President Saddam Hussein waves to the people of Saddam City in Baghdad on April 21, 1998. | AP Photo
AFTER witnessing a fortnight of teeth-gritting and much name-calling between the United States and Iraq, we may now sit back and watch the unending fiasco between the twosome roll on. It has been a familiar reel since 1991 when the United Nations Security Council created the Special Commission (UNSCOM) to inspect and eliminate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. After President Saddam Hussein decided in October, 1997 to expel US arms inspectors working for the UN, the US built up an armada in the Gulf to strike his country. The showdown was defused last February by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan who clinched a last-minute deal in Baghdad, opening the gates of presidential sites to UN arms inspectors. It was Annan who helped stave off armed confrontation in the latest crisis when he shuttled to Baghdad and secured Saddam’s capitulation.
The latest crisis began on August 5 when Iraq announced the cancellation of further cooperation with the UN weapons inspectors. The decision had looked very much like the last straw that would break the back of the camel of noisy restraint between the two countries to go to war. With President Saddam Hussein defying the UN with that, the US’s finger was put on the trigger, just about to attack Iraq. But Saddam abruptly stopped the charge by announcing an ‘unconditional’ surrender with a new acceptance of the humiliating inspections.
Saddam had no choice, really. The US had managed to obtain a near-unanimous consensus from the international community, including the Arab world, for its planned attack. Pointedly, Iraq and the US have at the end each voted itself as winner of the tug-o’-war. And Richard Butler, head of the UNSCOM, has resumed work in Iraq.
The real winner is no doubt Iraq. President Saddam’s game of ‘cheat and retreat’ has proved more strategic than Washington’s costly sabre-rattling in that it worked to attract more dividend to it. As I write this on Wednesday, the UN Security Council is voting to extend for six months the oil-for-food programme that allows Iraq to sell 5.2 billion dollars of crude every six months. Iraq itself had asked for a two-month extension. Under the two-year-old deal, Iraq is allowed to sell a limited amount of oil to buy food and other basic goods despite the embargo imposed after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
Indeed, Saddam has used the crisis to buoy up his profile at home. And it seems to be working. The Baghdad-based Iraqi-Indian Friendship on Monday voted him “Man of the Century” for his “unique characteristics, such as bravery and wisdom.” In contrast, Mr. Butler and the West have continued to receive verbal assaults from the lraqis.
Beyond the chest-thumping, however, lurks the reality of the US-Iraq rigmarole. The US will continue to fret about the future of its battered international image as it fails to do anything tangible — or sensible — about Baghdad. Its strong-arm tactics have proved ineffective in changing the Iraqi status quo the way it wanted. The world, even when it remains conspiratorially silent, sees the inspections regime as simply punitive, one which only visits untold hardship on ordinary Iraqi civilians while the Saddam government survives. Humantarian workers inside the country report that the eight-year-old UN embargo — which was imposed at the behest of the US anyway — has savaged the economy to the extent of mercilessly causing avoidable deaths and crippling social services.
The new song from the West now is for the elimination of Saddam and installing a new government. The aborted military invasion by the US and some of its allies was aimed at achieving just that. Now other strategies are being used. Last Monday, British Foreign Office Minister Derek Fatchett had a meeting with Iraqi opposition groups to plan a way to unseat Saddam. Last week, President Bill Clinton announced that the US would also be stepping up its assistance to Iraqi opposition groups whom last Tuesday’s Iraqi daily Al-Qadissiyah called “traitors” — as part of a campaign to try to bring about a new government in Baghdad.
All such may not necessarily cow Saddam into total submission. Attacked with superweapons by the US, France and Britain five times previously — in 1993 and 1996 — Iraq seems to believe that it can take any more beatings. President Saddam Hussein still has tricks aplenty up his sleeve in hitting back at Washington. He had played games before, and lived. The showdown of October 1997-February 1998 attested to this. What stops him from wringing Washington’s arms again if Washington continues to pull his intestines? Therefore, new crises should be expected as long as both sides maintain their stand. Such maintenance is almost guaranteed.
Does this mean there really is no alternative way out of the crisis? Is targeting the Iraqi president the only option available to the West? To this writer, Washington’s posture is not really as pragmatic as it’s made out. Since the US had lived with more ‘unwholesome’ heads of state than Saddam — and still does so today in Cuba, North Korea, China and now Malaysia — it can accommodate Saddam. It’s only a matter of if it wants to. Its blocking of attempt to lift sanctions on Iraq, in breach of Security Council resolution 687, doesn’t speak well of a country professing to protect the rights of ordinary, weak people. And its highly expensive psychological and physical assault on Iraq is an assault on ordinary, weak people.
* Published in my column, Melting Pot, in the New Nigerian Weekly today
