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Iraqi Purge Launched as Revolt Wanes

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TIMES STAFF WRITERS

With a ruthless campaign of purges and rewards, President Saddam Hussein struggled Wednesday to suppress Iraq’s postwar insurrections, sacking a once-trusted minister and replacing him with a strong-arm cousin, dissolving a second ministry and issuing big pay raises to the army and Republican Guard on the same day those forces were squelching a bloody rebellion in the south.

Hussein’s troops were getting the upper hand against their fellow Iraqis on the fourth day of popular revolt. In the southern city of Basra, tank-mounted Republican Guard troops have battled street by street to retake control, and in at least five other cities, the fundamentalist rebellion appeared to be waning, U.S. military officials said.

“The unrest in Iraq continues, but . . . at a lower level,” said Marine Brig. Gen. Richard I. Neal, deputy director of operations for the U.S. Central Command in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

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Intelligence reports showed no “active resistance” remaining in Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, but the situation in other cities remained “fluid,” American military officials said.

“We no longer have tanks pointed at each other” in Basra, said a senior U.S. military officer with access to intelligence reports. “They all appear to be on the same side, which is the government side.”

“The situation today is the army is in control of Basra. I’m afraid the resistance can’t survive,” said British citizen Brock Matthews, a Kuwait resident imprisoned by Iraqis in January and freed by rebels during the two days they held Basra.

“It is like a dead zone,” said Tuan Mohammed Razikeen, 30, a Sri Lankan shopkeeper also jailed by the Iraqis.

Rebels in some cities were still fending off loyalist troops. Iraq’s Shiite Muslim holy cities, Karbala and Najaf, “apparently remain largely in the hands of anti-government forces,” said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher in Washington.

New decrees announced on Baghdad Radio provided Iraqis with their first official confirmation of the violent dissent and the mutterings of discontent--and how decisively Hussein intends to answer them.

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As a measure of what might be coming, Baghdad on Wednesday ordered all foreign journalists out of the country by 5 p.m. PST today.

Hussein, first overwhelmed by war and then imperiled by internal strife, stepped up his consolidation of power, tapping old family loyalties and military allegiances.

He dissolved Iraq’s 12-year-old Ministry of Local Governments--what had been an effort to give a civilian veneer to martial rule--and ordered big wage increases to Republican Guards, regular army and security personnel.

Most ominous, though, was Hussein’s firing of Interior Minister Samir Mohammed Abdul-Wahhab, in charge of internal security operations, and replacing him with the president’s cousin and fellow clansman, Ali Hassan Majid.

It was an unmistakable signal to Iraqis and the outside world of Hussein’s intent to hold on to power, for Majid’s is a name that has sent shivers of horror through some of Iraq’s population.

One of the most feared men in the country, Majid served as governor of Kuwait during the most brutal months of Iraqi occupation. Earlier, he quashed an armed rebellion by Iraq’s Kurdish minority, in part by gassing them with chemical weapons and demolishing their villages.

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Throughout Iraq on Wednesday:

* After rebels held Basra for an estimated 48 hours, about 5,000 heavily armed army and Republican Guard troops surged in, U.S. military sources said, to crush the uprising. Some sources estimated that 1,000 had died in the fighting. In other cities, civil unrest was said to be “noticeably less.”

* In Baghdad, one news report said Hussein had put commandos in the streets and checkpoints had been set up, apparently to isolate the capital from rebellion that had struck elsewhere. Baghdad Radio said schools and universities, set to reopen this weekend for the first time since Jan. 17, will remain closed. Several Arab analysts said the move was to prevent students from joining in the popular revolt.

* The only bold resistance claims Wednesday came from exiled Kurdish political leaders, who claimed to control towns in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq.

* At least nine more foreign journalists were reported missing Wednesday in southern Iraq, raising the unofficial total to 37, amid conflicting claims as to which side in the Iraqi civil conflict held them.

* Hussein, concerned about rebel ties to an Iraqi fundamentalist leader in Iran, sent a trusted envoy to meet with Iranian leaders Wednesday. Officially, Iran has denied fomenting the rebellion, contending that civil war could prolong the despised Western military presence in the region.

Refugees straggled into this border town from Basra by the hundreds Wednesday in cars, trucks and on foot. A 28-year-old Kuwaiti, Mohammed Afzal, walked 38 miles with rags on one foot and a sock stuffed with newspapers on the other.

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Refugees said that rebels, including defeated Iraqi soldiers arriving from Kuwait, controlled Basra from Saturday until Monday, when Republican Guard units began a fierce counterattack.

Baghdad Shake-Up

The firing of Interior Minister Abdul-Wahhab, who had been in charge of internal security, and the appointment of Hussein’s cousin, Majid, was seen as a closing of loyalist ranks.

On Wednesday, Hussein also decreed that all Republican Guard troops would receive an additional $300 a month on top of their regular pay of $900. Regular army soldiers and members of Iraq’s many security agencies will get an extra $150 a month, and draftees and enlisted men another $75 under the edict--hefty pay in a country where annual per capita income is about $1,950.

Schools and universities, closed since the allied air war against Iraq began on Jan. 17, will not open as scheduled, Baghdad Radio announced--perhaps to keep students from organizing. Reuters news service reported that Baghdad is not untouched by anti-Hussein feeling, noting defaced portraits of the president. It said as well that checkpoints set up outside the city stopped travelers on the road to Jordan on Wednesday, and Republican Guards patrolled the streets.

Missing Journalists

At least nine more journalists were reported missing Wednesday, and U.S. news executives called for American troops to remain in southern Iraq until their status is resolved. In all, 37 journalists, many of them American, have been reported missing after venturing into the region to report on the anti-government uprisings. Both Iraqi loyalists and opposition groups claimed to hold many of the missing reporters.

An Iraqi exile in Geneva said the “Iraqi opposition army” is protecting most of the missing journalists, but other unconfirmed reports said many reporters might be in the custody of forces loyal to Hussein.

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Four news executives asked in a letter to President Bush that the United States not withdraw its forces “until the issue of the journalists is resolved.” In the meantime, Baghdad ordered all foreign journalists to leave Iraq by 4 a.m. Baghdad time Friday (5 p.m. PST today).

Iran and the Shiites

Matthews and other refugees said Iranians were seen in Basra and that Iran had sent supplies to fundamentalist Shiite rebels led by the Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr Hakim, a Tehran-based anti-Hussein leader. Hakim broadcasts into Iraq, encouraging Shiites there to establish an Islamic state.

The refugees said resistance fighters told them 3,000 Iranians had gone to Basra to back the rebellion. Iraqi Shiite rebels, who wore distinctive green headbands, waved pictures of Iran’s late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as they opened at least three Basra prisons, several refugees said.

Matthews, a former Indian army colonel, said three F-15 jets with what looked like Iranian markings flew low over the city Saturday, “like a victory pass.”

Such ties prompted Revolutionary Command Council member Sadoun Hammadi’s mission to Tehran on Wednesday, reportedly with a letter for Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani. Iran released no details of the visit.

Kurdish Claims

In Damascus, Syria, Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani claimed in a statement that Kurdish guerrilla fighters were battling 60,000 Iraqi loyalist soldiers, and some Kurds in exile said that Iraqi Kurds had seized control of five towns. But U.S. military officers said they had no evidence to support such claims.

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Leaders in rebellious Kurdish areas, where Majid is hated for using poison gas, claimed the firing of Abdul-Wahhab shows Hussein’s shrinking power base, but most expert observers said it was far more a signal of brutality to come.

Drogin reported from Safwan and Fineman from Amman, Jordan. Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson also contributed to this story.

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