Bush May Find His Father’s Foe a Formidable Adversary

A decade after his father’s administration launched a thundering air campaign against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, George W. Bush faces a regime in Baghdad that is stronger, more stubborn, more devious--and more successful at defying the United States.

It’s an extraordinary comeback given the collective might assembled against the Iraqi president, according to foreign policy experts and U.S. officials.

Operation Desert Storm, which opened Jan. 17, 1991, the first of 43 days of airstrikes, and ended Feb. 28 after a 100-hour ground offensive, forced Iraq out of Kuwait. Over the next eight years, U.N. inspectors dismantled thousands of tons of weapons of mass destruction. And the world’s toughest sanctions regime has restricted Baghdad’s ability to legally buy more arms.

Yet over the past 10 years, Hussein has managed to violate every element of the cease-fire agreement. He forced out one U.N. disarmament mission and rejected its replacement. His successful propaganda campaign led to a compromise allowing Iraq to export oil to pay for humanitarian supplies. Today, oil revenue is higher than in the boom days before the Persian Gulf War.

By offering lucrative trade deals, Hussein has undermined the coalition of 38 nations that went to war against him; three of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council now favor ending the economic embargo. Hussein has even managed to skirt the restrictions on air traffic, flying Iraqis to the hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia and, since August, welcoming “humanitarian” flights from France, Russia, Jordan and several other countries.

Most of all, he’s still in power, despite widespread predictions that he wouldn’t be able to survive politically after such a humiliating military rout.

“He’s no more loved, and he’s still a dictator. But his hold on power is clearly tighter and stronger today than it was 10 years ago,” said Henri Barkey, a former Iraq specialist on the State Department policy planning staff and now chairman of the international relations department at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.

As a result, the incoming Bush administration is about to take on a complex and difficult challenge in trying to contain a regime that is, once again, the most threatening in the gulf.

The scope of Hussein’s power was on display Dec. 31 during the largest military parade in Baghdad since the war. It featured dozens of advanced surface-to-surface and antiaircraft missiles and more than 1,000 Russian tanks. Despite the damage wrought by about 110,000 air sorties against Iraq in 1991, Baghdad still has the most sophisticated military in the gulf.

The scope of change in containing Hussein was evident last weekend at Saddam International Airport, where the message “Down USA” has long been painted in black across the entry walkway. But on Saturday, 27 American activists flew in to deliver $150,000 in medical and educational supplies, and were welcomed by the Iraqi health minister.

And the scope of the problem ahead was reflected last Wednesday when the incoming Bush national security team went to the Pentagon for its first formal briefing. Despite the dozens of other conflicts, hot spots and terrorist threats worldwide, half of the 75-minute meeting in the secure room known as “the tank” was devoted to Iraq.

Secretary of State-designate Colin L. Powell, who gained heroic stature as chairman of the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War, has given notice that he intends to act. The day he was nominated, Powell blasted Baghdad for failing to comply with U.N. disarmament requirements and pledged to “re-energize” U.S. policy on Iraq.

Added to the policy mix are any personal feelings that the president-elect might have about Hussein’s alleged assassination plot against his father during the elder Bush’s visit to Kuwait in 1992. The Clinton administration later bombed Iraq in retaliation.

Mideast experts and U.S. officials say George W. Bush’s options are limited. The central dilemma hasn’t changed since 1991: The U.N. mandate was to end Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait and its threat to gulf stability. The first Bush administration took that mission one step further. It believed that stability could not be assured as long as Hussein remained in power, a position at the heart of U.S. policy since.

But Powell opposed marching coalition troops all the way to Baghdad in 1991 for several reasons, including the limits of the U.N. mandate and the potential loss of American lives. That option is far less feasible a decade later.

At the same time, sanctions haven’t worked. They are supposed to remain in place until Baghdad accounts for and destroys all weapons of mass destruction. But the last team of U.N. inspectors was forced out in 1998.

Talks at the United Nations to solve the impasse over a new group of inspectors are slated for next month. But Iraq said Sunday that the proposed terms are “totally impractical” and that Baghdad will “never deal” with them, a position that could precipitate another crisis.

Hussein has also manipulated the distribution of goods within his country to worsen public hardship and exploit suffering, for which he has blamed the United States and scored sympathy points at home and abroad. Iraq’s middle class is fast dwindling, and tens of thousands of Iraqis have died because of poor access to food and medicine, U.S. officials charge.

“Sanctions in their present extensive form are no longer viable because they haven’t gotten rid of Saddam’s regime. The consensus today is that we will need to redefine our mission more narrowly so that it is sustainable,” said James A. Placke, a former U.S. diplomat in Baghdad now with Cambridge Energy Research Associates.

Three U.N. Security Council members--France, Russia and China--are pressing hard to ease or eliminate sanctions, as are many Arab, European and Asian countries.

“We’re at a crossroads,” said a senior U.S. official. “The difference between America and its allies is greater on Iraq than on any other issue. It’s going to be a real challenge to close the gap.”

Many experts predict that the incoming administration will end up combining a tamer version of economic sanctions with more aid for the Iraqi opposition. But they stress the importance of maintaining an embargo on all arms and any “dual-use” items such as fertilizer and ink, which might be used to produce chemical or biological weapons. U.N. control over Iraq’s oil income is also considered vital, to ensure that the funds are not diverted for weaponry.

A more complex issue is aid to the Iraqi opposition. In 1996, Hussein’s troops ousted the Iraqi National Congress, or INC, along with the CIA station, from Kurdistan in northern Iraq. In 1998, a Republican-led Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act, which pledged up to $97 million in arms and military training to the opposition.

So far, only $2 million has been spent on nonlethal training and $4 million for administration and propaganda. In one of its last acts, the Clinton administration has approved $12 million for the INC to covertly distribute humanitarian supplies in northern Iraq.

Over the years, foreign policy experts who are now part of the incoming Bush administration have voiced varying degrees of support for providing more military assistance to the INC. But a more ambitious operation would face many obstacles, experts warn.

The INC no longer has a base inside Iraq from which to launch major operations, and none of Iraq’s neighbors--Turkey, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria or Iran--has offered an alternative. Covert operations have never seriously weakened Hussein’s grip, while INC forces are no match for Baghdad’s military machine. The INC is also deeply divided, with factional disputes producing open clashes between rival Iraqi Kurdish groups.

Bush might not have much time to deliberate. U.S. security and intelligence officials have warned that Hussein is likely to test the incoming administration, as he did the new Clinton team in 1993. Within 24 hours of Clinton’s inauguration, Iraqi radar locked on U.S. warplanes over Iraq, leading to U.S. retaliation.

The choices will not be easy.

“The new administration will have to decide not only what action to take against him, it must also determine how much effort to expend on winning allied support before we do something unilaterally,” said Judith Yaphe, a former intelligence analyst now at the National Defense University in Washington. “And then what? Do we try another Operation Desert Fox where we bomb for a couple of days and still don’t get the inspectors in? How high will we ratchet up our threat and our activity?”

Further complicating Iraq policy, Bush might also face a shifting alignment of forces in the Mideast.

“One of the reasons the U.S. managed to maintain sanctions was because the Arab-Israeli peace process was making progress. But with that process in trouble and [hard-liner] Ariel Sharon about to be elected [as Israeli prime minister], the United States will face incredible odds in getting the Arabs to back us against Saddam,” Barkey said.

“It’s not that they like Saddam, because they know he wants to dominate them. But they all have their own streets to worry about, and they don’t want to be seen exerting energy against an Arab leader when they have Sharon to worry about.”