COMBATING TERRORISM:
PREVENTING NUCLEAR TERRORISM

TESTIMONY OF

DR. AMATZIA BARAM
Professor of Middle East History, and
Head of The Jewish-Arab Center and Middle East Institute
University of Haifa, Israel

HEARING OF THE NATIONAL SECURITY,
VETERAN AFFAIRS, AND INTERNATIONAL
RELATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE
HOUSE GOVERNMENT REFORM COMMITTEE

September 24, 2002

The predilection of President Saddam Husayn of Iraq to deception is by now proverbial, and yet his hostility to the US and encouragement for anyone who would harm it is open, vociferous and threatening.  This open hostility started to unfold during the Kuwait crisis and it became routine in the mid-1990s, but it reached full blossom immediately following the nine/eleven attack on America.  But this was not always so: at first Saddam’s ideological hostility to the US was masked by an outward appearance of amity. Since he became President of Iraq in July 1979 Saddam Husayn, threatened by the vitriolic hostility of the regime of Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran, initiated a love campaign directed at the West, including Washington.  This he did whenever he and his regime turned to the world media, yet inside Iraq anti-American propaganda was vitriolic.  At the same time that, during the second half of the 1980s, he received massive American economic aid eventually to have reached  $1 billion annually in loan guarantees, in addition to intelligence information, Saddam’s media in Arabic continued to accuse the US of hostility to the Arabs and imperialism.

A different kind of deception was exposed when, on the eve of his invasion of Kuwait, Saddam Husayn promised both President Mubarak of Egypt and US Ambassador April Glaspie that he would not use force until he would have exhausted all other options, most clearly until a high level Kuwaiti-Iraqi meeting in Baghdad took place. Needless to say, Saddam broke his promise.  Six years later he again broke his promise to his cousin and son-in-law, General Husayn Kamil: when the latter returned to Baghdad after he was promised clemency, Saddam’s men gunned him down.

Yet another form of deception became apparent when, following the defection of General Husayn Kamil to Jordan in August 1995, UNSCOM learned for the first time of Iraq’s massive military-biological development.  Beforehand the then Foreign Minister, Tariq Aziz, and other officials, flatly denied the existence of any biological military program.  The full scale of the Iraqi nuclear and chemical efforts, too, was revealed only after years of hard pedestrian work on the part of UNSCOM that was fraught with dangers to their staff. 

Since the mid-1990s Saddam Husayn and his top officials have been threatening the US with severe reprisal for the US resolve to keep the embargo on. They have never been specific, but their threats were ominous as they were clear.  Saddam Husayn’s reaction to the attack on America on Sept. 11, thus, should not have come as a shock, but it was still quite surprising. As it happened, he was the only world leader to fully condone the attack on America. His media even promised the American people that if their government did not change its policies over Iraq, it would suffer even more devastating blows.  Saddam has never admitted that he played any role at all either in the February 1993 attempt to blow up the world trade center, or in the nine/eleven attack.  And yet, his speeches, and those of his lieutenants, have breathed delight and encouragement to whoever is willing to damage America. Thus, for example, in a TV commentary immediately following the news about the jet liners’ crash into the twin towers, an important Iraqi commentator, Sa’d Yasin Yusif, was quoted in Iraq’s national TV as saying;

“The American cowboy is reaping the fruits of his crimes against humanity.  It is a black day in the history of America, which is tasting the bitter defeat of its crimes and disregard for peoples’ will to lead a free, decent life.  The massive explosions in the center of power in America, notably the pentagon, is a painful slap in the face of US politicians to stop their illegitimate hegemony and attempts to impose custodianship on peoples.  It was no coincidence that the World Trade Center was destroyed in suicidal operations…the operations of the century…to express rejection of the reckless US policy…These are the fruits of the new US order.”  (Baghdad Republic of Iraq TV in Arabic, Sept. 11, 2001 as translated by FBIS NES Sept. 11, 2001)

 The Iraqi president came closest to admitting guilt when he attended a meeting of Iraqi tribal chiefs who came to Baghdad to encourage him. The tribal chiefs recited panegyrics praising their president as a hero of Arabism and Islam and as a savior of Iraq. But the most important poem, recited in the Iraqi colloquial, came very close to actually admitting Saddam’s responsibility for the nine/eleven attack on America.  The poem read:

“We love you as much as a bird loves its nest when it rains. 

Your gold is pure; the gold of others is copper…

fatigue and injustice are over…

You triumphed over injustice; you will not be blamed should you beat them…

You are the guard, Saddam, and we are the watchful eyes. 

Just order us to proceed and repel the attacks…

From inside America, how five planes flew. Such a mishap never happened in the past!  And nothing similar[ly great?] will happen. Six thousand infidels died.

Bin Ladin did not do it; the luck of the president [Saddam] did it.”

(Shaykh Ali Bin Shallal, Head of the Sharji Tribes from Southern Iraq, as translated by FBIS NES, Dec, 3, 2001)

Before analyzing what this means, it is very important to bear in mind that no such poem is written and recited without the president’s consent, especially when it is done in front of the National TV.  What seems to be lurking behind this strange boasting, that Saddam Husayn’s “luck” made the nine/eleven attack happen, is the wish of the Iraqi regime to persuade both the Iraqi people, the Arabs and the Muslims, but also the American public, that Saddam Husayn is, indeed, behind the attack.  At the same time, however, it is crucial for Baghdad not to admit responsibility explicitly, because doing so will expose Iraq to an immediate American assault.  This way Saddam kills two birds with one stone.  He is demonstrating to his ruling elite, as well as to his people, that no one, not even the only super power in the world, can escape his revenge.  This is important for domestic consumption, lest someone might think that Saddam’s regime is weakening and that thus it may be possible to overthrow it.  The message to the American people, though, is no less important.  Since he became Vice President of Iraq in 1969, alongside a vast system of bribes and rewards, a crucial part of Saddam’s strategy was demonstrating to one and all his nuisance value, or, in other words, his ability and readiness to seriously harm anyone who would stand in his way to the top.  In Iraq his success was complete.  Often he did not need to actually assassinate or execute his opponents: rather, he managed to effectively terrorize them and thus remove them as opposition.  In most part, in later years, when he became sole leader, he also killed those people. As president, Saddam also applied the same strategy in his foreign policy. When it comes to US policy, mainly that of keeping the international embargo on Iraq and preventing him this way from using most of his oil revenues to buy weapons, Saddam believes that he can change it by demonstrating to the US public and administration alike that he can cause them huge damage and that they better not antagonize him.  To do that he must convince the US that he is behind the events of nine/eleven.  In fact, it will even serve his purpose better if he could convince the American people that he was behind the first attempt to blow up the twin towers in 1993.  However, he must also make sure that his finger prints don’t show and that the US authorities will have no tangible evidence of his complicity in either crime.

What does all this mean?  As I see it, it means that, as long as the US does not completely lay off him, and leaves him alone, including the removal of both the economic and military embargos, Saddam Husayn will continue to have an overwhelming incentive to harm America in every possible way, and yet to do so without being exposed as a driving force, or even as one of the forces behind the attacks.  The embargo is hurting him in two different ways.  In the first place, rather than having over $20 billion annually to spend as he wishes, he has annually only $1.5-2.5 billion in oil revenues and other income earned as a result of smuggling and other illicit operations.  Secondly, the embargo is seen as a major offense, as it affects Iraq’s sovereignty, and because Saddam identifies himself with Iraq, this is a slight to his personal honor and prestige as well.  As long as the US keeps the embargo on, it should expect Saddam’s wrath. 

What forms can one expect this wrath to take?  Before he is a nuclear power Saddam will not hesitate to use terrorist networks or to support such networks to damage America and US interests.  So far there is no clear evidence that he has provided chemical or biological agents to any such group, but if he has not done it yet the need to demonstrate his nuisance value is very likely to push him to do so in the next few years, If there is no other way to terrorize the US out of its policies against him.  The only pre-requisite will be that his fingerprints don’t show.  I believe that the fact that so far all attempts to identify the culprits behind the anthrax attack in the US will serve as great encouragement to Saddam, because by now he probably believes that it is impossible to identify anybody’s fingerprints on such a crime.  When he is a nuclear power, if by then the American policy is still to keep the international embargo on, while he is not likely to provide any organization that is not under his full control with nuclear technology, Saddam is indeed likely to be ready to provide a terrorist organization with a small nuclear device. This provided, again, that no one can trace its source either if it is captured or after it explodes. With the growing proliferation of nuclear weapons, when Pakistan, India and Israel already have it now and when Iran might have it within a few years, Saddam and his regime can always claim, convincingly, that there were other possible sources, and thus that Iraq can not be held responsible.  Especially Pakistan and Iran would in such a case become suspects, and Iraq has an excellent chance of being acquitted. Some analysts argue that Saddam, being a secular leader, supported by a secular political party is very unlikely to trust any Islamic organization, and the Islamists, too, are unlikely to trust him.  As a result any cooperation between Saddam’s Iraq and an Islamist terrorist group is an extremely remote possibility.  This argument is totally false.  In the first place, in the Middle East cooperation between very secular regimes and very religious regimes and movements has long become a tradition. Thus, for example, the Saudi Wahhabi ultra-orthodox Islamic regime collaborated closely with Saddam Husayn’s secular regime during the Iraq-Iran War. Likewise, Ayatollah Khomeini’s regime in Tehran collaborated very closely with President Hafiz al-Asad’s secular regime in Damascus, and Khomeini’s successors are still working hand-in-hand with Damascus today.  In fact, the young Asad is working today even more closely with Iran’s satellite movement, Hizbullah in Lebanon, than did his father, and it ought to be borne in mind that Hizbullah are radically Islamist.  But no less importantly, since 1990 Saddam Husyan started an extensive process of “Islamizing” his regime.  He started making speeches that sound as if they are coming from the mouth of an ultra-radical Friday mosque preacher.  He seems to be aspiring to the mantle of a latter-day Islamic Mahdi.  Saddam also enforced Islamic law in many walks of Iraqi society, and even though his “return” to Islam seems to this author to be a cynical manipulation, it has been accepted by a number of Islamist movements as a sign that he is, indeed, returning to Islam.   It is interesting to note that some of Saddam’s speeches and some of Usama Bin Ladin’s speeches and fatwas sound as if they came from the mouth of one person.  Under such circumstances I see no ideological obstacle for cooperation between Saddam and any radical Islamist movement.  The damage to the US from such non-conventional cooperation may be huge, everyone will suspect Iraq, but nobody will have proof, and this way Saddam Husayn will both get the credit and get away with it.  If his track record is evidence at all, this is how he hopes to finally convince the American people that keeping him under any kind of an embargo system is detrimental to the most essential interests of the US.

Why should Saddam be ready for such extremes?  In the first place, Iraq is accusing the US presently of the murder of anywhere between 1.5 and 2 million Iraqis, including at least one half million children as a result of the international embargo.  While these figures are very highly inflated, there may be no doubt that there were many embargo casualties, almost all of them innocent people. Indeed, the vast majority of the embargo casualties are Shi’ites, whom Saddam has been targeting for punishment for their disloyalty to him and to his regime.  Of course, one can reasonably argue that the guilty party is no other than Saddam himself, who refused to allow UNSCOM free and unfettered access in order to disarm Iraq of WMDs.  Also, it may be argued convincingly, to my mind, that the available resources were not equitably distributed even after the Oil-For-Food program was introduced, and Saddam’s cronies have been receiving the lion’s share.  Yet, this is not what Saddam and his media are telling the Iraqi people. As they present it the suffering of the Iraqi people (or of the majority of it) is the result of American machinations and ill intent.  This way Saddam’s own media is creating pressure on him to demonstrate that he, too, can cause huge damage to the tormentors of his nation.  If he is not doing it, his prestige will suffer.  Even more importantly, in his own eyes Saddam has a mission, a manifest destiny.  He sees himself as leader of all the Arabs, and recently: even the Muslims of the world.  Uniting all the Arabs under his leadership, leading them to a status of a world super power, equal to the US, China, the United Europe and Russia, has been his dream at least since he became the President of Iraq in 1979.  In order to unite the Arabs and provide them with the military prowess under his leadership, Saddam needs two components:  full control at least of the oil resources of the Arab side of the Persian Gulf, and a nuclear arsenal with the necessary delivery systems.   In other words, he needs huge amounts of oil revenues, by far more than Iraq can hope to have on its own, and mighty weapons.  As it happens, since 1990-1991, the US has placed itself between Saddam and these two ambitious goals.  As long as the US does not get completely out of Saddam’s way in his quest for money and military might, he will regard it as the most formidable obstacle on his way to fulfill his great destiny, and there is no punishment too great in his mind for such a crime.

Can the US support an end to the embargo, and this way get out of Saddam Husayn’s way and avoid his wrath? And if it can, what will be the results?  There is no doubt that the US can help lift the embargo.  This may buy it a few years of normal relations with Saddam’s Iraq.  This is not a certainty, though.  In Saddam’s track record revenge is a very central component.  Apart from enjoying it, Saddam has been using it also as an indication to one and all that he should not be confronted.  America is no exception.  When he can take revenge, he will, provided, again, that there will be no positive proof that he was behind it. This may be the case even if American decides to lift the embargo:  Saddam has an account to settle with the US even after the initial reason for which he believes that revenge is due is over.  But even assuming that by lifting the embargo the US will no longer be under threat from Saddam, once the embargo is lifted, Saddam will be able to become a nuclear power very quickly: he will have both the economic resources to do this, and the freedom to buy nuclear technology from European or American sources.

Is there any proof at all that Saddam is, indeed, endeavoring to become a nuclear power?  In addition to testimonies of UNSCOM weapons inspectors to the effect that he is, his own public record implies the same.  Thus, for example, starting in February 2001, Saddam has been meeting regularly with his nuclear scientists under Dr. Fadil Muslim al-Janabi and, in front of the national TV, they promised him “that they would be a tremendous force in terms of giving and inventing in the service of Iraq and its people…when this is being necessitated by the noble confrontation and battle against the Zionists and the Americans”.  (Babil, July 8, 2001, internet version: www.iraq2000.com/babil/page1.htm).  In another meeting, a few months later, his nuclear scientists, among other participants, promised Saddam: “ to provide a broad base of defense and combat capabilities and resources in a manner that would foster the steadfastness of the Iraqi army and people” (Baghdad Republic of Iraq TV in Arabic February 2, 2002, in FBIS NES, February 2, 2002). In my view this is tantamount to an admission that the Iraqi Atomic Energy Organization is working on military programs, and there were many similar meetings and public commitments.

When Saddam is a nuclear power it will be very difficult and probably impossible to prevent him from becoming the master of the Persian Gulf. This will be the first step towards fulfilling what he believes to be his manifest destiny, namely: becoming the leader of all the Arabs.  To become such a leader judging, again, by his track record, he will need to confront Israel, thus presenting himself as the protector of the Arabs against the Zionist menace.  He has done it once in April-May 1990, just before the invasion of Kuwait, when he promised Yasser Arafat in a meeting in Baghdad that soon he would “liberate Jerusalem” for him, using “only my missiles and airplanes”.  It is anybody’s guess what Saddam meant by that, but I believe that it will be a legitimate interpretation to say that he promised Arafat to use his missiles and non-conventional warheads as a means of non-conventional extortion.  At the time he preferred to invade Kuwait rather than engage in a non-conventional threat campaign against Israel, but once he becomes a nuclear power, there is every reason to believe that he will immediately try to translate his new status into Arab admiration for him and he is very likely to do it again, this time with a nuclear arsenal.  He will thus be very likely to rattle his nuclear saber in the direction of Israel, and this will introduce the Middle East into a state of permanent nuclear crisis.  Both scenarios: Iraqi control of the world’s largest oil producing zone and an atmosphere of unending nuclear crisis will be presenting the US with difficult choices, much more difficult than the one the US is facing today: to strike or not to strike. 

Amatzia Baram