Most in the Arab World View Punitive Strikes on Iraq as Doomed to Fail

Although most people in the Arab world agree that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is a repressive leader who has wreaked havoc on the region, they are largely united in their opposition to the Anglo-American military strikes against Iraq.

Eight years of economic sanctions and intermittent bombings have left the Iraqi people in dire straits and Hussein firmly in power, they say in Cairo and Kuwait City. Yet they are hard-pressed to articulate a coherent alternative to the policy that they regard as too punishing.

“The United States should hit at the regime and not the people,” said Palestinian political analyst Ghassan Khatib in Jerusalem.

This is the common view. Disagreements arise over how to do that.

The U.S.-backed Iraqi opposition says the answer is to support them. Give us financial and military support, says the Iraqi National Congress umbrella group. Enforce military exclusion and “no-fly” zones so that the INC can establish an alternative government in liberated areas. Public support will follow.

Most Iraq observers reject that scenario, saying the politically and ethnically divided opposition in exile does not present a credible alternative.

“It is nonsensical to talk about helping the Iraqi opposition,” said Rami Khouri, an internationally syndicated columnist in Jordan. “They are probably the least effective organization of the 20th century. And the regime is too strong. They are unable to make an impact.”

So what is the answer?

“What is needed is a combination of diplomatic efforts and continued inspections,” Khouri said.

That, U.S. officials would respond, is the policy that led to the current airstrikes.

Arabs across the map and political spectrum say that whatever its ill-defined objectives, the military assault called Desert Fox is doomed to fail. If the goal is to weaken Hussein’s military might, they doubt that hidden caches of chemical and biological weapons can be destroyed by missiles.

If the goal is to rid Iraq of Hussein, that too seems nearly impossible to most Arabs. The elusive Iraqi leader is unlikely to die in an airstrike. The idea that attacking Hussein’s security forces might provoke a coup or popular uprising also seems overly optimistic.

The best policy, they say, is to end the current policy.

“First of all, the attacks must stop,” said Ibrahim Izziddin, a former Jordanian ambassador to the United States. “The whole policy of trying to coerce others, and especially Iraq, should stop. It does not give us, the United States or the Iraqis anything.”

Richard Butler, chief of the U.N. inspections team in Iraq, and the U.S. and British administrations believe that Hussein still poses a military threat to his neighbors. In the Arab world, political analysts and the public doubt that.

“Jordanians are convinced that Iraq has not done anything recently to warrant such a strike,” said legislator Taher Masri, a former prime minister. “We are sure that Iraq has no military capability to threaten its neighbors.”

Nabil Abdel Fattah of the semiofficial Al Ahram Center for Strategic Studies in Cairo concurred, adding that the Anglo-American assault must be stopped because it is fomenting anti-Western sentiment in friendly countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which fear a popular backlash from their own radical fundamentalists.

“This operation is encouraging Islamic fundamentalism,” Fattah said. “That is the traditional reaction to an external invasion in this area.”

Instead, the U.S. should be backing “the liberal and democratic forces inside Iraq,” he said without identifying who they were or how that might be done.

The view that Hussein does not pose a threat to his neighbors is shared by Israeli political analyst Barry Rubin at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University in Te1814036481Aviv. He credits sanctions blocking trade with Iraq for that and argues that they should be maintained.

“Saddam Hussein has not been able to do maintenance on his missiles and other equipment for seven years. The crews have not been able to train, they haven’t been able to get spare parts. These things are sitting in hiding, disassembled, so the idea that they are going to assemble them, bring them together, [then] despite American reconnaissance, fire them [and] they’re going to work, is really ridiculous at this time,” Rubin said on Israel Radio.

Jordanian political analyst Radwan Abdallah said Hussein’s peak strength in the 1980s derived from U.S. support, financing from the Gulf states and Western military supplies. Those have been withdrawn, and the Iraqi leader is weak enough that economic sanctions can be lifted, he argued.

“Impose an arms embargo, use diplomatic boycotts against him. That was the policy toward the former U.S.S.R. But quit punishing the country,” Abdallah said.

He noted that a moderately powerful Iraq traditionally has been seen as vital to the balance of power in the region, offsetting Iran, Turkey and Israel.

“A very strong Iraq upsets that balance, but a very weak Iraq also upsets the balance,” Abdallah said.

Arab political analysts said that, to gain credibility for any policy toward Iraq, the United States must be seen as more evenhanded, pressing Israel to comply with U.N. resolutions and agreements with the Palestinians while leaning on Iraq. Arabs see Israel as the neighbor with expansionist policies and nuclear weapons.

“Clinton failed to pressure [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu or achieve a victory for U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East,” an editorial in the Egyptian state-owned newspaper Al Akhbar said. “If we were to compare Iraq’s mistakes to Israel’s, we would find that the latter’s are much bigger by far . . . without the U.S. even thinking of once reproaching it for its jungle law.”

Arab leaders also regard the Anglo-American military strikes as jungle law because they were undertaken without international backing.

Although they may not like Hussein, outside of the Iraqi opposition, few Arabs would declare any support for an American effort to topple Hussein lest their government be next.

“It is not for me or the Americans to decide what to do in Iraq,” said Izziddin of Jordan. “It is for the Iraqis.”

Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson in Jerusalem and Janet Stobart of The Times’ London Bureau contributed to this report.