Phil Taylor's papers
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BACK TO : The Gulf War of 1991
US Played an active role in encouraging revolt by T Horwitz Forgotten Rebels: After Heeding Calls To Turn on Saddam, Shiites Feel Betrayed --- U.S. Played an Active Role In Encouraging a Revolt Despite Lack of Strategy --- A Successful `Psyops' Effort By Tony Horwitz. Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: Dec 26, 1991. pg. PAGEA.1 Copyright Dow Jones & Company Inc Dec 26, 1991 AN NAJAF, Iraq -- At the end of Operation Desert Storm, a schoolteacher named Abbas heeded allied appeals and rose up against Saddam Hussein. But when Iraqi helicopters strafed this Shiite city in retaliation, nearby U.S. troops stood pat, and allied radio went silent. "I kept turning the dial and shouting, `Where is America now?'" recalls Abbas, who has returned to a classroom thinned by mass killings. "How can you say Saddam is like Hitler, then leave him free to murder us?" Almost a year after the Gulf War began, Saddam Hussein won't go away, nor will questions about how the war ended. In Iraq's wintry north, Kurds are on the run again, driven from their villages by sporadic shelling and Baghdad's blockade of fuel supplies. In the southern marshes, the army still is starving out fugitive Shiites in what a senior United Nations official calls "silent genocide." And in Baghdad, Saddam Hussein has elevated his most brutal deputy in a move that may herald even fiercer crackdowns. Saddam Hussein's survival deflates President Bush's triumph in the Gulf, exposing him to Democrats' jibes. The failure to topple the Baghdad regime at its most vulnerable moment last March also leaves the U.S. with few options in Iraq, beyond the hope that sanctions will prompt a coup. "There's still a commitment to get rid of Saddam," says a disgruntled Pentagon official. "But Allah hasn't told us how to do it yet." This paralysis has alienated potential U.S. allies in Iraq, weakening the U.S. hand if and when Saddam Hussein goes. New evidence from both Iraq and the U.S. shows the degree to which the U.S. urged revolt last March, with no clear notion of what to do if Iraqis took the U.S. at its word. For those who rose up, U.S. talk of promoting democracy and human rights now rings hollow. Many Shiites are turning instead to Iran, while Kurds decided Monday to try once again to cut a deal with Saddam Hussein. "The whole war and its aftermath is a story of mixed signals, missed opportunities and the phenomenal decline in the idealism of American foreign policy," concludes Kanan Makiya, a leading Iraqi dissident. Such an outcome was far from the minds of policy planners during the Gulf crisis. As troops deployed along the Kuwaiti frontier, the allies bombarded Iraqis with radio broadcasts, leaflets and even missives in bottles that floated ashore in Kuwait. The message: Iraqis had no chance of victory, and no hope for peace and prosperity, unless Saddam Hussein left power. "The Iraqi military and the Iraqi people should take matters into their own hands to force Saddam Hussein the dictator to step aside," Mr. Bush said on Feb. 15, in one of many such statements. This campaign reached Iraqis through allied radio, including Voice of America, which presents news and U.S. policies abroad. Between Aug. 2 and the outbreak of war, VOA doubled the hours of its Arabic service to more than 15 a day. The military also used modified C-130 aircraft to boost VOA's signal inside Iraq. In a Feb. 14 VOA editorial (vetted by the State Department and introduced as "reflecting the views of the U.S. government"), Iraqis learned that their soldiers in Kuwait were surrendering in droves. "But for Iraqi civilians," the editorial said, "there can be no sanctuary as long as Saddam remains in power." Much more inflammatory was a shadowy station called Voice of Free Iraq, which began broadcasting from Saudi Arabia on Jan. 1. Staffed by Iraqi exiles, and cleverly mimicking the musical theme of state-run radio in Baghdad, the station lambasted Saddam Hussein and made emotional appeals for his overthrow. "We talked a lot about people power -- individually you can't do anything, but as a mass no one can defeat you," says Sami Faraj Ali, the radio's London correspondent. "We told them that the whole world was behind them." Mr. Ali and other Iraqis say they were paid by the Saudis and later flown to Jeddah, where they issued appeals such as this, during the uprising's first week: "Pound the den of the tyrant in Baghdad to ensure the emergence of a new Iraq, an Iraq of pride, dignity and democracy." Mr. Ali says those working for the radio "assumed the allies would push to Baghdad, the same way they pushed to Berlin in World War II." When the push never came, dispirited broadcasters said they had been recruited for the radio by Saudi intelligence. Reports from the U.S. added that the Saudis were, in turn, acting at the behest of the Central Intelligence Agency, as part of a psychological warfare campaign authorized by President Bush. A CIA spokesman says "as a matter of policy we don't comment on such allegations." But the claims came as no surprise to officials at the BBC Monitoring Service near London. They had noted that Voice of Free Iraq fit the pattern of stations in Latin America long suspected of having CIA links: an unusually wide range of frequencies and hours of transmission, statements on behalf of no particular group, and concealment of its point of origin. Richard Measham, a veteran manager at the BBC Monitoring Service, adds that the Saudis, almost alone among Middle East powers, "don't go in" for propaganda broadcasts aimed at their enemies. One group that does is the psychological operations (psyops) arm of the U.S. military. "Persuasion when we can, deception if we have to," is how Lt. Col. Bryan Karabaich, a psyops adviser to Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, explains the unit's technique. "We deal in the truth, but we mold it, the same way Marlboro cigarettes does." In mid-January, U.S. aircraft began dropping 21 million propaganda leaflets over Kuwait and Iraq. Most of the leaflets warned of upcoming bomb runs and urged surrender. But the military also targeted civilians. One leaflet pictured a dove and the words, "Saddam is the cause of the war and its sorrows. He must be stopped. Join with your brothers and demonstrate rejection of Saddam's brutal policies. There will be no peace with Saddam." The intent, says Col. Karabaich, was to soften civilian support for the war. "To do this, we had to build a willingness to do something against the power structure," he says. This campaign worked beyond the military's own dreams. As the U.S. made good on its bomb threats, soldiers surrendered en masse. "Words and deeds reinforced each other for a very powerful message," says Col. Charles Williamson, who directs psyops for the U.S. military. But deeds no longer matched words once the war ended. With Baghdad's radio knocked out, allied radio monopolized the airwaves. Many Iraqis rose up, anticipating U.S. support, only to find themselves on their own. "We were careful not to create false expectations," says Col. Williamson. "But to the extent that there were messages that enjoined both military and civilians not to follow Saddam, then I think you could say we contributed to it {the uprising}." Washington also was caught off guard by the revolt. Alarmed by the rebels' Islamic fervor, and fearful that aiding them would force the U.S. to occupy Iraq, the administration balked just as the Baghdad regime appeared to teeter. "The Iraqi people alone have the responsibility and the right to choose their own government -- without outside interference," declared a Voice of America editorial on March 7, when the Shiites controlled almost all of southern Iraq. To administration critics, this seemingly neutral stance flashed a green light to Baghdad. "You had this mantra being repeated in Washington: `We're not going to get involved in Iraq's internal affairs'," recalls Peter Galbraith, a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer who visited Iraq in March. "This was a clear signal to Saddam that he could kill whomever he needed to stay in power." Baghdad quickly deployed helicopters against the poorly armed rebels -- violating the spirit of a cease-fire agreement -- and Republican Guards slipped out of Basra, under the noses of U.S. forces posted near main highways. As one senior officer puts it: "We had overwatch of the traffic but we didn't interdict it." Iraqis' expectations that the U.S. would intervene help explain why the Shiite city of An Nasiriyah was one of the first to rebel and the last to surrender. Units of the 18th Airborne Corps were posted just 10 miles from the city, closer to the fighting than any other allied troops. But rebels reaching the U.S. lines were disarmed, and requests for weapons and access to ammunition depots were denied. Shiite and Kurdish leaders add that senior Iraqi officers on the verge of defecting were scared off by the U.S. stance. As reports of mass slaughter trickled out of Iraq, Pentagon officials drew up a plan for protecting the Shiites with a "safe haven" similar to the one which later shielded Kurds. But no one acted on it. "The attitude was, `the war's over, Kuwait's secured, let's get the hell out of Dodge,'" says a Pentagon official familiar with the plan. The administration has kept its distance from both Shiites and Kurds ever since, even while threatening renewed military action against Iraq over issues such as nuclear inspection. As each such face-off between the U.S. and Iraq flares and then passes, a conspiracy theory has taken root in the minds of Iraqis. "We lost both ways," says Mr. Ali, the former radio broadcaster. "Iraq is destroyed and the system is left as it is." He and others suspect that the U.S. secretly wants to help Saddam Hussein survive because it fears Kurds and Shiites gaining power. Some Congressmen now advocate that the U.S. arm and train rebels, as it did in Afghanistan. Iraqi exiles also want recognition of a provisional government they hope to establish in January. But the administration resists such steps, for much the same reasons it stood pat in March. It fears that toppling the Baghdad regime will "Lebanize" Iraq into ethnic and religious enclaves, threatening U.S. allies such as Turkey and giving Iran an advantage. Many also suspect that only a major U.S. military incursion could change the Baghdad regime. The administration still hopes for the elusive coup that will install another but less-brutal strongman from the minority but ruling Sunni Muslim sect to maintain central control. Toward this end, and also to deflect criticism that it isn't doing anything, the administration recently reviewed plans for military aid should anyone in Baghdad attempt a coup. Iraqi dissidents say this policy risks helping another unsavory dictator seize power. Instead, they say, the U.S. should think long term. "The U.S. should stop playing realpolitik with the Iraqi people, and start helping to create a credible opposition," says Mr. Makiya, the dissident, who has written about Iraq under the pen name Samir Khalil. "Shape them, teach them how to work. And give them the kind of public attention that will legitimize them inside Iraq." He says America's current stance shows a distrust of Arabs' capacity for democracy -- a suspicion supported by Mr. Bush's tepid stance toward reform in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Iraq, Mr. Makiya points out, has a large, secular middle class that could buttress democracy. Iraq's vast oil wealth also means that "it's got a built-in Marshall Plan," he says. "So this won't cost the U.S. financially." And while there may be sectarian bloodshed if Saddam Hussein goes, this gives Iraqis an added reason to seek U.S. help, as a broker between competing groups. "You have a population seeking to do politics on its own for the first time," he says. "This is an infant experience. It needs nurturing." So, too, do the slim hopes of Iraqis stuck inside their country. Because Saddam Hussein still defies United Nations conditions for Iraqi oil sales, food and medicine are scarce. Iraqis who took part in the March revolt live in constant fear. Abbas, the schoolteacher in An Najaf, says he rarely risks listening to his short-wave anymore. But to practice his languages, he reads Western literature. These days, his favorite author is the darkly metaphysical playwright Samuel Beckett. "We are waiting for Godot," Abbas says, referring to Beckett's play about tramps vainly awaiting deliverance. "Godot represents the hope. From where and when he will come, we do not know. But alone we cannot do anything." Credit: Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal |