Has the Other Guy Blinked? : Saddam plays the hostage card: ploy or retreat?

Is it the beginning of the end of the Persian Gulf crisis? Does Saddam Hussein’s decision to free the thousands of foreign hostages he holds in Iraq imply an early readiness to accept U.N. demands that he get out of Kuwait? Or is the surprise announcement simply another gambit by the wily dictator, intended to weaken the anti-Iraq coalition and erode political support for possible U.S.-led military action that could destroy his regime?

Take the optimistic assessment first.

Hussein’s decision came only a day or so after he received a group of friendly Arab leaders, including Jordan’s King Hussein and the PLO’s Yasser Arafat, who are almost surely in firmer touch with global realities than the insulated dictator. It’s quite possible that the message they brought to Baghdad is that last week’s Security Council resolution authorizing force against Iraq after Jan. 15 must be taken seriously, and so must the Bush Administration’s readiness to use the war option as a last resort. Saddam Hussein may also now be facing the fact that the near-total interruption in Iraq’s international trade, if less than crippling so far, is nonetheless producing pain, with more damaging and demoralizing results sure to come.

Alternatively, it may be that Saddam Hussein has once again simply shown great shrewdness by a well-timed move to manipulate public opinion to his advantage.

Releasing the Western and Japanese hostages (Soviet citizens were told earlier that they could leave) removes what for many people is the most emotional element arising out of Iraq’s aggression. People are far more likely to identify with--to care about, to put it bluntly--fellow citizens who are being held hostage than they are about the plight of the exiled emir of Kuwait, or even the frightful treatment Iraq is inflicting on the emir’s hapless subjects. Take that visceral component out of the equation and, for many, Iraq’s aggression becomes less immediate, more abstract. It’s not easy to mobilize support for going to war against an abstraction.

The hostage-taking, it will be recalled, was an afterthought, an opportunistic reaction to the unexpected global condemnation of Iraq’s aggression. Letting the prisoners go now will cost Hussein nothing of substance. But it does let Iraq claim that it is being humane, that it is being reasonable, and that it has made a significant concession. That sets the scene for it to insist that now it is the turn of its antagonists (mainly meaning the United States) to make a concession--say giving Iraq control of some Kuwaiti territory. There will be a lot of people, and not just in the Arab world, ready to applaud that demand as fair.

Two equally reasonable assessments, then, of what the promised hostage release may mean. One points toward Saddam Hussein’s possible retreat, the other toward a shoring up of his political position. Of course the news of freedom for thousands of prisoners is welcome, always assuming that their release will come quickly. What’s still far from clear is whether this is the beginning of the end of the crisis.