U.S. to Ask Iraqi Exiles to Step Up

The Bush administration has drawn up plans to escalate the war of words against Iraq this fall, with new campaigns to increase pressure on Baghdad and rally world opinion behind the U.S. drive to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

This week, the State Department will begin mobilizing Iraqis from across North America, Europe and the Arab world, training them to appear on talk shows, write op-ed pieces and give speeches on reasons to end Hussein’s rule, among other things. At least four of the scheduled participants are from California.

“We’re going to put them on the front line of winning the public hearts and minds. It’s one thing for an American to get up and talk about regime change in Iraq. It’s quite another thing when Iraqis do it,” said one State Department official, who requested anonymity.

The program reflects the administration’s increasing focus on making Iraqis key players in the quest to change both the leadership and the political system in Baghdad.

“We believe the principal engine for transforming Iraq is the Iraqi people, and, ultimately, we hope that they are going to be freeing themselves of Saddam’s tyranny,” Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of Defense for policy, said in an interview aired Friday on Radio Sawa, a new U.S.-funded, Arabic-language station.

“The United States will perhaps be in a position to help that along, but the future that we see for Iraq is a future that would be based on the Iraqi people freeing themselves from the oppression that they are suffering,” Feith said.

In contrast to other Middle East groups, Iraqi exiles have not mobilized in most communities where they have settled. That is an issue of increasing concern in Washington, which often appears to be going it alone without much visible support from the estimated 300,000 Iraqis in the United States or the 4 million exiles worldwide.

“Iraqi Americans have been invisible, which is a product of Saddam’s oppression. Iraqis have feared speaking out because of the harassment and intimidation of family and relatives back home,” said Azam Wash, a geologist from Long Beach who was invited to the Aug. 27-30 training sessions in Washington. Wash left Iraq in 1978, when he was 20.

After Labor Day, U.S. officials intend to be more visible themselves in explaining U.S. objectives in Iraq in public appearances and overseas media, State Department officials said.

“It’s no accident that we’re torquing up the language. A decision was made this week by the Iraq public diplomacy group to do more,” said one administration official, referring to a group that includes senior officials from the State Department, the Pentagon and the National Security Council. “There’s a feeling that it’s time to start moving the rhetoric forward.”

Feith’s interview on Radio Sawa was part of the new initiative, U.S. officials said.

In tough language, Feith, an administration hawk, indicated that the United States may no longer view the United Nations weapons inspection regime as the key to disarming Baghdad.

“What we are interested in is not inspections as such. What we’re interested in is having an Iraq that does not possess weapons of mass destruction,” he said. “Inspections were merely a means to the end, [and] they have not been a terribly effective means to the end.... Saddam some years ago was able to undo the ground inspection regime altogether.”

The higher profiles of U.S. officials and Iraqis reflects a short-term strategy to lay the groundwork for longer-term goals and perhaps accelerate the process of change.

“The question has been, in the absence of military action, what can we do? So ratcheting up the rhetoric is the kind of thing we can do now. We can stir the pot and see what happens. It could push someone over the edge to act,” the administration official said.

U.S. officials and Iraqis outside their homeland hope that the strategy will reframe the public debate, which is increasingly questioning why Washington feels an urgent need to move against Baghdad.

“We want to introduce new arguments in the media: Is Saddam a legitimate president? Do Iraqi people have the right to gain their freedom? Why isn’t the opposition operating freely inside Iraq? And why can’t the Iraqi people, for example, assemble and conduct public rallies inside Iraq if they’re not happy with what the government does? These are the questions that should determine what the United States does,” said Muhannad Eshaiker, an architect from Irvine who will participate in the State Department’s training. He left Iraq in 1977 at the age of 24.

The program will bring in journalists and media personalities to teach Iraqis how to “become shapers of public opinion” to counter Hussein’s “propaganda machine,” the State Department official said.

“We’ll tell them: ‘You know the message well. You know how brutal Saddam Hussein is. You know the need for regime change and for us to be more active. We want to turn all of you into more outgoing spokesmen on this message. We’ll give you the methodology to turn this into a coherent message,’ ” the official said.

But not all of the Iraqis who have been invited to participate in training have fully signed on.

Ilham Sarraf, a Los Angeles psychotherapist, said Saturday that Iraqis are being repressed by “two evils”--Saddam Hussein’s political dictatorship and U.S. and U.N. economic sanctions.

Sarraf, who came to the United States in 1962 as a teenager with her new husband after an arranged marriage, still goes back to Baghdad on missions with Physicians for Social Responsibility. Her last trip was in 1999 as part of the Pencils for Peace mission, when she took seven suitcases full of educational supplies.

“The Iraqi people are trapped with severe sanctions, which are intolerable to any human without food, shelter or safety,” said Sarraf, who describes herself as “the voice of the muffled voices.”

Mazin Yousif, an engineer in Orange County’s Cowan Heights, has long tried to coordinate the different factions of the Iraqi community. He will come to Washington this week despite concern that the United States might not be in sync with many in the Iraqi diaspora.

“I’m convinced the United States will attack Iraq, and I’m convinced that the Americans will remove Saddam Hussein, but I’m not sure if we’re on the same page about not destroying the infrastructure in Iraq and not simply putting some military officer in power who will rule the country single-handedly,” Yousif said.

“For us, the question is: Will we see the emergence of yet another dictator, or new, truly democratic rule? We will be the spokespeople for this effort only if we’re clear on this most important issue.”