Washington's favourite demon

By Salah Hemeid
The new United States administration led by President George W Bush disclosed last week that it had approved a grant to exiled Iraqi dissidents. The gift of four million dollars will help groups opposed to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to resume resistance activities inside Iraq.
State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher said the money, which will be given to the CIA-backed Iraqi National Congress, will be used to gather information to prove that the Iraqi president had committed crimes against humanity, for military operations and other internal developments.
Although the application to the Treasury Department approving the provision of the money to the opposition group was submitted by the Clinton administration last September, the decision to unfreeze the money marks the first substantial move by the new administration to permit American-backed Iraqi opposition to operate inside the country for the first time since the US Congress passed the 1997 Iraqi Liberation Act to undermine Saddam's regime.
Sharif Ali bin Hussein, a spokesman for the London-based Iraqi National Congress (INC), an umbrella organisation of groups opposed to the government in Baghdad, welcomed the move. He said his movement would use the money to enhance its network of operators and to penetrate the Iraqi regime. The INC also said it was sending a three-man delegation to Washington to discuss ways of overthrowing Saddam's regime with top officials of the Bush administration.
However, when asked about the Bush administration's decision, Saddam's deputy Taha Yassin Ramadan replied: "The decision is laughable." He added that no single Iraqi would pay attention to the American move. While Ramadan poured scorn on the Bush administration's decision, it came at a time when the world was watching Washington to see what might lie behind the escalation of its rhetoric against Baghdad.
It had long been expected that, sooner rather than later, the new administration would have to come to grips with the problem that former President Bill Clinton kicked along the road for eight years: the survival and the comeback of Saddam. During his confirmation hearing, Secretary of State Colin Powell labelled Saddam's government as a threat to the region and promised to make sure that Iraq adhered to its promise to destroy any weapons of mass destruction. He also made it clear that Washington envisioned the continuation of the 10-year-old economic sanctions until that goal was achieved.
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was more hawkish, saying that the US should take a tougher stance towards Saddam. "I think the policy of the country is that it is not helpful to have Saddam Hussein's regime in office," Rumsfeld told a press conference. "That is government policy, as I understand it."
Washington has never hidden its desire to see Saddam overthrown, even though that is not the official policy of the three administrations which have confronted his regime since the 1990 Kuwait crisis. American policy-makers have always been convinced that the regions of the Gulf and Middle East will never be safe as long as Saddam is in power. Nor can the US envisage normalising relations with a regime it regards as hostile to its interests. However, now the Bush administration has to decide if it wants to avoid an eventual confrontation with Saddam or to pursue a policy that assists Iraqis to overthrow him, as underscored by the decision to finance the Iraqi dissidents' activities.
But Saddam has proved to be a great survivor. He has survived defeat in wars, countless assassination attempts, and a decade of harsh United Nations economic embargoes. He even laughed off his own mortality after widespread and constant rumours abounded that he was suffering from a fatal illness. Critics of the American policy say talk of overthrowing Saddam by the exiled Iraqi opposition groups is mere wishful thinking. These groups were known to be weak and even fractured, and often prevented by infighting from effective moves against the Iraqi regime. In short, given their current position, they pose no real threat to Saddam's grip on power.
In the past 10 years, nouns used to describe events in Iraq-US relations have been dramatic: crisis, standoff, and confrontation. Now one wonders how much further the new administration in Washington is prepared to go in real terms beyond the talking tough strategy. Officials in several US agencies already have been consulted on how to deal with the Iraqi leader, who has defied all US efforts to ease the way for a successor.
The Clinton administration committed too many mistakes in Iraq, the biggest of which was to underestimate Saddam. President Bush and his advisers are doomed to make the same mistakes if they keep looking to the West's vested interests in the region, regardless of the dilemma of the Iraqi people. The talk about funding a small and irrelevant dissident group to oust Saddam is pure nonsense, and would do more harm to the cause of the Iraqi people. The best policy would be that which leaves the Iraqis alone, giving them a chance to build their own future in a free and democratic country, at peace with itself and its neighbours, and no longer at war with the world.
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