America’s Nemesis Wins New Respect

Under President Saddam Hussein, Iraq has been continuously--and most literally--at war with the outside world for nearly two decades. It is the longest war endured by any nation in modern history, the longest since the Europe-wide Thirty Years’ War in the 17th century (the Indochina wars in our time lasted only 20 years or so). There is nothing to indicate that this horrifying state of affairs will end in any foreseeable future, except on Hussein’s own terms.

Thus, the Iraqi leader made it absolutely clear on April 14: The U.N. Security Council’s latest proposal for Iraq to readmit arms-control inspectors in exchange for lifting economic sanctions was unacceptable. It took Hussein but 24 hours to make up his mind.

The costs have been enormous for Iraq’s social structure and the lives of 24 million Iraqis. UNICEF estimates that a half-million children under the age of 5 died between 1991 and 1998 as a direct result of the Persian Gulf War and the U.N. sanctions that deprived Iraq of vitally needed food and medicine, in addition to almost everything else. Iraqi civil servants earn the equivalent of $5 monthly; others earn nothing.

Hussein’s refusal to accept any check on his freedom to expand and upgrade his arsenal of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction increasingly poses a stark dilemma for the United States and its allies: what to do to make the Iraqi ruler amenable to reason, and how to keep him from calling the shots in this endless confrontation.

Everything tried has failed: “Desert Storm,” which expelled Hussein from Kuwait; U.N. economic sanctions, in force since the end of 1991 Gulf war; nearly daily airstrikes by U.S. and British jet fighters on Iraqi air-defense installations; and CIA efforts to overthrow Hussein from inside.

Hussein, who fought a war with neighboring Iran for most of the 1980s and has weathered 10 years of war with the West, remains as powerful and untouchable as ever, and there is no reason for him to shift gears at this or any other predictable moment. He thrives on defiance, having turned it into an art and a science, at least in the eyes of the small Western diplomatic community here.

To make matters worse for Washington, Hussein has happily watched his international isolation erode the past year, especially since worldwide oil shortages have enhanced Iraq’s importance as one of the Middle East’s principal petroleum producers. A member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Iraq is again a respectable presence on the international scene, and it was with undisguised pleasure that its oil minister announced at the start of April that his country would be increasing its crude-oil production by 150,000 barrels a day until hitting 3.1 million barrels daily by the end of May. As it happens, OPEC must raise its output by 2.3 million barrels daily if global oil stocks are to return to the 1990-96 levels.

Coincidentally or not, the Security Council that same week doubled, to more than $1 billion, the amount of money Iraq may spend annually on importing spare parts for its poorly functioning oil industry. Since 1996, the United Nations has authorized Baghdad to sell $3.6 billion of its oil on world markets annually to pay for essential food imports. But the Security Council still insists that the sanctions will not be fully lifted until Hussein allows arms inspectors back into Iraq. Inspectors were expelled on “espionage” charges in December 1998, and Western allies (not the U.N.) responded by hitting Iraqi military targets.

Though sanctions cap the the amount of oil that Iraq may sell, world oil shortages will certainly drive the figure higher. Moreover, Iraq is successfully smuggling one-half again its allotted quota by land through Turkey and Jordan and aboard foreign-flag tankers from Persian Gulf ports (official exports go mainly through a pipeline across Turkey). As a result, Hussein has enough income to keep modernizing his military and security establishment.

Nothing succeeds like success, and this is true of Hussein at this juncture. Apart from Iraq’s cordial welcome at last March’s OPEC meeting, Hussein sees the U.S. losing support for its policies toward him. Russia, China and France, all permanent Security Council members, make no secret of their intention to bury the sanctions; all three have oil interests in Iraq. (China has a huge co-production deal with Baghdad.)

At the same time, Russia announced, after 14 Iraqi civilians were killed by allied missiles in southern Iraq, that new arms inspectors will not be allowed into Iraq as long as the U.S.-British airstrikes continue. France withdrew from the missions last year. Early in April, Bahrain reopened its embassy in Baghdad on “humanitarian grounds.” (Bahrain is the headquarters of the U.S. 5th Fleet, which operates against Iraq.) Qatar, Dubai and Oman have also reopened their embassies, solidifying Persian Gulf support for Iraq. Unexpectedly, Iran repatriated 300 Iraqi prisoners it held since the Iran-Iraq war in the ‘80s. And Ankara has quietly protested the use of cluster bombs by U.S. jets flying missions from bases inside Turkey.

Even senior U.N. officials are turning against the sanctions policy. One evening in Baghdad, the entire foreign diplomatic community turned out to bid farewell to the heads of the U.N.’s humanitarian program in Iraq and the World Food Program, who had resigned in protest over the way the food-for-oil operation was being implemented by the U.S. and Britain. Approval for nearly $2 billion of such contracts remained inexplicably frozen.

In Washington, nobody in top-level policymaking circles seems to have the slightest idea how to cope with the ever-stubborn and suddenly respectable Hussein. He has joined the company of Fidel Castro and Slobodan Milosevic, who have also developed a knack for ignoring the awesome power of the U.S. and, famously, getting away with it, year after year. *