Karbala from heading south to arrest the American advance.

B.
North of Basra, where US and British special forces have sectioned off the road at a point between al-Quranah near Aradah and the northern area of al-Uzayr, the traditional Moslem burial site of the Hebrew prophet Ezra, known in Arabic as Uzayr. This eastern region of Iraq is across the border from the Iranian cities of Khorranshahr and Hamid. US forces will be on guard against Iranian regular or guerrilla units slipping in and seizing Iraqi oil fields.

C.
US and British special forces units are in position between the Iraqi cities of al-Quranah and al-Amarah opposite the Iranian city of Susangerd as a barrier against a potential Iranian grab for the large Shiite cities of Najef and Karbala before the invasion force comes in.
The comings and goings of these advance US-UK special force troops are watched with dismay by Iran's leaders. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Tehran sources report that alarm on this score sent Iranian president Mohammed Khatami to Jeddah on September 14 to confer urgently with Saudi crown prince Abdullah. On September 16, former Iranian president Hashem Rafsanjani accused the Americans of embarking on their military venture for the purpose of seizing control of Iraq's oil fields. Beneath this charge was the very real Iranian fear of an American attempt to snatch the oilfields of Iranian Khozistan as well.

Saddam's Secret Army

Must Be Destroyed First

In the hierarchy of America's war objectives, the break-up of Iraq's formidable intelligence-security apparatus takes precedence even over the targeting of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. US war planners know that capturing and killing Saddam and his two sons - or even wiping out all or the bulk of his missiles and non-conventional weapons systems - will go for naught if Iraqi intelligence lives on.

This conclusion was reached in consultations among senior security and intelligence officials in Washington in the run-up to the US military offensive, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources report. It was laid before the Congressional leaders President George W. Bush briefed on strategy at the Oval Office on September 17, as part of his efforts to get Capitol Hill behind his Iraq campaign. The lawmakers were asked not to air this most sensitive part of their briefing since it touches on a vital step in the war against terrorism.

The destruction of Iraqi Intelligence, they were told, would represent the first truly important tactical step toward eliminating intelligence networks that continue to prey on the United States and which the US-led war on Afghanistan left untouched. ("Intelligence" in this sense is a cynical euphemism for the service's real functions, as will be seen in the detailed rundown below.)

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Washington say the administration made the following points to the members of Congress:

A.
No more than scraps of information have been garnered about the men who masterminded the 9/11 attacks, notwithstanding a whole year of intense tracking during and after the Afghan War. The Al Qaeda and Taliban heavyweights in US hands know very little, if anything, about al-Qaeda's command structure and the identity of the men who ordered the attacks. Under interrogation, no captive - however senior - could name any commander more than one level above him in the chain of command, the source of his orders and operational plans. They had no notion who gave that source his orders.

B.
One conclusion reached by the American and other counter-terror agencies investigating al Qaeda's record of destruction is that each strike was masterminded by a different group of planners from the top-level ideological and operational leadership level. This applies to the East African US embassy bombings in August 1998, the crippling of the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000 and the September 11, 2002 attacks.

C.
The names of certain organizations crop up repeatedly in one probe after another. Among them are:

Iraq's Special Security Service - Al Amn al-Khas.

The Saudi general intelligence service (GIS) - al-Istakhabarah al-Amah.

Syrian air force intelligence - Idarat al-Mukhabarat. Far from supplying the air force with tactical intelligence, as it name would suggest, this service is Damascus's instrument for clandestine overseas operations, also supervising and managing the terrorist organizations under Syrian patronage.

The terrorist-intelligence group attached personally to Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The Iranian Intelligence Ministry and other Iranian intelligence bodies.

Yasser Arafat's special intelligence apparatus, including agencies formerly grouped under Palestinian Central Surveillance, once run by Abu Iyyad, deputy PLO chief and one of Arafat's go-betweens with the CIA. He was assassinated on January 16, 1991, one day before the launching of the Gulf War in a joint "intelligence" operation mounted by Arafat and Saddam. This assassination displaced Washington's influence in Palestinian intelligence in favor of Iraqi military intelligence which up to the present day retains its control of the sections of Palestinian intelligence still loyal to Arafat, such as the intelligence arm of the Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades commanded by Colonel Tawfik Tirawi and the intelligence wing of another Fatah wing, Force 17, Arafat's presidential guard.

Hizballah intelligence, including the special security and intelligence branch run by Imad Mughniyeh.

Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence, the ISI.

Yemeni military intelligence.

The list is not complete, covering only the main groups who maintain operational links with al Qaeda - and then only certain elements of those groups, whose top and middle level commanders may not always be completely in the picture.
The most intensely active allies of Osama Bin Laden's network are the organizations most committed to the path of terror - the Iraqi, Iranian and Hizballah's undercover agencies.

D.
American and other authorities countering terrorism have come to believe that the collaborative links between these agencies and al Qaeda are far deeper and more malignant than mere logistics or even shared operational planning. Their agents penetrate US intelligence, gleaning and trading the types of inside information that enabled Bin Laden's masterminds to set up the 9/11 attacks without putting the American authorities on guard and arming al-Qaeda cells in Yemen - via Iraqi military intelligence operatives in Aden - with the data needed to blast the USS Cole.

The card up al Qaeda planners' sleeves for the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon was, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence experts, this:

They had obtained full details of the emergency plan to evacuate the US president, cabinet, White House staff, Congress, essential government employees, military chiefs and top CIA and FBI personnel from Washington, in the event of nuclear threat. They knew the paths of the removals and their destinations.

This information could only have come from Iraqi intelligence operatives who had been fed by certain intelligence sources in Moscow.

Moscow obtained the top-secret plan from FBI turncoat Robert Hanssen, a high-ranking counter-intelligence operative for the bureau for 25 years. Hanssen was close enough to top FBI, CIA, Pentagon and National Security Agency (NSA) officials to be privy to their most classified secrets. Last year, Hanssen was arrested for passing secrets to Russia and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.

Certain factions of Russian intelligence traditionally maintain close ties with Iraq's clandestine agencies from the days of the Soviet Union. The super-sensitive data passed to al Qaeda ahead of 9/11 would have enabled the terrorists to target not only the White House, but also the president and vice president in the course of their evacuation and at their safe destination. The president was therefore kept airborne in the first hours of the emergency, for fear he might be targeted on his way from the White House in the course of the pre-arranged evacuation.

By handing this secret to Osama bin Laden, Iraqi intelligence may have intended al Qaeda to use it to assassinate the president of the United States.

The United States has a long score to settle with Iraqi "intelligence", but also with its helpers. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence experts estimate that US military action will not stop at destroying the mighty Iraqi intelligence machine; it will have no choice but to go after Iranian and Hizballah intelligence as well.

Iraqi Intelligence

An All-Consuming Web, Key to Iraq's WMD

Anyone familiar with the structure of the old Soviet KGB and Spetsnaz Special Forces will recognize some of their features in the elaborate web of Iraq's security, intelligence, undercover and special forces units. Most of these organs of Saddam Hussein's single-party (Baath), one-man regime, are answerable only to the Presidential Palace in Baghdad; some are even headquartered there. Their number and diversity are legion. Nonetheless, Saddam keeps adding to them. The latest three additions, revealed here by DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources, are: The Nuclear Sword, Men of Sacrifice, Al Hussein Missile Brigade/AKS Special Unit 223.

Special Security Service (Al Amn al-Khas)

This is the most secretive and feared of all Iraq's many undercover services. As elite guard unit to the president, its members must be prepared to lay down their lives in the frequent attempts to assassinate him. Their loyalty must also stand the test of spying on fellow officers in intelligence, security and other sensitive services.

In the 1980s, the Special Security Service acted also as Baghdad's primary procurement arm for the supplies and equipment acquisitions required to advance its illicit nuclear, chemical, biological weapons and missiles programs. The procurement program was run by Hussein Kamil. To muddy the trail, Al Amn al-Khas set up a network of front companies in the US and Europe. The service's records, files and plans are duplicated and hidden in secret installations, most probably underground in the network of emergency bunkers that Saddam Hussein has provided for his top level government officials. Similarly concealed back-up facilities have also been set up for their command and communications centers.

Some of the front companies set up for illegal procurement were also useful in the 1990s for busting UN sanctions. Among the Special Security Services' undercover tasks is the payment of bribes to secret overseas helpers. Abu Nidal was paid for aiding in the smuggling operations of weapons and technology into Iraq as well as to Palestine.

Amn al-Khas runs an arms and military equipment smuggling network in Syria and Lebanon through Syrian military intelligence, Hizballah and Hamas, using Al Qaim in western Iraq and Rumashid near H-3 on the Jordanian border as interim depots; it also organizes the training of Palestinian terrorists in new weapons in the Beqaa Valley of eastern Lebanon under cover of Syrian bases.

Department for General Intelligence (GDI) - Da'irat al Mukhabarat al Amah

This body was instrumental in Saddam Hussein seizure of power in 1979. Its forerunner fell under his control in 1964. When his Baath party took power in 1968, Saddam expanded the service. In 1973, he elevated it under the new name of Da'irat al Mukhabarat. He relied heavily on this service's support during his takeover of the presidency, as he still does today to keep him in power.

By now, a large, sprawling organization, the GDI is made up of ten sub-departments:

The Special Bureau (1st Directorate). This most violent and sinister unit of Saddam's secret army carries out assassinations of suspected enemies, also conducts their interrogation under torture.

Surveillance (3rd Directorate) keeps an eye on suspects and also potential recruits.

Counterintelligence (5th Directorate) works against foreign agents, concentrating its attention on the undercover activities of American, British, Israeli, Iranian, Syrian and Turkish espionage services.

Mukhabarat Security (6th Directorate) is the internal policeman of the organization. Its members are planted in all the departments. The 6th Directorate not only issues security passes, it also manufactures false identities for undercover agents and provides them with the identification papers and other necessary gear and gadgets for carrying out "black operations".

Al Haakimiya Prison (7th Directorate). This facility has become a landmark as well known as the old Lubiyanka in Moscow. It is therefore no longer used for lengthy high-profile interrogations, which are relegated to hidden safe houses, but mostly as a holding center.

Secret Operations (9th Directorate) - so secret that it is controlled from a command center outside Baghdad.

Personnel Supervision (19th Directorate) - Another in-house policing body that keeps all Mukhabarat personnel under scrutiny by opening their mail, bugging their homes, tapping their phones and shadowing their movements.

Protection (22nd Directorate) provides personal security details on demand for high officials and high-ranking visitors.

Office of Special Operations (14th Directorate) manages the training of agents for clandestine operations and killer squads for assassinations, mainly at a facility in Salman Pak southeast of Baghdad. This directorate is responsible for super-secret operations like, for instance, the botched assassination attempt against the first president George Bush in 1993 during his visit to Kuwait.

Deep Penetration (Unit 999) deals with clandestine operations at home and abroad from its headquarters in an army base at Salman Pak. One of the unit's commanders is a kinsman of Saddam Hussein, Capt. Muhammad Abdallah al-Tikriti. This headquarters contains also a facility for training terrorists in the tactics of multi-casualty strikes, sabotage, hi-jacking, abductions and assassinations, as well as the use of chemical, biological and crude nuclear devices. They are also taught how to get weapons aboard a civilian flight, overcome a flight crew and cow the passengers, and carry out suicide attacks. Saudis, Egyptians and Chechens are reported to have passed through this facility, some trained by instructors from targeted countries. The Arab volunteers are programmed as human bombs aimed specifically against US targets.

Under the direct control of Iraq's al Mukhabarat Intelligence Service Special Operations Unit, the foreign fighters are mostly kept separate from Iraqi military personnel. Unit 999 originally had five battalions - 1st Persian, 2nd Saudi Arabian, 3rd Palestinian, 4th Turkish, 5th Marine (seaborne). The sixth battalion, "Opposition", was added recently, its two sections dealing with dissident Kurds in the north and rebellious Shiites in the south. Undercover agents have infiltrated both regions.

This unit was responsible for the sabotage bombing attacks on Iran's oil installations in the 1990s.

Brigade of Mukhabarat whips senior officers and high officials to safe locations in times of external danger.

Military Intelligence Service (Al-Istikhbarat al-Askariyya)

Another of the clandestine services deferring directly to the president. Centered in Baghdad, it is built around a prison and interrogation unit, but also maintains regional headquarters at Kirkuk - covering Iran and the Kurdish tribes of the north; Mosul - covering Turkey and Syria; Basra - covering the Gulf Emirates and Iran; and Baghdad - covering Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran and opposition groups.

Military Security Services (Al Amn al-Askariyya)

Yet another covert service that answers directly to the president on cases of dissidence in the armed forces and the political reliability of its members.

General Security Service (Mudiriat al-Amn al-Amma)

This arm employs an extensive web of informers to uncover such crimes as smuggling, but also focuses on manifestations of dissidence in the population. The agency operates independently of the other services but reports like them directly to the presidential palace.

SPECIAL FORCES

After their poor showing in the 1991 Gulf War, these units were thoroughly overhauled with the help of Russian ex-Spetsnaz Special Force instructors. Greater emphasis was placed on intelligence and motivation. Some of the most reliable units have been charged with guarding Saddam Hussein. They include the "Green Berets" (33 Special Forces Brigade), the Special Republican Guard Motorized Infantry Division - both rapid reaction forces - and contingents assigned to Counter-terrorist and Hostage Rescue operations.

Special Force Battalions with the Republican Guards and a Special Forces Brigade are assigned with clandestine penetration of Kurdish areas in the north. Their jobs are assassination, sabotage, intelligence-gathering, psychological warfare and a close watch on the Turkish and Iranian border districts.

The three latest additions to Saddam's secret army are:

The Nuclear Sword

A super-secret team of some 50 men who are moved around from one group to another in special operations, trained in secret and, since September 11, extensively compartmentalized. Among its members are Palestinians from Lebanon who come to Iraq for training, as well as agents sent undercover to the US. Among them too are Iraqi scientists believed to have manufactured at least three 12-kiloton atomic bombs weighing almost two tons, that are small enough for transportation by a heavy-duty truck, or for hiding in the vicinity of advancing enemy troops. These scientists are also thought to have built three working models of a radiological weapon as well as a special ground vehicle to deliver it, to be driven by a suicide volunteer. These devices are quickly assembled on the spot and deployed for activation against enemy troops.

Saddam's Martyrs (Men of Sacrifice)

This organization of between 30,000 and 40,000 troops was established by Saddam Hussein's son Uday. Many of their tasks overlap those of other military and intelligence units so that they are able to move in and salvage a mission after other units have failed. These Men of Sacrifice are described as a pre-emptive suicide strike force consisting of many units: a motorized infantry force made up of teenage recruits from the president's Tikrit clan, an armored force, an artillery unit equipped with towed and self-propelled pieces, a small number of fixed wing and rotary craft, as well as a special chemical platoon, a commando company, a communications section and a transportation section. Deployed too are scuba divers and airborne commandos.

The "martyrs" are trained in tactics of assassination, explosives, kidnapping and chemical and biological warfare. Their crack troops are fluent in English, Persian and Hebrew. They have been known to carry out cross-border assignments in Syria, Iran and Jordan, with strong indications that they are currently active in Lebanon and the West Bank.

Al Hussein Missile Brigade/AKS Special Unit 223

This force is made up of three Al Hussein Missile battalions under tight presidential control. At least one maintains a fully operational launcher; the rest are on standby with disassembled launchers. Two additional brigades are believed to be armed with cruise missiles, drones and special 50-ton flatbed transport vehicles named Al Nida.

The Al Hussein missile, after undergoing modifications, has a separable warhead capable of delivering a 1-ton payload with a range of 650 km. A research program known as "Meteo 1" created a detachable parachute with retarded missile warhead. UN sanctions restricted Iraq to testing missiles with ranges of no more than 150 km. Nonetheless, Iraq went ahead clandestinely with computer simulations, wind tunnel trials and production engineering tests to upgrade its warheads for weapons of mass destruction. Testing of improved bombs using simulated agents and spray systems for germ warfare is almost impossible to detect - particularly since 1998, when the UN arms inspectors left Iraq. Iraq is thought to have spent the last decade greatly improving its shells, bombs and warheads and weapons of mass destruction, producing weapons that are 5-10 times more effective than its original crude designs.

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

14 September: US President George W. Bush and his top military and intelligence advisers are clearly convinced by the evidence in their hands that America faces an existential peril. One piece of evidence is revealed in the case of the "Palermo Senator" container vessel, detained and searched at sea for four days after radiation traces were detected in its hold on September 9. The fact that the search came up empty does not obviate the danger. It ties in with the solid intelligence the FBI is holding that 40 al Qaeda men are heading for the United States by ship. No one knows what ship, what arms they bear - conventional, chemical, biological or chemical - or where they are programmed to strike.

The fear of unconventional weapons of terror stealing into America is only one element of the sense of encompassing peril in store. A nightmarish standoff of the type familiar to movie thriller fans has certainly entered the minds of Washington's decision-makers. It goes something like this: One morning, a spokesman of the ruling Iraqi Baath Revolutionary Council issues a statement: Iraqi secret agents are in place at two or three key centers in America - or strategic locations in America, Britain and Israel - armed with suitcases containing nuclear devices or deadly viruses, smallpox, anthrax etc. Then comes the ultimatum: Bush is given 12 or 24 hours to go public before the UN General Assembly and revoke his war plans for Iraq, or else an irreversible order goes out to the agents to release the suitcases' deadly contents. An American pre-emptive blitz of Iraq cities would have the same consequence.

That is only a scenario. However, hard intelligence data reaching Washington raises the distinct possibility of Iraqi agents, or Iraq-trained Palestinian terrorists, being concealed somewhere on the West Bank or hiding in an Israeli Arab community, armed with exactly such suitcases. Their penetration and concealment will have been facilitated by Yasser Arafat and his Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. This danger, raised more than once in DEBKAfile, accounts for the as yet unpublished Israeli government decision to begin inoculating the entire Israeli population against smallpox in early October.

It also explains the chief of staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon's statements that Palestinian terror is a hazard to Israel's survival. These assertions have brought down on the general's head a full-blown assault by Israeli left-wing political groups. The chorus of protest comes from factions that initiated and carried through the 1973 Oslo Peace Accords with Yasser Arafat. They are echoed by a supporting caste of media pundits.

The contrast is stark. The Bush administration fully acknowledges that America is in grave existential peril, even without facing a potential Iraqi military invasion of New York, while Israel's chief of staff is slammed for the crime of articulating the same warning. His detractors find nothing threatening in the Palestinian terror that has blighted Israel for two years, nor from the Hizballah whose avowed objective is to destroy Israel. Above all, they blind themselves to the danger posed by the alliance between Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat and their collaboration in the deployment of weapons of mass destruction that threaten Israel as much as America. Even as Israel marks the 29th anniversary of the Yom Kippur war that placed Israel's survival in dire peril, some of the most vocal Israeli politicians, writers and academics display all the symptoms of amnesia and denial.

17 September: Iraq's offer to unconditionally re-admit the UN arms inspectors thrown out four years ago has forged cracks in the UN Security Council, but not deflected the Bush administration's determination to remove the regime the US president called "barbaric" when he addressed a fund-raiser in Nashville, Tennessee, Tuesday, September 17.

In New York, meanwhile, Colin Powell demanded a new resolution to lay out in full the conditions for the inspectors' return and force Iraq to comply with the promises it has broken in 11 years, or face the consequences; Igor Ivanov, backed up by France and China, dismissed the need for any more resolutions, urging the council to focus on getting the arms inspectors back into Iraq quickly.

Their posture gives Washington a rough ride to UN endorsement of military action, but does not faze President Bush. He will simply hark back to his earlier promise to go it alone, if necessary. Some of the waverers were impressed enough then to begin to form up behind him. Saudi Arabia explicitly consented to the use of its bases for a UN-mandated attack on Baghdad, a notable gesture given that the Saudis spoke also for Egypt. France, the leading European waverer, might also have come aboard. But Baghdad's "inspectors exercise" yanked all three back as Saddam calculated, without however deflecting the Americans.

Notwithstanding the poor psychological profiles often painted for him, Saddam Hussein is a realist. He is also deeply influenced by Muslim military thinking which holds that, when a Muslim general runs into an unbroken wall of resistance that he cannot overcome, it is his duty to beat a tactical retreat until he sees a crack. This he did when he ran into the unbroken wall of the George Bush's determination, also buying time enough to hide his forbidden weapons and equipment - either in the country or across the border, before the inspectors return.

When the heat dies down, he can go back to full production of weapons of mass destruction, just as he did the moment he saw the backs of the arms inspectors in 1998.

The Iraqi dictator also believes he is wise to the Bush administration's weaknesses. The US president vowed to destroy Osama Bin Laden, al Qaeda and the Taliban. Bin Laden has dropped out of sight, removing himself like a good Muslim general from the range of a determined enemy, but al Qaeda and the Taliban are far from finished. In June, Bush declared the Palestinian people deserve a new leadership in place of Arafat and his cronies. Yet four months later, after the Israeli armed forces severely crippled the Palestinian terror infrastructure, Arafat and his henchmen continue to sit in state in Ramallah. Saddam therefore hopes against hope that he too will survive the mighty American war machine if he acts prudently.

But Bush has in the meantime gained backing from the US Congress and the authority to press forward with the military campaign already begun. The Russians, like the Saudis and French, know this as well as Saddam. They are therefore not seriously intent on holding the Americans back, but rather trying to get them over a barrel on the post-war share-out of the spoils of victory. The name of this game is oil.

17 September: Sunday, September 15, the Macedonian voter overwhelmingly returned to power the former Social Democrat prime minister Branko Crvenkovski, dumping the ruling coalition led by the nationalist VMRO minister Ljubco Georgievski and partner, the moderate Democratic Party of Albanians. Both were widely accused of corruption.

The socialists, who governed the country from 1992 to 1998, are expected to invite the newly-elected Albanian Public Democratic Party to share power. This was mandated in the Western-brokered Ohrid peace accord, that last year halted the ethnic Albanian rebellion insurrection on the brink of civil war. The new ethnic Albanian face in Macedonian politics is Ali Ahmeti, formerly a key commander of the National Liberation Army (NLA) that led the rebellion. In the predominantly Albanian city of Tetovo, Ahmeti's supporters danced and fired guns in the air to celebrate his victory. Ethnic Albanians are Muslims and account for roughly one-quarter of the population.

DEBKAfile's Balkans expert comments:

The voter turnout was low - no more than 50 percent, a reflection of the majority Macedonians' disbelief in their ability of their politicians, elected or deposed, to heal this tiny landlocked Balkan nation's afflictions. Two million Macedonians scarcely hope that any administration rising in Skopje can eradicate the country's festering ill of organized crime, dominated by the Albanian mafia and Islamic extremists, which feeds on ethnic, religious and communal strife and does not conceal its ambition to establish a Greater Albania.

Neither Macedonian police officers nor international peacekeepers dare venture into parts of Tetovo and most of the villages strung along the country's western frontier. Both are powerless to stem the almost daily shooting attacks on - and abductions of - Macedonians, even in the capital Skopje.

Violence is also rife in the Albanian-dominated areas where rival ethnic Albanian factions wage turf wars. The PDP party that guerrilla leader-turned politician Ahmeti established for the election is challenged by Arben Xhaferi's Democratic Party of Albania. A showdown between the two - both leading lights of the NLA (an offshoot of the Kosovo Liberation Front, hence the group's acronym of KLA/NLA) - is inevitable now that the election is over. Already, a wave of reciprocal liquidations has begun. More than one gangster has been gunned down in his favorite outdoor haunt by a speeding motor cyclist.

Untold profits are at stake: control over the most lucrative dope smuggling route in Europe - the Balkans Golden Triangle. Albanian liberation fighters battling in the hills of Macedonia and southern Serbia have been identified by international law enforcement agencies as the paramilitary wing of the Albania mafia which traffics in drugs, women, stolen luxury cars and other contraband to Europe, Russia, Africa and across the Atlantic.

German and Scandinavian police say Kosovo Albanians are their countries' leading suppliers of heroin and other drugs. In Italy, police say Albanian gangsters are the leading importers of prostitutes from Eastern Europe and Russia.

The Albanian mafia is estimated to control at least 80 percent of the heroin entering Western Europe, and 40 percent of the drug sold in Europe and North America

Unrest in Macedonia and Kosovo is a positive boon for these criminal activities.

Huge sums of money flowing from Kosovar-Macedonian Albanian control of the Central European drug market fund terrorist activities in Tetovo and Kosovo. They finance the purchase of the latest weaponry and have long funded an international industry promoting ethnic Albanian victimhood over that of any other member of the Balkans' ethnic rainbow.Beside its links to crime, the KLA/NLA has opened the door of Macedonia to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda and Islamic elements from the Middle East, a presence that poses a potential threat of extremist Muslim penetration to other parts of former Yugoslavia and their European neighbors.

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