The Best Strategy Against Saddam : Afghan-style approach for Kurds and Shiites

The United States did not go to war in the Persian Gulf to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. We went to war to restore Jabbar al Ahmed al Sabah to power in Kuwait.

The facts, on this point, speak for themselves. When Hussein’s army was on the run, the coalition did not run it, or him, to ground. Gen. H. Norman Schwarz- kopf may or may not have wished to do that. Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, may or may not have overruled him. What is clear is that U.S. allies in the Mideast went to war to restore a ruler, not to remove one. Diplomatic strategy--politics, if you will--overruled military strategy.

In the months that preceded and followed the brief shooting conflict, another cause for war emerged: Saddam Hussein was turning Iraq into a nuclear power. He still is. Technology transfers from the West, even from the United States, have had much to do with this. But, past mistakes aside, what is now to be done?

Though the Saudis and the Kuwaitis back unilateral U.S. action against Hussein, the Turks and the Egyptians do not. Nor is there much chance of reassembling the broader Gulf War coalition. But there is an alternative to war. Call it the Afghan strategy.

No Western coalition ever invaded Afghanistan. But at a time when the Soviet invasion seemed to portend a Soviet thrust toward the Persian Gulf, the Democrat-controlled Congress actually increased a Republican President’s appropriations for support to the Afghan resistance. And it worked: The resistance won.

The United States should back the Iraqi resistance--which is to say the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south--as it backed the Afghan resistance. The Bush Administration’s policy toward this resistance has been lamentably confused. On the one hand, the Administration clearly hoped and indeed predicted m Hussein’s overthrow. On the other hand, though Administration rhetoric encouraged the Kurds and the Shiites, U.S. diplomacy froze them out.

That seems to be changing now. On Wednesday Secretary of State James A. Baker III met with Kurdish and Shiite leaders. And the Administration has gone to the U.N. Security Council again for new authorization for possible additional military action. But aside from Britain and France, few nations have much enthusiasm for more war.

Washington may well find that the West’s internal allies in Iraq are its most effective assets against Saddam Hussein. A prewar meeting with a key Kurdish leader like Masoud Barzani could have made an enormous difference back then. But meetings now serve a most important purpose--and send a vital signal.