Inside the Secret
Campaign to Topple Saddam
A shadow
war has already begun, aiming to undermine the Iraqi leader and his
defenses even before the first shot is fired
By Michael Elliott and Massimo Calabresi
Saturday, Nov. 23, 2002
................
Listen to government officials in Washington and London, chat with
members of the alphabet soup of Iraqi exile groups, and you can come
away thinking that such conversations are a dime a dozen. And they may
be. In small ways and big ones, the U.S. and its allies are working like
termites to undermine the rickety foundations of Saddam's rule. As the
U.N. weapons inspectors started their work inside Iraq and President
George W. Bush conferred with possible coalition partners at meetings in
Prague and Moscow, it was easy to miss a story taking place behind the
scenes. Whatever timetable the U.N. Security Council resolution on Iraqi
disarmament may imply, and whatever Saddam may or may not do to cough up
his weapons of mass destruction, people in the know are behaving as if a
war to unseat the regime in Baghdad has already begun.
America's recent combat experiences in the Balkans and Afghanistan have
confirmed for the Pentagon the virtues of psychological warfare and
political initiatives in weakening the enemy before battle. These days
the U.S. Army likes to say it is committed to "softening up the
battlefield." Iraq is being softened up in many different ways. For one,
following a Presidential Decision Directive on Oct. 3, the U.S. started
a program to train up to 5,000 Iraqi exiles for possible missions in
Iraq that could assist American combat troops. There is action inside
Iraq too. A senior intelligence official tells Time that the U.S. has
contacted groups that may be capable of sabotage before full-scale
hostilities start. The U.S., says this official, is opening up lines to
"people who can do World War II-style resistance, breaking up the
infrastructure of communications and command." In a program that links
intelligence, diplomacy, psychological warfare and military action,
Saddam is being squeezed. "I see it as poking," says a State Department
official. "Let's poke this pressure point and see what happens; let's
see what reaction we get."
....................
Already, U.S. and British warplanes have moved to a more aggressive
posture while enforcing Iraq's no-fly zones, the northern and southern
regions from which Iraqi planes are banned. In the past, when Iraqi
forces fired on allied planes, the reply came in attacks on guns and
missile batteries. That has changed. Now the allied planes are attacking
command-and-control centers, communications nodes and the fiber-optic
network that links Iraq's air-defense system. "We're responding
differently," says a Pentagon official, "hitting multiple targets when
we're fired upon‹and they're tending to be more important targets."
............
In March and May of this year, according to a senior Kurdish official,
American teams from the Defense Department and the cia visited Iraqi
Kurdistan to investigate Ansar al-Islam, a terrorist group that has been
linked to al-Qaeda and that has its base in caves on the border between
Iraq and Iran. (The Americans didn't hide their presence; they drove
black Grand Cherokee suvs with communications gear on the roof, not
exactly common in Kurdistan.)
.......................
Meanwhile, a key U.S. ally is working to undermine the Iraqi regime's
capabilities in the west of Iraq, where Iraq launched Scud missiles on
Israel in the Gulf War. U.S. and Israeli officials tell Time that
Israeli special forces have been operating inside Iraq's western desert
on reconnaissance and training missions, surveying 30,000 sq. mi. for
places where Iraq might have hidden the missiles and launchers it kept
after the Gulf War. "You sniff around in the western desert," says a
U.S. official, "and try to get an idea about those hardened concrete
bunkers that Saddam has created to put his Scuds in." In the past few
years, members of an Israeli special-forces unit called Shaldag, Hebrew
for "Kingfisher," have taken part in the Scud hunt. There are only a few
dozen Shaldag fighters, trained to stay in the field for weeks at a
time. Sources say that should a war start, Israel will ask the U.S. to
allow it to contribute a few three-man teams to the search for missiles.
The bulk of the searches, the Israelis assume, will be carried out by
British and American special forces. A British source says none of his
country's forces are in Iraq‹"We haven't got there yet"‹but adds they
will go in "once it's clear there's going to be an invasion." Washington
is doing its best to make those who would suffer the sharp end of such
an invasion believe that one is coming‹and to tell them what it will
feel like. Recently revised U.S. military doctrine says forces must try
to "influence the thoughts and opinions of adversaries and
noncombatants" by dominating "the information environment." Meaning: in
a military maneuver as old as Joshua's fanfare of horns before the walls
of Jericho, the U.S. intends to scare the pants off its enemies. In the
southern no-fly zone, leaflets are being dropped warning, none too
subtly, precisely what will happen to individual Iraqi soldiers if they
choose to resist. (Think a rocket smashing into an Iraqi gunner's
battery with such force that it leaves nothing but iron filings and body
parts.) Such operations don't always go according to plan. On Oct. 3, a
U.S. A-10 attack plane was dropping leaflets in southern Iraq warning
Iraqis not to fire on American warplanes‹when it was fired on. Sometimes
the scaremongering is done at a remove. Recently the Washington Post and
the New York Times ran stories on the same day claiming that the U.S.
was ready to commit 250,000 troops to an invasion; the double whammy
stank of a calibrated piece of propaganda.
.............
To bolster its position in the south, the Administration is trying to
reach out to Tehran through intermediaries. "We've asked our friends in
Britain and Germany and Canada to help," says a U.S. official. American
sources say political turmoil has made it difficult to tell whether
hard-liners in Tehran can stomach siding with the U.S.
....................
It all amounts to a steady, relentless encirclement designed to convince
Saddam‹and his supporters inside Iraq‹that forces opposed to him are
closing in. But Saddam has not caved yet. Indeed, knowledgeable
observers say that so far the pressure has just led Saddam to step up
his efforts to contain unrest. "They know people are trying to make
contacts outside," says the former U.S. government official. "The regime
is being extremely vigilant." A senior British official concurs that
Saddam's security apparatus remains impressive. "We really don't know
how serious the (internal) opposition is," he says, "because if we knew,
Saddam would know. And it wouldn't last very long." Last month, Saddam
ordered the families of diplomats abroad to return to Iraq, implying
that he intends to hold those family members hostage. In both London and
Washington, officials insist that it is unlikely that anyone very senior
within the Iraqi power structure has made contact with the outside.
"Nobody's going to bet their life yet that America is ready to roll,"
says the former government official. "You don't want to get yourself
killed two months before the U.S. liberates the country. That's not
smart." But allied officials are hoping that if they make the right
moves now, the war before the war will be the only one they will have to
fight.
