India's National Magazine
From the publishers of THE HINDU

Vol. 16 :: No. 01 :: Jan. 02 - 15, 1999

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COVER STORY

WAYS OF IMPERIALISM

The brazen military aggression by the United States and the United Kingdom against a sanctions-stricken Iraq is the latest manifestation of pax-Americana, which is impervious to international law and morality.

KESAVA MENON
in Bahrain

THIS is supposed to be the annual season for celebrating peace and the liberation of the human spirit. The stones of Baghdad, however, have quite a different story to tell.

On the night of December 16-17, at about 1 a.m. local time, the first cruise missiles, launched from United States naval ships and aircraft carriers based in the Gulf waters, smashed down on targets in Iraq. Over the next three nights the onset of darkness signalled the imminence of a barrage that would last until just before the call for the dawn prayer. Long-range B-52 bombers from Diego Garcia and British Tornado strike planes added their payloads to the pile of munitions dropped on Iraqi targets. At the end of Operation Desert Fox, its planners announced that over 400 cruise missiles - more than the numbers launched during the 1991 Gulf war - had been fired and over 200 aircraft sorties carried out.

FALEH KEIBER / REUTERS
An explosion in Baghdad on the night of December 16-17 as Operation Desert Fox gets under way with the United States and the United Kingdom launching a wave of air strikes.

In their post-operation presentation, the military aggressors claimed that they had attacked over 100 sites in Iraq. These were said to include 30 "weapons of mass destruction targets", 27 air defence targets, 20 command, control and communication targets, 10 Republican Guard targets and six airfield targets containing air defence missiles and command and control facilities. Iraqi authorities produced documentary footage to show that civilian targets, including hospitals, were hit. In respect of these accusations, U.S. military planners said that the civilian facilities were adjacent to military installations and that any damage to them was unavoidable collateral.

Even a week after the bombings, there was no precise count of the dead and the wounded; one reason for this could be that the Iraqi Government had not yet collated the information from all parts of the country. At a post-operation news conference, Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said that 62 military personnel had been killed and 180 wounded and that the civilian casualties were many times that number. A couple of days after Operation Desert Fox was launched, Iraq publicly buried 68 people who were said to have been killed in the bombings. When U.S. officials did mention the "regrettable" civilian deaths, they tried to suggest that these civilians might have been in the vicinity of military targets.

KHUE BUI / AP
U.S. President Bill Clinton.

U.S. officials have tried to palm off the opinion that many Republican Guard soldiers "must have been killed" in the operation. In the absence of any real evidence, this presumption rests on the fact that several barracks of the Republican Guard were completely or partially destroyed and the aggressors' hope that most of the Guardsmen would have been asleep or caught unawares. It is probable that the precise count of the dead and the wounded, civilian and military, will never be known to the outside world. However, credible evidence of high civilian casualties could prove extremely damaging to the U.S.

THROUGHOUT the operation, high-powered U.S. representatives from Clinton down stated that they had two objectives directly in mind and would also be happy if a third was accomplished en passant. Military force was being used, they asserted, to degrade Iraq's capability to develop or deliver weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and to degrade its capacity to pose a threat to its neighbours. They have indicated that they would welcome a third outcome: the elimination of Saddam Hussein.

There are two dimensions to Iraq's alleged WMD programme and the efforts to discover and dismantle it. First is the relentlessly expressed suspicion that Iraq still possesses a number of chemical warheads, at least a few long-range missiles and stocks of ingredients for chemical and biological weapons. The United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) is mandated to unearth this allegedly hidden arsenal and destroy it.

PAUL HACKETT / REUTERS
British Prime Minister Tony Blair. U.S. policy on Iraq, which is faithfully supported by Britain, is centred on demonising Iraq and savaging it time and again.

Secondly, UNSCOM is also mandated to monitor on a continuous basis all industrial facilities, storehouses, military installations, and so on, which can conceivably be employed in connection with a chemical and biological weapons programme or to build or deploy missiles. At the same time the International Atomic Energy Agency is supposed to be working on a parallel track to ensure that Iraq's nuclear facilities are not used for weapon-related purposes.

If Iraq has a hidden arsenal or stockpiles of what its enemies allege are weapons of mass destruction, the U.S.-U.K. strikes are unlikely to have destroyed them. What the military operations could have done to an extent was to destroy those facilities which could conceivably be used in future to produce or deliver lethal weapons. At first it was thought that the U.S. was also going about destroying industrial facilities which could be used for "dual purposes" but there have been clarifications that only facilities that were more proximately connected with the alleged WMD programme were targeted. Tariq Aziz made the point at the end of the operation that all the facilities destroyed were already under monitoring. What the U.S. military strikes appear to have degraded was material which was already in the monitoring safe-box.

As for the second objective, it needs be mentioned that most of Iraq's neighbours do not currently feel threatened by Baghdad's conventional forces. Even if Saddam Hussein does not consider the military forces of the neighbouring states to be a serious obstacle, he knows very well that the U.S. will repeat 1991 for its own purposes and without waiting for an invitation from the regional states. Saddam Hussein has used chemical weapons before, and continued possession of a WMD arsenal could be a problem for the region. But the resort to military force to "degrade the ability to threaten neighbours" does not make any sense because it has come close to destroying simultaneously the mechanism which was meant to dispossess Iraq of its hidden arsenal.

REINHARD KRAUSE / REUTERS
Relatives grieve at the bedside of a civilian who was hospitalised with severe burns following the missile attacks.

UNSCOM'S conduct before and during the military operations has destroyed its credibility as an independent body answerable only to the U.N. Security Council.

That aside, the Iraqi Government has declared that it will never allow UNSCOM to re-enter the country. The U.S. response to this is that Iraq was, in any case, not allowing UNSCOM to function freely and its utility has therefore become questionable. It is not very clear whether the U.S. will firmly resist the Russian and French effort to remould or even replace the mechanism which is to discover and destroy Iraq's alleged hidden arsenal. From the current posture it is clear that the U.S. relies less on an inspection or monitoring mechanism than on the aggressive use of military force to ensure a "weapons-free" Iraq.

REINHARD KRAUSE / REUTERS
A civilian neighbourhood that was bombed in the first wave of attacks.

THE framework of a policy to deal with Iraq, in which military force is the key element, has been outlined. This includes the exertion of diplomatic effort to keep Iraq isolated in the world; the tightening of economic sanctions and close supervision of its enforcement; the upgradation of long-range and aerial surveillance; and resort to force again if Iraq takes a significantly defiant step.

Overlooked is the fact that international and regional support for any resort to force will not be forthcoming in the absence of an entity which can certify that Iraq is not meeting its international obligations. It may well be that the U.S. has no use for the United Nations Security Council or international opinion in general but its own vested interests will be adversely affected if public outrage against its actions leads to the destabilisation of friendly Arab governments. From the manner in which protests on the Arab street intensified during Operation Desert Fox, it is reasonably clear that any future resort to force by the U.S., on the basis of its own judgment, will lead to even more vehement protests.

INA / AP
Saddam Hussein. Far from undermining his ability to control his country, the attack has strengthened his standing in Iraq and the rest of the Arab world.

In the absence of a precise count of the number of Republican Guard personnel who were killed in the operation, it is difficult to ascertain the extent to which Saddam Hussein has been weakened. The damage to the command, control and communications network is likely to pose a problem but Saddam Hussein exercises control through a multi-layered network of tribal loyalties, Baa'th party organisations and undercover operatives.

While Saddam Hussein's ability to control his country does not appear to have been undermined, his standing among the Arab masses has received a tremendous boost. The U.S.' plans to unify the dysfunctional Iraqi Opposition and build up its strength so that the Saddam Hussein regime can be replaced eventually have not progressed beyond the stage of conceptualisation. The U.S. has not even appointed the co-ordinator (as it proposes to do under the blatantly illegal Iraq Liberation Act passed this year) to unify the dysfunctional Iraqi Opposition.

On balance, the contribution made by Operation Desert Fox to the accomplishment of the objectives ascribed to it was significantly outweighed by the damage it has caused to the other processes which could have weakened the Saddam regime.

REINHARD KRAUSE / REUTERS
Shell-shocked women and children in Baghdad.

INFORMATION originating from several directions points to the conclusion that the operation was not just a "mistake" committed because it was hastily conceived on account of a sudden provocation. It was a crime perpetrated with ulterior intent. A case was made that Iraq had reneged on its international obligations and military preparations were carried forward as if the planners knew that they would use force at a particular point in time.

At a press conference on the first day after the attack, Iraq's Foreign Minister Mohammed Saeed al Sahaf provided details of his country's dealings with UNSCOM after cooperation had been resumed in November. Over this period, al Sahaf said, UNSCOM had visited 427 sites, of which 299 were already under monitoring, and UNSCOM's executive chairman Richard Butler recorded complaints in respect of merely five inspections.

MURAD SEZER / AP
Clearing the rubble in Basra in southern Iraq.

In his presentation, al Sahaf said that a site visit which formed the first cause for complaint was not the Baath headquarters, as Butler had stated, but a relatively minor office of the political party. Another complaint pertained to a building that used to be the office of the deputy to the head of Military Intelligence but has since been converted into a guest house.

Iraqi officials had wanted to know what legitimate UNSCOM purpose would be served by a search of these buildings and the very fact that such questions were raised was, according to al Sahaf, made into a cause for complaint.

Butler's report is said to have recorded that on two occasions no Iraqi personnel were present when UNSCOM teams visited sites. According to al Sahaf, these visits had taken place on two Fridays and it had been explained to UNSCOM that the personnel were absent because it was the weekly holiday. In the last instance one of the inspectors had wanted to interview under-graduate students in Baghdad University, and questions by Iraqi officials about the relevance of the interviews were made a cause for complaint.

ABBAS MOUMANI / REUTERS
In Ramallah in the West Bank, Palestinian demonstrators burn U.S. and British flags in protest against the air attacks.

To date, there has been no refutation, even by UNSCOM, of al Sahaf's point-by-point expose.

Scott Ritter, a former U.S. intelligence man who was a UNSCOM inspector until his resignation a few months ago, has revealed that the sites inspected in November were not connected with the WMD programme and that UNSCOM has known this for many months. These sites, according to Ritter, had been picked by UNSCOM with the knowledge that Iraq would be provoked into refusing access and would thus provide the excuse for a military strike.

Only those who were naive enough to believe that legal niceties would be gone through in this case would have expected Butler first to present his report to the U.N. Security Council, of which UNSCOM is an appendage, so that it could be discussed before any military action was unleashed. However, the British press has reported without contradiction that Clinton telephoned Tony Blair a few days before Butler presented his report, and told him that the report was going to be negative on Iraqi compliance.

MIKE SEGAR / REUTERS
UNSCOM executive chairman Richard Butler.

An exhaustive report in The Washington Post notes that Clinton and his advisors had Butler's report in their hands well before it was presented to the U.N. Secretary-General. More importantly, according to the newspaper report which has not been refuted, Clinton and his team "reviewed the language" of the text of the report. These several and separate reports indicate very strongly that the final report was doctored to provide a rationalisation for launching attacks on Iraq. But nothing was left to chance and even as the full Security Council met to consider Butler's report for the first time, it was informed that the U.S. missiles were already in the air.

In justification of the refusal to let the U.N. Security Council debate Butler's report, the U.S. has offered two arguments. The first is that the earlier Security Council resolution contained the warning that Iraq would face "severe consequences" if it again failed to cooperate with UNSCOM. This, according to the U.S., provided it with the due authorisation to act if and when Iraq was found to be in breach of its obligations. Russia, France and China do not agree that the earlier Security Council resolution contained any such implicit authorisation but their power of veto was bypassed.

A second argument is that a prolonged debate in the U.N. Security Council would have provided Iraq with the time to prepare itself for any attack eventually ordered. If Iraq had been alerted, it has been contended by the aggressors, the military action would not have been as effective and the lives of those carrying out the missions could have been placed in danger. Given that the U.S. has complete air superiority, blanket air surveillance over Iraq and the ability to strike from a multiplicity of points, this effort at operational secrecy surely represents over-kill.

From the post-operation assessments presented by U.S. military leaders themselves, it would appear that the only elements of the Iraqi defence system that were caught unawares on account of the swiftness and secrecy of the operations were a few surface-to-air missile batteries which were not dispersed in time. Since the Iraqi air defence system proved to be totally ineffective in the following days when it had ample warning, the second argument has no leg to stand on.

CYNICS in West Asia, as elsewhere, call this operation the "Monica Lewinsky War" and its timing was certainly of the utmost convenience to the U.S. President. Clinton's riposte to this charge - that Secretary of Defence William Cohen, a Republican, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, Gen. Henry Shelton, would not have played along in such a game - is essentially meaningless. After all, the Defence Department and the military have a vested stake in operations (especially operations where their losses would be minimal) since it provides them with the opportunity to battle-test new weapons technology and enhances the records of those who participate.

PETER MORGAN / REUTERS
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

The other counter-argument is that the operation in all its dimensions could not have been built up within the time-frame in which the impeachment process came to a head. But the recent operations were initiated by the forces which the U.S. has kept in the Gulf for a long period of time; the only additional forces were the B-52s brought in from Diego Garcia on the second day.

Clinton's personal problems and needs, serious as they are, do not represent the centrality of the issue. An anti-Iraq policy would not have served Clinton's domestic purposes were there not an apparent consensus in mainstream U.S. politics that the general good is served if Iraq is savaged time and again. Iraq has been so demonised and yet made so vulnerable to U.S. long-range power projection that a decision to attack it will produce public support which is unlikely to diminish even if "body bags" were seen to come home.

IN an interview he gave The Washington Post, U.S. National Security Advisor Samuel Berger appears to have given away the real purpose behind Operation Desert Fox: "For me the most important reason why we had to do this was that to have failed to do so not only would have lost UNSCOM but would have lost the credible threat of force."

Berger suggested in the interview that U.S. decision-makers wanted to remind Saddam Hussein that the threat of force had not been removed. But Saddam Hussein knows this very well. One interpretation is that his whole game plan has been to provoke the U.S. to a point where it threatens military action before he whisks away the justification that the global policeman needs to actualise it. That was precisely what he did in November when he revoked his decision to stop cooperating with UNSCOM before the threatened military strikes could get under way. What Saddam Hussein achieves through this process is the repetitious raising of global concern so that the international community re-focuses its attention on the Iraq situation. The U.N. was close to a decision to hold a "comprehensive review" of the Iraq-UNSCOM relationship. This could have perhaps led to an unravelling of the Butler-run exercise and the appearance of a sliver of light at the end of the sanctions tunnel.

APTN / AP
Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz addresses a press conference in Baghdad on December 18.

If the U.S. intention was primarily to deliver the message to Saddam Hussein, it would appear that it was not intended for the Iraqi ruler alone. This was more or less admitted in a statement by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who seems to perform the same function for Clinton that Berger does: "It also sends a message to others in this dangerous world that the patience of the international community cannot be tried indefinitely and that when it is right and when the will of the international community is at stake we will act to enforce it because the stirrings of a new global reality are upon us."

Blair might have had to swallow his regret that pax-Brittanica has given way to pax-Americana but he seems relieved that imperialism in all its brutal power is active and flourishing.