With Iraq Unbowed, Powell Vows Indefinite Support for Kuwait

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell pledged Monday that the United States will stand indefinitely by Kuwait in holding off Iraqi aggression. But the 10th anniversary commemoration of Operation Desert Storm underscored the fact that the United States and Persian Gulf sheikdoms are still struggling against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein--and that the battle is getting tougher.

“We renew our determination that evil will not prosper, that freedom will live and breathe in this part of the world and that honored heroes will not have died in vain,” Powell said at a ceremony on the sun-drenched grounds of the fortified American Embassy here. As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Powell ran the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

In the U.S. campaign to keep the squeeze on Iraq, Powell announced later Monday, after leaving Damascus, the Syrian capital, that the United States had won an agreement from Syria to end its smuggling of Iraqi oil, which began in November and has been generating as much as $2 million a day for Baghdad.

President Bashar Assad promised Powell that he would bring the oil exported through a Syrian pipeline into compliance with the United Nations “oil for food” program, which controls Iraq’s oil revenue and allows the money to be used to pay for humanitarian needs. The concession would end Baghdad’s biggest source of secret funds and cost Syria’s troubled economy millions in discounted oil.

Powell Expresses Confidence in Deal

Powell told reporters traveling with him that he had “high confidence” in a “solid agreement” with Syria, although he said he did not know whether Damascus intends to comply immediately or wait until a U.N. review of the oil-for-food program in June.

The Syrian promise, if fulfilled, would be the first diplomatic success for Powell in one of the most pressing policy challenges facing the Bush administration.

After talks with leaders in four countries bordering Iraq--Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria--Powell also said he had found “pretty solid support” for his plan to revise sanctions imposed on Baghdad.

The Bush administration hopes to streamline the embargoes by eliminating sanctions that hurt the Iraqi people, while restricting Hussein’s deadliest weapons programs and limiting expenditure of his oil revenue to mostly humanitarian needs.

Yet as the heroes and policymakers of the six-week war, such as former President Bush and retired Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, reassembled to mark their decisive victory over Iraq, many factors that produced the confrontation have not changed.

The oil-rich sheikdoms are at least as reliant on the United States as they were after Iraq’s stunning August 1990 invasion of Kuwait. More than 5,000 U.S. military personnel are deployed in Kuwait, with thousands more in Saudi Arabia and other gulf states and on a rotating series of warships.

Iraq’s army has been more than halved, but Baghdad still has the most powerful military in the gulf. The Iraqi leader has managed to rebuild many of his weapon-production facilities over the past two years, since the U.N. disarmament inspectors were forced to withdraw, according to U.S. intelligence.

U.S. Dependence on Gulf Oil Grows

And the United States is more dependent on imported oil than it was 10 years ago, tying its economy to the fate of some of the most undemocratic regimes in the world. Saudi Arabia, whose protection from Iraq was the other major reason for Operation Desert Storm, now provides the largest share of America’s imported oil--more than 20% of total crude imports, according to the State Department.

“The American presence has become a permanent feature of gulf security for the foreseeable future. And America will need gulf oil for the foreseeable future,” said Shibley Telhami, a Brookings Institution fellow and Mideast expert at the University of Maryland.

The high-profile relationship has in turn made the United States susceptible to the region’s problems--and more vulnerable to Islamic militants and other opposition forces.

At the American Embassy here, diplomats go through “terrorist drills” similar to fire drills. The corridors carry big, red “Duck and Cover” signs, which instruct staff to take low cover far from windows whenever they hear a special tone and await instructions from Marine guards.

The campaign of Saudi militant Osama bin Laden against the United States, which allegedly has included the bombings of two U.S. embassies in 1998 and the World Trade Center in New York in 1993, has its roots in the Gulf War. Muslim extremists were angered by the heavy U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and home to its holiest sites.

The reality of Iraq a decade after the Gulf War is particularly reflected in two little-noticed facts.

Last month, Uday Hussein, son of the Iraqi leader, proposed to the National Assembly that it adopt a new state emblem showing Kuwait as “an integral part of greater Iraq,” implying that Baghdad still eventually hopes to incorporate Kuwait.

Virtually no country in the 38-nation coalition that went to war to free Kuwait even flinched. At the Liberation Day celebrations here, the United States, Britain, Japan and Argentina were the only coalition countries to be represented by senior officials involved in the war.

The tenor toward Iraq has changed worldwide. At the United Nations, which crafted the resolutions regulating the war and its aftermath, three of the five permanent members of the Security Council are in the midst of campaigning to do business with Iraq again.

The second fact is that the United States is today the prime consumer of Iraqi oil: It imports about a third of the approximately 3 million barrels of oil Baghdad exports each day, according to U.S. oil experts. American oil companies have been able to legally buy Iraqi petroleum since the United Nations created the “oil for food” program in 1996 to allow Baghdad an income to pay for humanitarian goods.

The American purchase of Iraqi oil, especially at a time of high prices and growing domestic energy needs, reflects U.S. dependence on even its enemies.

Hussein Has Defied CIA Predictions on His Rule

Meanwhile, Washington is finding it harder to contain Hussein, who has defied every CIA prediction about his durability--estimated in 1991 to be only months. In congressional testimony Feb. 7, CIA Director George J. Tenet said Hussein “has grown more confident in his ability to hold on to power” and predicted “greater assertiveness” by Baghdad over the next year.

The Arab world now overwhelmingly opposes economic sanctions, forcing the new Bush administration to revise policy.

Hussein has emerged as a hero to the Arabs, as Powell has found on his first trip as secretary of State, which included travel to five Arab cities. The Iraqi regime is promoting Hussein as a 21st century Saladin, the Kurd from what is today northern Iraq who won back Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187.