POWs Begging Not to Be Sent Back to Hussein’s Iraq

As the number of Iraqi prisoners of war swelled Wednesday to more than 50,000, allied officials and relief organizations confronted the urgent question of what to do with POWs who are afraid to return to a country still controlled by Saddam Hussein.

Allied forces say many Iraqi POWs are begging their captors not to repatriate them, and their fears may be understandable. They know Hussein as a man who executed officers for retreating during the Iran-Iraq War, and who more recently dispatched execution squads to shoot front-line soldiers who would not fight allied forces.

“They have reason to fear him, because Saddam’s record on this kind of thing has been terrible,” said David Korn, a former State Department official who last year wrote a book on rights abuses in Iraq for the group Human Rights Watch.

Although Hussein’s future is anything but clear, the allies soon may be forced to look for other countries willing to provide homes for many of his long-suffering soldiers--and may find them hard to come by, some analysts say. Some could wind up in the United States.

“It is amazing how many of them said they wanted to go and live in the United States,” said a member of the 1st Armored Division, which has been taking prisoners in Iraqi territory.

“We’re now getting prepared to face this problem,” said Francois zen Ruffinen, a delegate to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which works with countries on treatment of prisoners.

While Hussein’s regime probably would not attempt to punish all the POWs now held by allied forces, the fear that he could select some--including officers he may blame for the defeat--could keep many from returning, analysts say.

The question of how to handle the POWs recalls a bitter debate in the United States after World War II, when the government had to decide whether to repatriate tens of thousands of Soviet soldiers who had been German POWs. The soldiers ultimately were returned to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, who considered them disloyal and had thousands tortured, executed or sent to labor camps.

Some analysts predict that the question of whether to repatriate Iraqi POWs could become a major issue between the allies and Hussein, if he remains in power. Though the Geneva Convention requires captors to repatriate POWs, U.S. officials say the allies will follow the practice of most nations and heed the wishes of individual prisoners on whether they wish to return.

If Hussein demands all the POWs back and the allies refuse to return them, the Iraqi president could refuse to return U.S. and allied POWs.

“It could be a real mess,” said Yayha Sadowski, a Middle East specialist at the Brookings Institution.

It also is unclear whether neighboring Arab countries would agree to take the Iraqi POWs, or whether they would refuse to take them on grounds they could be a destabilizing factor. For example, Saudi Arabia, which has expelled 2 million Yemenis because it considered them a possible political threat, “might not be too anxious to keep a large number of (Iraqi) prisoners,” said Sadowski.

Col. Eric Chase, a specialist in international law at Marine Corps University, believes the POWs could be divided among a number of allied countries, including Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, but that “at least some of them could end up over here.”

The question of repatriation is only one of the complexities emerging in the POW issue.

In his Wednesday briefing, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, U.S. commander of Operation Desert Storm, noted that some of the Iraqi soldiers are not only prisoners but also witnesses and potential suspects in alleged war crimes incidents.

He said allied forces now face the task of identifying which POWs fit into each category, and separating them.

As for the reasons behind the mass surrenders, Schwarzkopf pointed to a lack of desire to fight. “A great deal of the capability of an army is its dedication to its cause and its will to fight,” he said. “You can have the best equipment in the world, you can have the largest numbers in the world, but if you’re not dedicated to your cause, if you don’t have a will to fight, then you’re not going to have a very good army.”

He also placed blame squarely on the shoulders of Hussein and the Iraqi leadership. “. . . I’ve got to tell you what,” the general said, “a soldier doesn’t fight very hard for a leader who is going to shoot him, OK? . . . And so I attribute a great deal of the failure of the Iraqi army to fight to their own leadership. (POWs) all are saying that they didn’t want to be there, they didn’t want to fight their fellow Arab, they were lied to, they were deceived, and when they went into Kuwait they didn’t believe in the cause.

“And then after they got there, they had a leadership that was so uncaring for them . . . that they didn’t properly feed them, they didn’t properly give them water, and in the end, they kept them there only at the point of a gun.”

Iraqi soldiers have demonstrated their eagerness to surrender in novel ways.

Six Iraqi soldiers tried to surrender to CBS Television newsmen Richard Threlkeld and Bob McKeown on the road to Kuwait city, and another group tried to surrender to a drone airplane, a pilotless craft used to spot tanks on the battlefield.

A press pool report from the front said it was the first time in history soldiers had sought to capitulate to a robot.

In another incident, two soldiers stuck in the mud in their Humvee vehicle began to fear for their lives when they saw an Iraqi tank and armored personnel carrier approach. But the tank crew obligingly pulled the Humvee out of the mud--then surrendered.

About a dozen Iraqis surrendered to an Italian TV cameraman, one of them saying he might be a distant cousin to his captor.

Some troops reported that allied forces are showing unusual sympathy to their Iraqi prisoners, and that the Iraqis seem to be returning the warm feelings.

Some British soldiers, for example, have given Iraqi troops food, water and clothing from their own rations. Some Iraqis have demonstrated their gratitude by pointing out the presence of nearby land mines.

Others, after surrendering, have pointed out other Iraqi units that are ready to give up.

“These guys are mostly farmers, regular people who were forced to join the army or have their families killed,” said Marine Lance Cpl. Steven Van Waus. “They are real nice guys.”

The widespread fear of being sent back to Iraq was poignantly illustrated this week as a group of prisoners was put on an evacuation aircraft. One POW looked highly agitated, and began to resist his captors.

Finally, he asked where he was being taken. When the answer was Saudi Arabia, the POW broke into a broad grin as his body went slack with relief.