Steve Quayle News Alerts

September 27, 2002

Saddam Hussein and his two sons, Uday and Qusay, are cited by intelligence reports reaching DEBKA-Net-Weekly from Iraq to be seriously considering taking a page out of the al-Qaeda handbook and staging a collective disappearance, Osama bin Laden style.

In intense discussions in the palace-bunker near his home town of Tikrit, the Iraqi ruler is examining the notion of evaporating with his entire entourage like the al Qaeda leader, who went to ground with his top lieutenants and the Taliban high command. The group accompanying the Iraqi ruler would include such top officials of the ruling Baath party as Vice President Taha Yasin Ramadan and Vice Chairman of the Baath Revolutionary Command Council, Izaat Ibrahim, who have stood by him through thick and thin, as well as a number of Iraqi intelligence chiefs.

The bunker discussions also turned on a plan for Iraqi intelligence to rescue Yasser Arafat from his besieged headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, in an operation staged concurrently with Saddam's disappearance. The Palestinian leader would also then drop out of sight.

After learning of the "Great Escape" plan for Arafat, the Israeli army strung razor wire three meters (10 feet) high around the only building left standing in the wasteland of the administration complex.

Arafat's fate is still under discussion; not so is the plan to make use of the radiological, biological and chemical weapons Saddam has so painstakingly developed, before he makes his own exit.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources learn that the Iraqi ruler is examining three strategies:

A.
Hours after he has successfully vanished with family and following, a signal would go up to unleash the entire Iraqi arsenal of missiles, aircraft flown by suicide pilots, warships, naval commandos and local terror cells, for massive assaults on the oilfields of the entire Gulf, including those of Saudi Arabia and Iran. Saddam intends to go out on a dense biological/ chemical cloud that will poison the region's atmosphere and contaminate the oil fields and waters of the Gulf.
He may also opt for the use of radiological bombs or devices.
It is believed in Baghdad that an operation of this nature will completely shut down Gulf oil production and its refineries and cut off the flow to international markets for at least six weeks. Even if nuclear, chemical and biological decontamination squads reach the region swiftly, the variable Gulf winds will quickly undo their work and re-contaminate any area they have cleansed.
In any case, there are not enough trained squads at the disposal of the Americans, the British or the Japanese to decontaminate an area as extensive as the Gulf region.

B.
Spreading pollution outside the Gulf to such strategic waterways as the Suez Canal and Red Sea. Proponents of this course argue that fouling the Red Sea would prevent Saudi Arabia from re-directing its oil exports through outlets on its western coast after its eastern coast ports become inoperative; closing the Suez Canal to shipping would create mayhem; cleanup crews and equipment would have to go round the long route to the distressed region and the American war effort would be stymied since its logistical system is oriented on the canal and Egypt's giant Cairo-West airbase.

C.
Sending a toxic chemical, biological or nuclear-radiological cloud over Israel, a country the Iraqi leadership anathemizes as much as it does the United States. Such an assault would portray Iraq as the only Arab country directly supporting the Palestinian uprising. It would also make the Jewish state unsafe as America's alternative logistical base, in place of the contaminated Gulf facilities.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Iranian sources report that Iranian president Mohammad Khatami, calling on Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah in Jeddah on Saturday, September 21, laid before him confirmation of Iraq's reported plan to employ weapons of mass destruction to contaminate the Gulf and its oil-rich coastal regions.

Verification came the following day from a second source, the US war chief, General Tommy Franks, when he visited Abdullah in Riyadh. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources say the Iraqi assault plan against Gulf targets and Saudi oil fields dominated the Riyadh talks, together with a review of the ways in which the United States can help the oil kingdom.

The Iranian president offered to cooperate with the Saudis in fighting the Iraqi attacks off or at least battling their lethal effects. He said his government had begun instituting damage control measures in three main areas:

1.
It had agreed to join America's military offensive against Iraq (See separate article on the secret US-Iranian military cooperation pact), trading this consent for Washington's aid should Iraq launch a nuclear, biological or chemical attack in the Gulf region.

2.
Essential installations and equipment have been evacuated from Gulf coastal areas, Iranian islands and oil terminals.

3.
A large military force have been transferred from its Gulf bases to the Caspian area of Mazandaran for comprehensive training exercises in combating nuclear, biological and chemical warfare.

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources, Saddam and his sons are examining this radical once unthinkable course after concluding the cards are stacked against them. They do not expect the Iraqi army to hold out in the face of a joint US, British, Turkish and Jordanian assault bolstered by logistical backing from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Moreover, even before the US offensive gets underway, they know they cannot take the loyalty of Iraqi military units for granted. The answer, Saddam and his advisers believe, is a punishing pre-emptive military and economic blow to the West, devastating enough to make the conquest of Iraq not worth the candle. In the meantime, Saddam and his sons would emulate the Taliban and al Qaeda and conduct the war from secret hideouts.

Saddam's escape plan relies on America's lack of success in tracking down al Qaeda and Taliban leaders.

But Iraq is not Afghanistan and his neighbors are not willing to abet the butcher of Baghdad in his escape. It stands to reason, therefore, that the Iraqi ruler has already located distant hideouts where a substantial Iraqi intelligence staff is ready and waiting. The infrastructure is there. Over the last 25 years, Iraq has built up extensive intelligence networks, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence experts, across the Middle East, Australia, Eastern Europe, the Far East and South America.

If Arafat and his top men can be smuggled out of his beleaguered compound in Ramallah, Iraqi military intelligence will band together with Palestinian, Lebanese Hizballah and al Qaeda assets to create a formidable military intelligence coalition that will carry on the war on the United States and its allies. This war will be rooted ideologically in the concept of jihad versus the Christian world.

Iraq-2

Iraq Distances Army from Main Cities

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources refute the reports spread mainly by the Iraqi opposition of large army contingents brought to Baghdad and digging in to confront US and British invasion forces. On the contrary, Saddam has sent the army out of the cities to remote desert areas in the south and west. They were ordered to take up battle positions spread thinly over large areas - not as protection against US aerial attack, but because they are not trusted. The authorities want to make it hard for the men to regroup and re-enter Iraq's cities as rebel forces.

To reduce their mobility, these scattered troop units are sparsely supplied with petrol, as well as insufficient fresh food and water. This device has served Saddam as a two-edged sword. Deprived of basic supplies and stuck in the desert, his officers and men welcomed the advances of US, British and Turkish special forces in the region and were more than willing to establish relations, particularly after being promised that food and water would be parachuted in to them. Most of all, the stranded Iraqi servicemen asked for gasoline, but were turned down by the Americans.

Our military sources report that food and water airdrops were made in several places this week. Their continuation depends on the willingness of Iraqi commanders to play ball with the US-led contingents.

If the Saddam Hussein regime cannot count on the armed forces, it can rely even less on Iraq's largest tribal groups, the Majiedi and Dulain. Sensing the approaching threat to the regime, those tribes each convened their senior councils for emergency sessions last week to consider their oaths of allegiance to Saddam Hussein.

Our Iraq experts explain that the members of the two tribes make up the bulk of the Iraqi army's senior officer corps. Since the Iraqi ruler transferred to his sons the command over the units composed of members of his own Tikrit tribe, these two tribes form the backbone of the brigade and battalion command echelons. Therefore, it is in their power to bring about the collapse of the Iraqi army's command structure should they decide to withdraw their loyalty from Saddam Hussein.

The Americans, like the Iraqi ruler, are watching intently to see which way the debate goes. However they are finding the wait a nail-biting experience. The debating in the tribal councils is typically long-winded, tending to go on and on, back and forth and round and round in sessions counted in weeks rather than days, before a decision is forthcoming. The palaver is still going on in both councils.

Washington-Tehran

Iran Secretly Jumps Aboard Washington's War on Baghdad

President George W. Bush and his aides must be patting themselves on the back this week over a most surprising feat. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and Iranian sources report that months of laborious bargaining have produced a secret US-Iran military cooperation agreement for the war against Iraq.

Both sides also reaffirmed the military pact they sealed on the eve of the Afghan War last October to do battle against al Qaeda and the Taliban. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in the Gulf reveal the deal was struck in Doha, capital of the United Arab Emirates, after lengthy negotiations between an official from the office of Iran's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and representatives of the White House National Security Council.

The Iranian representative was Abbas Malachi, former deputy foreign minister, who used the pseudonym of Tom Serkiss. The American called himself Jonathan Smith Jr. Both claimed to be on the staff of the US embassy in Kuwait.

Our sources list the high points of the accord:

The Americans undertook three key commitments:

A.
Iranian irregulars would be admitted into the parts of northern Iraq controlled by US and Turkish special forces and participate in military action against Saddam Hussein's regime.

B.
America and Iran would collaborate in the political moves for installing an alternative Iraqi government in place of Saddam's administration. Tehran sought and received a US pledge to include Iran in the current preparations in northern Iraq for convening the Iraq National Council. This body will bring together all of Iraq's minority and opposition groups -- Kurds, Turkmen and Shiites - that together make up about 60 percent of the population. The Shiite Iraqi Supreme Moslem Revolutionary Committee, led by Mohammad Bakr al-Hakim, who has long lived in exile in Teheran, will be awarded a seat on the council.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources expect the National Council to convene soon, probably in the Kurdish-controlled city of Irbil in northern Iraq, and declare itself Iraq's transitional parliament. The Council will dissolve all other ruling bodies, including Saddam's government and the ruling Baath party institutions. The National Council in its capacity as transitional parliament will invite world nations, led by the United States and Britain, to come to the aid of the Iraqi people and liberate it from Saddam Hussein's tyrannical rule.

Throughout this process, the United States is committed to protecting the rights of Iraqi Shiites, granting them military protection in the same measure as is extended to the Turkmen and Kurds. The Shiites will also be afforded the same degree of autonomous government as their two fellow groups and appropriate representation in the federal administration scheduled to rise after the regime is overthrown.

C.
Washington promises assistance to Iran for repulsing any Iraqi offensive and for preparing against a possible nuclear, biological or chemical attack.

The Iranians countered with the following pledges:

A.
No additional regular or irregular Iranian forces will enter Iraq before, during or after the war. Iran effectively recognizes Iraq's territorial integrity.

B.
There will be no Iranian attempt to damage or commandeer Iraqi oil fields, in part or in whole.

C.
No more Iranian agents will be planted in the predominantly Shiite areas of Iraq. Anti-US agitation and propaganda will be discontinued in the Shiite community and Tehran will refrain from meddling in Iraq's domestic politics during and after the war.

D.
US special forces, after proper coordination and accompanied by Iranian liaison officers, will be permitted to cross into Iran from Afghanistan in pursuit of al Qaeda fighters taking refuge in the country.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources liken Clause D of the new accord to the understandings Washington reached with Pakistan for US special forces to conduct operations in Afghan-Pakistani frontier districts. But, unlike Islamabad, Tehran will not tolerate the presence of CIA or FBI agents in its cities - certainly not in Mashhad in the north and Teheran and Qom in the center of the country, the very locations where al Qaeda operatives are believed to be hiding. Iranian officials agreed merely to act on US intelligence information and launch their own investigations on the whereabouts of al Qaeda fugitives in those cities. Any discovered would be deported.

Our sources discerned the first application of the landmark accord last week, when

a battalion-strength vanguard unit, made up of Iraqi and Afghan rebels from the Badr force, an elite counter-terrorism contingent of the Revolutionary Guards, crossed into northern Iraq. US and Turkish special forces officers escorted the Iranian unit to its deployment zone in the Kurdish Sulemeniyeh area.

Meanwhile, Iraq's Kurdistan Democratic Party leader Massoud Barazani sent his cousin, Nachirwni Barazani, to Teheran to meet leaders of the opposition Iraqi Supreme Revolutionary Committee. He brought back with him to northern Iraq a large party of Revolutionary Committee members for talks with Massoud Barazani.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Iraq experts note that this exchange of visits marks a historic reconciliatory "sulha" between the Iraqi Shiite opposition leadership and Kurdish tribal chiefs. Had they not buried the hatchet, the Americans would have been held up in their efforts to create a political infrastructure to replace the Baghdad government.

The US-Iranian rapprochement has already yielded valuable fruit for Washington's war on terror.

According to our intelligence sources, the arrest of Mullah Krekar, leader of the Iraqi extremist Moslem group Ansar al-Islam, at Amsterdam's Schipol airport on September 12, was the result of an Iranian tip to US counter-terror authorities. He was picked up en route from Tehran to Oslo.

Teheran next ordered its penetration agents in Ansar al-Islam, an organization that hosted al Qaeda trainees in northern Iraq, to quit and return home.

Hundreds of group members, realizing that without Iran's protective umbrella they would be easy prey for Kurdish forces, have begun turning themselves in - some to the Kurdish authorities, others to US special forces.

Iranian agents have been working alongside American interrogators to weed out al Qaeda operatives buried among the extremists. They are also useful for fingering al-Ansar fighters who collaborated with al Qaeda or are suspected of possessing information on bin Laden's network. As a result, al Qaeda's most important ally and supporter in northern Iraq has been disabled.

Wednesday, September 24, several hundred US special forces troops entered the border town of Doupshta, near the Afghan-Iranian border station of Islam Qala (Fortress of Islam). The commandos will continue their journey over the weekend and be led by Iranian officers across the frontier for a lengthy operation against the hundreds of al Qaeda fighters who have set up bases along the Iranian border.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources remark that neither the Americans nor Iranians are under any illusions about the lasting effect of their accord or its ability to prevail over underlying dissonances. But, as an ad hoc device, the collaboration pact has made it possible for the United States to tighten the noose around the necks of Saddam and his regime. Iran is deemed in Washington a vital strand in the rope for snaring the Iraqi leader.

Moscow

Washington's Deal with Iran Vexes Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin is cross with his erstwhile partner-in-Afghanistan, President George W. Bush. For him, the hush-hush agreement Washington has just concluded for bringing Iran's hardline rulers on board the American offensive against Iraq was a nasty shock.

Reporting this, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Moscow sources note that for months, the Americans have been leaning on the Russian leader to halt the lucrative and massive assistance Moscow has been extending Tehran for the construction of Iranian nuclear installations at Bushehr and its involvement in Iran's missile program. One US official after another argued that it was dangerous to let the ayatollahs come so near to achieving nuclear armament.

Putin used those same arguments to convince his generals and intelligence chiefs that the understanding between him and Bush, forged after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington and begetting their close cooperation in the Afghan War, was founded on solid ground, reciprocal interests and mutual trust. Therefore, it was worth the Kremlin's while to be flexible in the face of Washington's demands, including implicit Russian support for the US campaign against Saddam Hussein.

Russia's generals and other top Kremlin officials remained skeptical. They as well as Putin regarded the proof of his friendship with Bush as being the stake on offer to Moscow in post-war Iraqi oil. Only this would make it worth while for Russia to abandon its traditional bonds with Baghdad and Saddam's intelligence chiefs.

On September 20, Bush invited Russian foreign and defense ministers, Igor Ivanov and Sergei Ivanov, to the Oval Office in an aggressive bid for Moscow to second a new tougher Iraq resolution at the UN Security Council. The two Russian officials countered with questions on the issue of Iraqi oil. When no clear reply was forthcoming, the Russians stayed with their position that no new Iraq resolution was necessary. Before considering military action, they urged getting the arms inspectors back into Iraq as quickly as possible.

This posture was tantamount to fence-sitting with regard to Washington's war plans.

That same day, the US president followed up his meeting with the two Russian ministers by a phone call direct to his opposite number at the Kremlin.

It then became evident that in order to clear the air between them, a face-to-face encounter would be necessary.

Such a summit has become even more pressing in view of Putin's sense of affront from the Washington-Tehran deal and certain jarring incidents occurring over recent weeks. Putin is fuming in particular over the US president's refusal to support Moscow in its four-year battle against Chechen separatists as a quid pro quo for Russian backing on Iraq. The Russian leader has not forgiven Bush for personally slapping him down after he formally notified the United Nations that, if Georgia did not deal with the Chechens taking refuge in the Pankisi Gorge, Russian troops would take care of them. Washington is clearly concerned with its bases in Georgia which are vital for the attack on Iraq.

Thursday, September 26, 17 Russian servicemen were killed, including the crew of a Mi-24 helicopter gunship hit by a shoulder-launched rocket, fired by Chechen guerillas who had thrust in from Georgia some days earlier. News film taken this month showed well-armed Chechens, including turbaned rebel leader Ruslan Gelayev, crossing into Russia from Georgia. Some were shouting Allah is Great!

There is also some grumbling in Moscow over the American-backed $2.9 billion Baku-Ceylan oil pipeline the construction of whose first section was inaugurated on September 18. By bypassing Russia, the project will diminish Moscow's traditional influence in the energy-rich Caspian region in its back yard.

Palestinian Intelligence

Ramallah Showdown Aimed at Breaking Iraq's 11-Year Grip

There is more to the siege of Yasser Arafat in his trashed Ramallah compound than meets the eye. On the face of it, the White House's rare criticism of Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon's chokehold on Arafat and his headquarters is a damage control exercise to keep Middle East tensions from boiling over in the run-up to the US war against Iraq. (See also related item in <#Hot>HOT POINTS below.) Beneath this surface, an undercover battle is raging, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources, to wrest the long-standing grip of Iraqi military intelligence from Arafat's intelligence agencies.

Israel's furious demand of Arafat to surrender his top 20 security-cum-terror chiefs and Arafat's equally furious refusal to hand them over, intersect with the bitter duel fought by the CIA, its director, George Tenet and the agency's operations section against the Palestinian leader and the heads of his undercover services: Colonel Tawfik Tirawi, head of Palestinian General Security in the West Bank, and his sidekick, Mohammad al-Abbas, or Abu al-Abbas, the Baghdad-based leader of the Arab Liberation Front.

Where Israeli and American interests converge is in the burning need to loosen Baghdad's fingers from Palestinian intelligence.

The outcome of the Ramallah standoff may bear significantly on the US campaign against Iraq and its post-Saddam aftermath. Failure would leave Palestinian intelligence services free to act as an Iraqi fifth column behind US lines. Their commanders, who have polished their terror techniques in the two years of confronting Israel, would have no trouble organizing strikes against US strategic targets in Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain and America's Middle East allies, notably Israel and Jordan, or targeting for sabotage regional oil fields, pipelines, main roads, ports, airports and fuel and supply depots.

Five Iraq-trained Palestinian terrorist-saboteur units have already been captured on the West Bank. They comprised no more than three to five men each, all especially instructed by Iraqi intelligence in the use of explosives and anti-tank rocket-propelled grenades. Some were also assigned destabilization missions in Jordan. They were taught how incite the Palestinian populace, especially in the kingdom's main cities, and organize paramilitary militias to seize control of urban districts from which to shake the throne's foundations.

The ensuing unrest is intended to be exploited by the estimated 200 Iraqi intelligence agents planted in Amman for a move to overthrow King Abdullah.

After the war, should Saddam be defeated by the Americans, he has cast Palestinian intelligence in a key role in his fallback plan that would hinge on a full-time resort to terror.

His plan is to disperse the Palestinian undercover agencies among the intelligence and terror arms of Iraqi military intelligence, al Qaeda, its associated Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the Lebanese Shiite Hizballah. The Palestinians would be absorbed into those groups' cells and take part in their operations in the Persian Gulf, the Middle East, Africa and Europe, while still obeying Arafat or his top gun, Col. Tirawi.

This eventuality depends of course on the showdown in Ramallah, which is why Arafat and his 20 men are hanging on so tight.

Unlike battlefield engagements, intelligence wars tend to be protracted and are invariably pursued in deep hush. The contest for control of the Palestinians' clandestine arms is no different; it has been going on for eleven years.

It began with an assassination. The victim was Salah Khalaf, also known as Abu Iyad, chief of Palestinian Surveillance Service (the equivalent of the CIA), who was murdered in Tunis on January 14, 1991, fourteen hours before the start of Operation Desert Storm.

At the time, Arafat, his PLO and his military and intelligence staff lived in exile in the Tunisian capital, there from the time of their expulsion from Beirut in 1982.

In August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait with the Palestinian leader's enthusiastic support. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled from the oil emirate to Jordan, whose monarch, King Hussein, also took Saddam's part.

In secret, however, Abu Iyad maintained close contact with the CIA, bringing Arafat into disfavor in Baghdad. When Palestinian emissaries called on Saddam just before the war, he grumbled that he could not trust Arafat when his right hand intelligence aide was a US intelligence stooge. Arafat decided to rid himself of his liability.

Unaware of his peril, Abu Iyad paid a visit to his operations chief Abu al-Hul at his seaside villa in Tunis, accompanied by three bodyguards. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources report one of Abu al-Hul's three minders, Hamza Abu Zayad, burst into the guest room. Using a silenced pistol, he shot his service director dead and made a getaway.

The gangland-style hit was set up by Col. Tirawi and Mohammad al-Abbas.

Tirawi is the terrorist kingpin holed up in Arafat's compound with 19 other wanted terrorist chiefs. Then, he was head of the Iraqi desk of Palestinian intelligence, while Abu al-Abbas was commander of the Arab Liberation Front and resident in Baghdad - which he still is. Now, as then, the ALF is funded by Iraqi military intelligence and stands ready at Saddam's behest. Childhood friends from the West Bank village of Tira, northwest of Ramallah, Tirawi and al-Abbas are close friends and collaborators to this day.

Al-Abbas proposed the liquidation plan to Tirawi, which he would never have done without the approval of Iraqi military intelligence. Saddam and his intelligence chiefs had nothing to lose by robbing the CIA of one of its top sources in the Arab world and much to gain: the slot at the top of the Palestinian Surveillance Service became available for the pro-Iraqi Tirawi.

From then on, Abu al-Abbas's best friend has made sure that Palestinian intelligence is wholly committed to Baghdad's service and they are allowed to perform many of their feats together. The latest instance was the joint operation last month to liquidate another of Arafat's former allies, the arch terrorist, Abu Nidal. (More details on this conspiracy in <#Hot>HOT POINTS below)

But the Abu Iyad murder affair did not end there. It had a revealing epilogue uncovered by DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence and Palestinian sources.

For six months after the crime, the assassin, Abu Zayad, was moved round the Middle East by Iraqi intelligence and Tirawi's operatives, looking nervously over his shoulder all the time. But then, Arafat, Tirawi and al-Abbas realized that, as long as he was free and not classified a wanted man, they would be suspected of complicity in Abu Iyad's killing.

In late 1991, they arranged for Abu Zayad's arrest. A Palestinian military court in Yemen convicted him of murder and sentenced him to death. As guests in Yemen, the Palestinians had no right to carry out the sentence in the country. So they put the condemned killer aboard a ship belonging to the tiny Palestinian navy. After the vessel steamed out to the Red Sea, an official Palestinian communiqu&Mac218; announced he had been executed after being found guilty of treason and the murder of Abu Iyad. The assassin was accused of working for the Israelis.

That was the story given out. What really happened was that the Palestinian ship did indeed set out from Yemen manned entirely by Tirawi's men. But, instead of killing Abu Zayad, they transferred him to another ship in the Red Sea crewed by al-Abbas's men and Iraqi agents.

Since then, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources have discovered that Abu Zayad, Abu Iyad's murderer, lives happily ever after in Baghdad as the well protected guest of Abu al-Abbas and his strong-arm men.

From Abu Iyad's death until the day that Arafat and his top intelligence operatives came under Israeli siege on September 18, 2002, Col. Tirawi and his hard core aides have been fully in control of Palestinian intelligence. After the Oslo framework peace accords were signed in 1993 and Arafat was allowed to establish the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian Surveillance Service was legitimized and renamed the Palestinian General Security service for the West Bank.

But behind the organization's nameplate, nothing changed. Col. Tirawi stayed on as its chief, built up Arafat's terror machine in readiness for the "Intifada" of 2000 and scrupulously kept the Palestinian security machinery operating in unison with Baghdad. The 19 Palestinian terrorist-intelligence agents of whom Israel is demanding custody along with Tirawi, as the price for lifting the stranglehold on Arafat's Ramallah compound, are the selfsame pro-Iraqi operatives who took over Palestinian intelligence 11 years ago and have spearheaded Arafat's brand of suicidal terrorism in the last two years.

Their presence is the reason why Israel continues to besiege the Ramallah government complex in defiance of a UN Security Council resolution and President Bush's characterization of the Israeli operation as unhelpful for reforming the Palestinian Authority. He knows as well as anyone that Arafat and those 20 wanted men are if anything the barriers to genuine reforms. Without admitting as much, Washington is aware that the handover of Tirawi and his gang will write finis to eleven years of Baghdad's domination of Arafat's most trusted intelligence apparatus and its exploitation in the service of Saddam's ends in Jordan and the West Bank. Bush's team accepts that Israeli must act now. The last thing they want is for a defeated Saddam to retain his grip on the strings of the West Bank Palestinian intelligence arms still loyal to his legacy and backed by Iraqi terrorist elements that have gone underground.

Some factions of Arafat's own Fatah are equally dismayed. A group led by Abu Mazen, his designated successor and potential nominee as Palestinian prime minister of a reformed Palestinian administration, has been holding meeting after meeting since the siege crisis erupted. Its members are twisting and turning in a desperate effort to disencumber their movement from the Iraqi albatross. They recall that the Palestinians scarcely survived their open support for Saddam Hussein in Gulf War I, and fear that a repetition of that error will do forever for the Palestinians' national aspirations.

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

21 September: DEBKAfile's military sources point to the danger of Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein attempting to turn the tables on the Americans by adopting the Bush administration's newly- enunciated first-strike strategy.

An Iraqi pre-emptive could take three forms:

1.
Nuclear, biological or chemical terror strike in a major American city or closer to home against Israel.

2.
Military or terrorist action against one of the Persian Gulf nations that have made bases available to the United States, with Kuwait, Qatar and Oman first in line.

3.
A large-scale missile assault on Israel.

The latest official pronouncements have played down any such threat to Israel.

US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Thursday, September 19, that he trusted Israel would not react if struck by Iraqi missiles, while the Israel chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon said last week that he is less worried about the Iraqi threat than he is by Palestinian terror. Nonetheless, neither official is oblivious to the possibility of an Iraqi first strike action and both the United States and Israel have made appropriate preparations. DEBKAfile reports as a certainty that Israel is determined to retaliate with all its might.

The threat of an Iraqi military strike increases the closer the Americans come to launch-date for their overt war against Baghdad. Washington admitted Saturday, September 21, that a detailed Pentagon plan containing the military options for deposing Saddam had been delivered to the White House in early September.

With telling timing, the Bush administration unveiled Friday, September 20, its national security strategy, a document that emphasized military pre-emption as the prime means for maintaining America's political and military superiority against the newly-emerging threats.

"As a matter of common sense and self-defense", says the paper, "America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed". It is therefore willing to launch pre-emptive military strikes against perceived dangers posed by tyrant state and terrorist networks before they reach American shores. Terrorists and rogue states were identified as the common enemy of the world's great powers. "The greatest danger our nation faces lies at the crossroads of radicalism and technology."

The paper addresses the transformation of national security institutions, stressing the need to improve intelligence.

21 September: Israel's military's Operation Absolute, which has flattened building after building in Yasser Arafat's government compound in Ramallah, is aimed at more than winkling out the 20 hardcore terrorist chiefs he harbors, or even retribution for the fresh wave of suicide terror he unleashed against Israel this week at the cost of nine Israeli lives. This operation was planned jointly in Washington and Jerusalem as a strategic step in the military and intelligence preparations that are bringing open war on Iraq very close.

The factor most troubling to US war leaders and the Israeli government is the information that Saddam has managed to smuggle a set of chemical and biological weapons to Arafat's operatives, especially the ones commanded by General Security chief Tawfiq Tirawi, who doubles as al Aqsa commander. It is also feared that Iraq has been allowed to plant its undercover agents, armed with weapons of mass destruction, including even radiological devices, among Arafat's terror cells.

These discoveries and suspicions prompted Israel's all-out operation to cut off Arafat's links with the outside world and its efforts to lay hands on Tirawi and at least 10 other of Arafat's top guns who shelter in his quarters. These men are believed to be in possession of the secret locations of the Palestinian terrorist rings harboring Iraqi agents and their weapons of mass destruction.

Smashing this Palestinian-Iraqi connection and its hub in Ramallah is regarded by the Americans and Israelis as the key to preventing Saddam mounting an unconventional warfare attack from Arafat's terror base - and not only against Israel.

Rooting out this hazard from its Ramallah source is the immediate objective of IDF Operation Absolute. But not the only one. DEBKAfile's analysts report three further goals:

A.
Further narrowing down Arafat's options and pointing him to his last remaining outlets. The systematic demolition of his compound in Ramallah leaves him surrounded with rubble, stripped of the trappings of government, destroyed its institutions, cut off his communications and unable to care for his most basic needs. His only resort is self-exile, either to the Gaza Strip, whence Israel has begun deporting terrorists, or an Arab country still willing to accept him - Yemen or Sudan.

B.
Applying to Israel - even through such intermediaries as the Europeans or the Egyptians - for safe passage to the Gaza Strip would be tantamount to abdicating his rule over the West Bank. His favorite taunt for enemies would rebound against him: "If they don't like what I'm doing, let them drink the waters of Gaza!"

C.
Arafat's disappearance from the West Bank would facilitate the establishment of Jordanian rule in line with the Bush master plan for remolding Middle East boundaries while fighting Saddam in Baghdad.

23 September: The weathervane of US-Israel relations has begun to hover between fair and cloudy as the Bush administration's assault on Iraq approaches. DEBKAfile's Washington and Jerusalem sources say the trouble is not related to Israel's isolation of Yasser Arafat in Ramallah - that episode is closely coordinated with the White House - but to developing dissonances over the Iraq campaign.

In one of the first surface indicators of this unease, Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, in one of his pre-New Year interviews earlier this month, suddenly came out with a revelation - not about Iraq or even Iran, but about Egypt's previously unheard of nuclear program. He informed an unsuspecting American and Israeli public that a Libyan program was well advanced to build the first Arab-Muslim nuclear bomb as a joint Egyptian, Iraqi enterprise funded by Saudi Arabia.

Sharon's revelation was not repeated. According to DEBKAfile's Washington sources, the Bush team jumped on him for stirring up embarrassing mud when Washington needed help from Egypt and Saudi Arabia to fight Saddam Hussein. The timing was unfortunate. In early August, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah and Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak had been finally brought round to making bases available for the campaign.

Slapped down on the Arab nuclear issue, Sharon came up with a new one: He defined as a casus belli Lebanon's project to tap the Hatsbani River by pumping water from its main tributary the Wazzani and diverting 15 percent of Israel's water supply. The Hatsbani is fed additionally by subterranean springs near Ajar, the border village split between Israel and Lebanon. And a further complication: the Hizballah has posted armed guards at the Lebanese project on top of the thousands of missiles the Lebanese Shiite terrorists have positioned along the Lebanese-Israeli frontier - all pointed at northern Israel.

Washington, fearing an untimely conflagration, again asked Sharon to hold his horses, while a panel of American water experts hurried over to review the rights and wrongs of the situation and report to the US administration.

But then the cat was let out of the bag. Vice president Richard Cheney and defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld expressed the wish for Israeli not to get involved in the Iraq war, even if it is attacked.

Our analysts translate this as a message from Washington to Riyadh and Cairo in respect of Israel's plan to crush Arafat's regime in Ramallah with Washington's assent. The message ran like this: We are holding Israel in check on the Libyan-Egyptian-Saudi nuclear bomb and the Wazzani water dispute; it is up to you to hold quiet for the Israeli assault on Arafat's power base.

If Washington can this time too persuade Israel to sit on its hands in the face of an Iraqi attack, its deterrent and strike capabilities will be seriously impaired - as they were in 1991.The Jewish state will come out of the Iraqi conflict beaten and debilitated, while Egypt and Saudi Arabia have every chance of escaping Saddam Hussein's ire and emerging stronger.

The small price for this reward will be to abandon Arafat to his fate.

American-Israeli sparring over Iraq has only just begun. Our Washington sources believe that the Bush administration will push hard to prevent Israeli from reacting militarily to an Iraqi strike - even if it is a terrorist attack. At the same time, Sharon will be given free rein to grab the top terror team under Arafat's protection in Ramallah

DEBKAfile's Washington sources discern in these moves the beginning of the blame game, one that is destined to be played out should the US offensive against Baghdad tip the Middle East into overall conflict or run into unforeseen setbacks. The finger will then swivel round to point at Sharon instead of Washington or any Arab government.

24 September: DEBKAfile's readers were not taken aback by the Israeli Shin Beit's (Security Service) disclosure on September 23 that it had custody of a three-man Palestinian cell from Ramallah who trained in Iraq with Iraqi instructors in the execution of strikes against Israeli targets - in the company of al Qaeda terrorists.

Their admissions - which link Yasser Arafat, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden in a collaborative relationship for the pursuit of terror - were included in a sensitive file carried to Washington this week by a team of Israeli officers.

DEBKAfile pointed attention to this association right after the Passover massacre at the Park Hotel in Netanya on March 27, 2002. Three months earlier, in January 2002, we highlighted secret rendezvous taking place regularly in Amman between two childhood friends: Col. Tawfiq Tirawi, chief of West Bank General Intelligence and one of Arafat's most trusted aides, and another Palestinian terror executive, Mohammad Abbas, known as Abu al-Abbas, head of the Baghdad-based Arab Liberation Front. Abu al-Abbas is better known for hijacking the Achille Lauro pleasure craft in 985 in an operation ordered by Arafat and throwing the American Jewish Leon Klinghoffer overboard in his wheelchair.

According to DEBKAfile's military and counter-terror sources, the Israeli officers brought to Washington two further pieces of information:

1.
The interrogations of Palestinian and Iraqi terrorists and agents picked up in recent weeks in the West Bank, at the Jordan Bridges crossings from Jordan and in Jordan itself, yielded the discovery that Yasser Arafat's hand was behind the assassination in Baghdad on August 16 of the terror master Abu Nidal, his notorious former partner turned rival, with four of his aides. Indeed, Tirawi and Abu al-Abbas were entrusted with setting up the murder. Arafat asked Saddam Hussein to get rid of Abu Nidal, claiming he was on the point of passing to American parties in the Persian Gulf evidence of the three-way partnership-for-terror forged by Arafat, Saddam and bin Laden. Saddam gave his assent at the beginning of August. The plan of operation entailed Abu Nidal's regular contacts in Iraqi intelligence calling on him and, when he opened the door unsuspectingly, standing aside for the Palestinians to burst in and do the deed.

2.
The second piece of information relayed to Washington exposes another hidden facet of the working relationship binding Arafat and his PLO with Saddam and al Qaida. That facet surfaced after Italy seized a ship on August 5, carrying a suspected al Qaeda cell of 15 Pakistanis. The ship's smudged name appeared to be "Sara". The Pakistanis were detained in Sicily after US naval intelligence deciphered coded messages and gathered evidence on some of the men. One coded note used the expression "united in matrimony", which was similar to a reference intercepted during the first attack on New York's Twin Towers in 1993.

DEBKAfile's counter-terror sources reveal exclusively one of the most telling discoveries of the Italian investigation: The "Sara" was owned by the same shipper as the Karine-A, the freighter captured by Israel last January with 50 tonnes of arms bound for the Palestinian Authority. Both vessels were also purchased by the same Palestinian-Iraqi company; the Palestinians negotiated the purchase with money put up by Iraq. Both ships flew the Tongan flag of convenience.

Whereas the Karine-A carried a cargo of contraband weapons provided by Iran, the Sara carried a suspected al Qaeda terrorist cell.

Arafat may protest he is innocent of terrorist activities and make a show of demanding a halt to terror. However, ample evidence continues to pile up demonstrating his hand in violence not only against Israel, but also in al Qaeda's global terror campaign and Iraq's machinations against the United States.

26 September: The construction of a new ring road around Damascus was the pretext for an outbreak of popular anti-government fury in the Syrian capital this week. Until now, stringent measures by the Syrian authorities have kept any hint of the unrest from leaking out.

DEBKAfile's Middle East sources have discovered that, last week, when the highway's road-works began edging into the southeast Damascus neighborhood of Kabas, angry residents tried to block the incursion bodily. When this was unavailing, they began demonstrating. Last Saturday and Sunday, September 21-22, the demonstrations escalated to violent anti-government riots that raged for two days and were marked by violent slogans against the Assad regime. Sympathizers streamed in from other parts of Damascus to join the protesters.

After 48 hours in which the police failed to quell the unrest, army troops were called in. The next day, Monday, September 23rd, President Bashar Assad sent bulldozers escorted by troops into the defiant Kabas neighborhood with orders to continue building the road. The bulldozers also knocked down several houses.

The series of clashes ended with an unknown number of arrests and casualties. Some reporters who covered the outbreak were arrested and every scrap of reporting - print, photo and footage - was confiscated. Our sources add that the total blackout clamped down on the episode is part of the government's efforts to prevent the spread of unrest - sparked as much by popular disaffection and economic suffering as by a local incident - to other parts of the capital.

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