Defector Urges U.S. to Court Iraqi Commanders

The former general has fought alongside Saddam Hussein and against him. And Wafiq Sammarai, who was once Iraq’s chief of military intelligence, thinks that the most effective weapon against the dictator could be his own armed forces.

Sammarai urges U.S. strategists to reach out to Iraqi commanders who could overthrow the Iraqi president without an all-out war.

The commanders “are the important ones in the equation,” Sammarai said during a recent interview. “If some commanders rise against the regime and they have something like 100,000 soldiers, that will be a new force on the ground. This could resolve the whole conflict.

“The most important thing,” he added, “is how to make these commanders feel safe, that they are not going to be destroyed .... The Americans must distinguish between the military commanders and the political elite.”

As a senior military defector, Sammarai is a force in the Iraqi opposition and has been a valuable resource for the U.S. intelligence and military communities. He defected eight years ago and dedicated himself to leading U.S.-backed covert operations against the regime.

Today, Sammarai is talking again with U.S. officials about their plans for Iraq. But he said they have not discussed details about his potential role. If asked, the retired major general said, he is ready for action.

“Anything that will help the Iraqi people, I will not hesitate to accept,” he said.

Sammarai and other Iraq-watchers in Britain, the key U.S. ally in the campaign to disarm Hussein, are examining scenarios for a confrontation in the widely anticipated event that U.N. arms inspections break down.

Although some analysts say U.S. and British planners think a military revolt of the kind envisioned by Sammarai is likely on the eve of war or in its early stages, an Iraq expert at Warwick University calls that wishful thinking.

“The main army will disappear, but it won’t run toward the Americans,” said Toby Dodge, the expert. “Nearly everyone is expecting a coup. But my distinct worry is that the strategic policymakers in both Washington and London are significantly underestimating Saddam Hussein’s ability to control his core troops and loyalists. And they are all that matters until the Marines get to Baghdad.”

Hussein’s inner circle doubts that it can avert an invasion, according to Dodge, who travels frequently to Iraq and expects an armed clash as soon as next month. He predicted that the regime will make a show of cooperating with U.N. inspectors while girding for a last stand.

The Iraqi leader has concentrated trusted commanders and crack forces in Baghdad and major cities, according to analysts.

“The idea is to extract as high a cost of life as possible and flood the country with journalists,” Dodge said. “The military strategy is essentially political. He’s hoping the Americans won’t have the stomach for it.”

The Iraqis want to force U.S. troops into ugly urban combat “on international TV screens,” Dodge said. Hussein hopes that the bloodshed will turn international opinion against the Bush administration, causing it to stop short in a scenario resembling the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when U.S. forces halted the charge toward Baghdad as Iraqi casualties mounted.

Speculation about Hussein’s ability to survive dominates Iraq-related analysis in London these days. His apparatus of repression appears to have weakened, according to British officials and members of the Iraqi opposition.

A British diplomatic source cited an apparent public spat between the Iraqi leader and his eldest son, Uday, over the unusually critical tone in an official newspaper run by the younger Hussein. British officials also are getting reports about dissent from Iraqi refugees, according to the source.

“We have picked up from asylum-seekers that there are more slogans appearing on walls, more anti-regime leaflets, clandestine activity,” said the source, who requested anonymity. “The number of Iraqi asylum-seekers here is at an all-time high.”

Attempts by high-level Iraqi officials to defect or communicate secretly with the outside opposition also have increased, according to activists here.

“It seems they are opening avenues of contact so they can say in the post-Saddam era that they were in contact with the opposition,” said Zaab Sethna of the Iraqi National Congress, or INC, a coalition of opposition movements. “Hedging their bets. We have guys calling us on open phone lines, which is a surprise. We see a slight unraveling of his system of control.”

Although military officials are among the would-be defectors, opposition leaders said they are for the most part urging the disaffected soldiers to remain in Iraq because they could play vital roles there during a U.S. military operation.

Sammarai thinks that Iraq’s military brass can be mobilized against the regime with appeals to their sense of duty and patriotism. That approach would balance recurring threats of prosecution and annihilation that have convinced some officers that their only choice is to stand by Hussein, he said.

“I believe the majority of them will have, if conflict begins, an impact on the situation. None will go and sleep at home,” Sammarai said. “If they are a target, they have no choice but to fight against America. If they get good assurances, they will move with the people.”

Sammarai recently founded an opposition group, the National Salvation Movement. His outpost in exile is a spartan apartment in a nondescript brick tower in a London suburb. He works at a desktop computer surrounded by files and wall maps, writing commentaries for Arabic newspapers.

Although Sammarai used an interpreter during the interview, he answered some questions in English.

Asked whether he thinks that Hussein will surrender any weapons of mass destruction, Sammarai said: “He will give very wide access to the inspectors. But at the end of the day, there will be a conflict. That will appear when the inspectors touch sensitive things relating to the regime.”

Sammarai gave U.S. agents a treasure trove of sensitive information after defecting in December 1994. He revealed Hussein’s secret hoard: VX nerve gas, 40 Scud missiles and aggressive programs to develop biological and chemical weapons. His account helped U.N. weapons inspectors conclude in 1995 that Iraq had failed to comply with their mandates, according to the recent book “The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq,” by Kenneth M. Pollack, formerly a top Iraq analyst for the CIA and National Security Council.

Sammarai spent 20 years in army intelligence, whose focus on strategic espionage makes its record less sadistic than that of other Iraqi spy agencies, according to Mustafa Alani of the Royal United Services Institute, a think tank affiliated with the British Defense Ministry.

Sammarai served as intelligence chief during the Gulf War. He then retired and eventually fell out of favor. He worked as an administrator in Hussein’s presidential office before fleeing Iraq, an adventure requiring a cross-border trek on foot.

“Thirty hours!” he said, a smile creasing his stern features.

Soon after his escape, Sammarai went to work trying to win over former comrades in arms. The CIA backed him in 1995 when, along with Kurdish rebels and the INC, he assembled a guerrilla force in northern Iraq and attacked government troops at Irbil. He planned to use his clout with Iraqi officers to trigger a rebellion and push to Baghdad. But the regime’s spies got wind of the conspiracy and the military crushed it.

Nonetheless, Sammarai remains a player in the fractious opposition, which in a rare show of unity this weekend is holding a landmark conference in London.

“He’s ambitious, and he has a good analytical sense,” Alani said. “His assessment of the army officers’ attitude is accurate. But because of his involvement in the opposition, he is playing the political game.”

Sammarai may retain connections with the armed forces that would be useful in a future conflict, experts say. But they add that he does not have the heroic aura of Nizar Khazraji, a former army chief of staff in exile in Denmark. Many Iraqi officers still “worship” Khazraji, a third-generation soldier, according to Dodge of Warwick University.

“Sammarai doesn’t play as well,” he said. “Khazraji has been careful not to align himself with the opposition or Washington.”

Danish prosecutors filed war crimes charges last month against Khazraji, however, scuttling his hopes of going to the Middle East to rally opposition to Hussein’s regime.

Sammarai doubts that the U.S. will rely much on armed opposition forces, whether guerrillas fielded by Kurds in the north, Shiites Muslims in the south, or exile groups. The former general said his impression of the developing U.S. military strategy results from his conversations with U.S. officials and from media reports. Sammarai expects the U.S. to attack Iraq with a force smaller than it used in the Gulf War and bigger than the agile, commando-driven operation in Afghanistan.

The U.S. will start with an air offensive designed to paralyze Iraqi communications and infrastructure, and deploy special forces in the western deserts to prevent short-range missile attacks on Israel, Sammarai predicted. U.S. forces will also use psychological tactics to encourage a revolt that would isolate Hussein in Baghdad, according to Sammarai.

“I think America does not want to destroy the Iraqi army,” he said. “This American plan will put Saddam in a very difficult situation.” Aware of his weaknesses, Hussein is lavishing money and attention on the Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard, according to Sammarai and others.

Contrary to common wisdom, some experts here think that the resolve of elite troops and security services may strengthen if they find themselves surrounded in the capital, where the population tends to despise them.

In the past, Sammarai has warned that Hussein has a medieval mentality, a bizarre taste for the advice of soothsayers and a willingness to lash out with biological and chemical weapons if cornered.

Today, Sammarai is careful about discussing weapons of mass destruction. Only the U.N. inspectors and Western intelligence agencies can know for sure whether the Iraqi leader still has them, he said.

But he believes that Hussein will use whatever means to counterattack, such as spreading biological agents on roads in front of invaders.

“If he has weapons of destruction, and if you attack him to remove him,” said the general, “I have no doubt he will retaliate by using those weapons.”