Overtures raise Pentagon dissent
WASHINGTON – The CIA and State Department have begun aggressively courting exiled Iraqi generals in Europe and the United States whom they see as key to overthrowing President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, US officials and Iraqi dissidents said.
The overtures – which have irked some in the Pentagon – have intensified since January, when President Bush declared that Iraq, Iran, and North Korea were part of ''an axis of evil'' and US officials stepped up their anti-Iraq rhetoric.
In recent weeks in Washington, US officials have met with two former generals – Fawzi Shamari, a Shiite officer, and Najib Salhi, a former Republican Guard commander. In London, they met with a third, Wafiq Sammarai, a one-time chief of military intelligence who fled Iraq in 1994.
The meetings were meant to explore what the officers might do to help topple the Hussein government and how the military would respond to his overthrow.
The CIA has stepped up contacts with another key figure, Nizar Khazraji, a former Iraqi chief of staff who lives in exile in Denmark and is thought to maintain ties with officers inside Iraq, opposition officials say.
Al-Hayat, a leading Arabic newspaper based in London, reported that Khazraji was the leading candidate on a US-generated list of more than 55 dissident officers to serve as ''an Iraqi Karzai,'' a reference to the US-backed interim Afghan government of Hamid Karzai. The officers on the list are all Sunni Muslims, like Hussein.
The State Department denies that report, saying it is premature. But it has described the meetings as crucial to its efforts to broaden support for overthrowing a regime actively opposed by three administrations.
''Certainly any regime change is going to have to draw on military elements already inside,'' a State Department official said on condition of anonymity.
Not everyone in Washington, however, sees wisdom in the State Department and CIA overtures. Dissent is not surprising given the history of disagreement between the State Department and the Pentagon over how to proceed on Iraq.
The Pentagon critics complain that the latest overtures are undermining support for the Iraqi National Congress, an opposition group that has received $12 million in US funds.
In early January, the State Department cut off funding for the Iraqi National Congress, declaring that the organization was unable to account for millions of dollars it had already received. After several weeks, the payments resumed as the organization promised to improve its accounting.
The Iraqi National Congress enjoys substantial support in Congress and the Pentagon but is often treated with disdain by the State Department and CIA.
''What I have seen in recent weeks is a desperate effort by opponents of the INC to find an alternative,'' said Richard Perle, a former Reagan administration official who serves as chairman of the Pentagon's influential Defense Policy Board. ''I think it's foolish and short-sighted.''
Perle fears that the State Department and CIA efforts send a mixed message to the region. ''It seems to me very damaging, and it creates confusion,'' he said.
The debate goes to the heart of a long-standing dispute over how to shape anti-Iraq policy, which has demonstrated few if any successes since the end of the 1991 Gulf War.
For years, the Iraqi National Congress – a nominal umbrella for the Iraqi opposition – has served as a centerpiece of US efforts to oust Hussein.
Its leader, Ahmed Chalabi, is seen in Washington as a charismatic and effective lobbyist. But within the fractious Iraqi opposition, he remains a divisive figure, derided by some detractors as autocratic and arrogant.
The Iraqi National Congress and its US backers tout Chalabi as a potential leader of post-Hussein Iraq. But as a Shiite Muslim, like many of Hussein's opponents in southern Iraq, he is handicapped in recruiting officers from the army, which is dominated by Sunnis. His ties to the military are also limited by his long absence from Iraq: He left the country in 1958.
A former defense official who monitored Iraq said: ''The INC has a fairly effective lobby around town and in certain circles in the Pentagon and certain members of Congress on the Republican side. But it has no standing whatsoever in the intelligence community or at State.''
That view was echoed by Edward S. Walker, who oversaw the Middle East at the State Department during the Clinton administration.
''The INC is incapable of doing anything. The INC is not representative of the broad opposition. The INC has been infiltrated by Iraqi intelligence by all reports that I have seen. And there's just a significant group of Iraqis in opposition who won't follow that lead,'' he said.
It retains its supporters, however, particularly among hawks at the Pentagon like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.
Perle is another. He has outlined a plan – reminiscent of Afghanistan – that combines bombing with US forces assisting the opposition. A government would be set up in territory wrested from Hussein, and his army would be encouraged to revolt.
''I don't think we'd have to defeat Saddam's armies; I think Saddam's armies would defeat Saddam,'' he told the Hoover Institution last month.
Few outside the Pentagon, though, say the Iraqi National Congress could fulfill that role, and in recent weeks, State Department and other US officials have stepped up their efforts to recruit the support of the former Iraqi generals.
Salhi, formerly a senior commander in the army and Republican Guard who fled Iraq by way of the Kurdish-controlled north in 1995, has received much of the attention. The State Department calls the contact ''pretty fairly regular'' – the most recent an hourlong meeting Tuesday.
''Before there were ongoing meetings,'' an Iraqi opposition official said on condition of anonymity. ''But in the past two or three weeks, they've been more serious than before. They're trying to build another INC.''
While Iraq has a Shiite Muslim majority, Sunni Muslims dominate the military and security services, and Salhi is seen as a link to high-ranking officers who would prove key to any overture to the Iraqi army. Salhi himself has said he detects a new tone in dealings with the administration.
''I heard very encouraging words from them,'' he told the Globe. He said he promised to attend a meeting that the State Department is seeking to organize in Europe this spring that will draw former military officers.
Another key figure is Sammarai, who moved to London five years ago. He said he met a US official and a diplomat from the Embassy in January in talks that focused on how the Iraqi military would respond to change.
''They wanted to know how we see the Iraqi Army after Saddam,'' he said.
The figure believed to be supported by the CIA is Khazraji, who defected to Jordan in 1996. Iraqi dissidents say there was a move to bring him to the United States after Sept. 11. But plans were scuttled by an inquiry in Denmark over allegations of war crimes under his watch, particularly the military's use of poison gas against Kurds in Halabja in 1988, they say. Khazraji has denied responsibility, saying Hussein and a cousin ordered the attack.
US officials say they remain interested in what he can offer.
''Certainly there's every reason to belive he still has connections inside Iraq,'' a State Department official said. ''That's his strength. Does that mean he's the next Karzai? No, that's not what I'm saying.''
Whitley Bruner, a former CIA station chief in Baghdad, met Khazraji earlier this year at the former general's home outside Copenhagen. But Bruner told the Globe that ''there was absolutely no involvement with the US government at all,'' and the CIA declined to comment on its attitude toward Khazraji.
The United States is not alone in courting Iraqi generals. On Tuesday, for example, Ben Bradshaw, the junior British foreign office minister, met in London with Iraqi opposition forces. It was reportedly the first opposition meeting with a British minister in two years.
''He asked about the possibility of a military coup, defection of army officers, movements within the military. All the questions are about the military,'' said Hamid Bayati, a spokesman for a Shiite opposition group.
The strategy has its backers, and many see the former generals as key to any inroads into an institution that Hussein jealously watches.
''They're sort of a liaison to the actual power,'' said the former defense official, ''the guys who have the tanks or the guns.''
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