Survival as victory By Al-Ahram Weekly's special correspondent on Iraqi affairs The pronouncements of the US, Britain and Iraq after the end of last week's air strikes were predictable. President Saddam Hussein declared Iraq's victory while both Washington and London insisted that the four-day campaign, Operation Desert Fox, had achieved its goals Yet if past experience is anything to go by, the hopeful statements from both sides should be taken with hefty pinches of salt: it is far too early to declare a winner. The latest crisis started on 31 October when Saddam stopped cooperating with UNSCOM, the UN commission entrusted with the task of dismantling Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, thus bringing the work of searching for and destroying lethal stockpiles to a complete halt. Saddam backed down two weeks later, almost at the last minute, after the Americans and the British threatened heavy air strikes. When the inspectors resumed their work on 17 November, Clinton and Blair made clear that they would keep the military option open while testing Saddam's real intentions. But a few days later, Iraq refused to hand over a key document to the inspectors, calling their request provocative. On 10 December, the inspectors were denied access to a Baghdad building used as an office by the ruling Baath Party with Iraq claiming that this had not been agreed to. UNSCOM's chairman, Richard Butler, immediately seized on Iraq's "violations" and declared that Iraq was not fully complying with the terms of the deal. For their part, the Americans and the British used Butler's report to charge Saddam with once again shirking his commitments. Whether Butler's report was the primary cause of the US-British bombardment or not, both Saddam and Clinton seemed locked in a game of dare-and-double-dare, constantly poised for a new military confrontation. In fact, Saddam was preparing himself for a real battle of wills, which would prove once and for all that the trumpeted American threats would result in nothing more than pinprick attacks, which his regime would withstand. Saddam was ready for, perhaps even seeking a new confrontation which, in his own words, would achieve "victory". This has only one meaning in Saddam's lexicon: to stay in power as Iraq's absolute and everlasting leader. It was clear that Clinton and Blair were after blood this time. Their decision to call off the attack in November was conditional on Iraq's full cooperation with the UN inspectors. They warned that there would be no advance notice of any future American assault. According to reliable reports, the Americans and British bluffed Saddam into backing down in November so that they would then be able to launch strikes at a time of their own choosing. Under this interpretation, Butler's report was merely the pretext used for the military action. As the crisis came to a head with the sudden departure of the inspectors from Baghdad on 16 December, the United States and Britain were poised for the heavy and sustained attack which they wanted to carry out. Their real goal was not, as they claimed, to hit Iraq's weapons of mass destruction but to destroy Saddam's power base. Now that the dust has settled over Iraq after four days of intensive bombing the most important question is: have the Britain and the US achieved their goal? During the operation around 400 cruise missiles were fired and British and American planes made hundreds of sorties, hitting nearly 100 targets. In justifying the strikes, both Clinton and Blair claimed that substantial damage had been inflicted on these targets, particularly on Saddam's elite Republican Guard units, their command and control centres, the air defence systems and on the huge network of security and intelligence services. But even if we accept the argument that the attacks have made Saddam weaker, severely damaged his combat capabilities and set back his weapons programmes by one or two years, as both Clinton and Blair claim, the question remains: was it worth the trouble? Any attempt to score the achievements of the two sides would be futile if we do not consider the crux of the problem, namely: will the bombing of Iraq settle the Saddam issue? The simple answer, as last week's attacks have demonstrated, is "no." Washington and London may be right in claiming that they have managed to degrade Iraq's weapons capabilities but at the end of the campaign, Saddam, the master of brinkmanship, let it be known that he was still in full control of Iraq. Furthermore, he used the heavy civilian casualties to expose America's and Britain's cruelty and arrogance and to highlight the suffering caused by eight years of sanctions. Iraq can also ask the question, raised by its deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz: what are America's and Britain's options now that they completed their military action but have failed to achieve their objectives? Of course, the two allies can continue to boast that their air strikes have degraded Saddam's military power and reduced his ability to threaten his neighbours, but they have yet to prove that the four-day operation has shortened his days in office. They have also to outline their long-term policy in view of the possible collapse of the inspection regime if Iraq refuses to allow the UN teams back, as it has indicated. Without a well-defined strategy, the US administration and British government are either misleading their electorates or fooling themselves with their self-congratulatory statements. In the meantime, Saddam will fight to the end even if the price is the last Iraqi citizen, as his deputy Taha Yassin Ramadan has boasted.
