Iraq invasion unlikely to rely on insurgents USA Today
December 10, 2002
By Paul WisemanAny attempt to use Iraqi opposition fighters in combat roles against Saddam Hussein would be undercut by their shortage of weaponry and skill, crippled by their history of fighting among themselves and compromised by their sensitive relations with neighbors Turkey and Iran.
For these reasons and more, the United States is unlikely to seek or get much military assistance from Kurdish and Shiite Muslim resistance groups that have fought Saddam in the past. "You don't want a bunch of infighting amateurs in your way," says Toby Dodge, an expert on Iraq at Britain's University of Warwick.
Even so, Iraqi resistance groups undoubtedly would play some role in any drive to unseat Saddam. The 4 million to 5 million ethnic Kurds inside Iraq, mostly in northern Iraq, have long sought autonomy or independence and have been repeatedly crushed by Baghdad. In southern Iraq, Shiite Muslims, accounting for more than 60% of Iraq's population, have rebelled in the past against Saddam, a member of Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority. Both groups could help U.S. forces. The United States also is financing a controversial effort to recruit Iraqi exiles as scouts, interpreters and guides.
But don't expect a repeat of last year's campaign in Afghanistan, where the United States assigned most of the ground fighting to a motley collection of anti-Taliban Afghan warriors called the Northern Alliance. Using local fighters worked against the Taliban in Afghanistan, but is unlikely to work, or even be tried, against Saddam.
Turning to the Kurds would be particularly troublesome:
*They're no match for Saddam's troops. The two main Kurdish opposition groups the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) can muster perhaps 80,000 guerrilla fighters between them. But they're poorly trained and lightly armed. They have no tanks or artillery. When Kurds rebelled after the Gulf War in 1991, Saddam's forces carved them up in days. However, the Kurds are experienced guerrilla fighters and might prove useful harassing and pinning down Iraqi forces.
*They have a history of fighting each other more ferociously than they ever fought Saddam. The KDP and PUK have tried to put their differences behind them; they joined this year in an Iraqi Kurd parliament. But their cooperation has proved short-lived before. After the United Nations offered them sanctuary from Saddam in northern Iraq in 1991, they turned their guns on each other in a fight for power and a share of taxes collected from trucks carrying illegal cargo across their territory between Iraq and Turkey. In 1996, KDP leader Massoud Barzani invited Iraqi forces into Kurdish territory, where they executed resistance fighters and smashed a CIA intelligence operation. Barzani later rejoined the anti-Saddam cause.
*They don't completely trust the United States. After defeating Iraq in the Gulf War, the United States encouraged Kurds to rise up against Saddam, then did nothing to help when they were crushed. "We are responsible for almost 4 million people," says Safeen Dizayee, the KDP's Ankara representative. "We would be at the receiving end of any retaliation. ... We have to be very, very careful."
*They have a lot to lose. The current safe haven is the closest the Kurds have come to having their own homeland. They enjoy enormous autonomy under U.S. and British military protection in the so-called northern no-fly zone, which has been off-limits to Iraqi aircraft since the Gulf War. They run their own schools, their own government, their own newspapers. They are reluctant to jeopardize what they have now. The Northern Alliance, by contrast, had lost 90% of Afghanistan to the Taliban, so it had a big incentive to join the U.S.-led campaign.
*They risk the wrath of neighboring Turkey, a key U.S. ally. Turkey is determined to prevent any uprising by Iraqi Kurds from creating an independent Kurdish state in what is now Iraq. Turkey is worried that its own Kurds about 20% of its 67 million people would want independence, too. Already, 7,000 Turkish troops and 40 tanks are in northern Iraq, says Mustafa Kibaroglu, a military analyst at Ankara's Bilkent University. They are there ostensibly to mop up the remnants of a Kurdish separatist group accused of committing terrorist acts in Turkey.
The United States would need Turkey's support in a war against Saddam, partly to stage air raids from Incirlik air base in Turkey, partly to have an Islamic ally and prevent the invasion from being perceived as a war on Muslims.
The Iraqi Shiite resistance carries its own baggage primarily its tight relationship with the theocratic Shiite regime in neighboring Iran, which fought a bloody 1980-88 war against Saddam's Iraq. President Bush has lumped Iran with Iraq and North Korea as part of an "axis of evil."
The main Iraqi Shiite resistance group, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, is based in Iran and armed by the Iranian government. The council has up to 20,000 fighters, many of them defectors from the Iraqi army, plus tanks and artillery, says Hamid Bayati, the council's London representative. "The only thing we don't have is an air force," he says. Americans also were impressed when Shiite guerrillas a few years ago fired rockets at one of Saddam's palaces in Baghdad and got away alive.
The Shiites are wary about participating in what might be seen as a U.S. invasion of a Muslim country. And the United States and other countries are nervous about anything that might increase Iran's influence in a post-Saddam Iraq.
"A divided Iraq would strengthen the hands of Iran in the gulf region," says Seyfi Tashan, director of the Turkish Foreign Policy Institute in Ankara. "Iraq is a firewall."
And not all Iraqi Shiites oppose Saddam; many fought for him against Iran.
The U.S. effort to recruit Iraqi exiles also is controversial. In October, President Bush set aside $92 million to train Iraqi resistance fighters mainly as scouts, guides and translators. The Iraqi National Congress, a coalition of Iraqi opposition groups, has sent the Pentagon the names of 4,700 potential recruits. The INC and its leader, a U.S.-educated former banker named Ahmed Chalabi, enjoy considerable support from the U.S. Defense Department. But the State Department views Chalabi with suspicion. And he has been charged with bank fraud in Jordan. Kurdish resistance groups also are wary of Chalabi, fearing he will use the newly trained force to grab power in a post-Saddam Iraq.
The U.S. experience using the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, though successful in toppling the Taliban, showed that using local forces risks entangling the United States in local disputes that can damage postwar reconstruction.
Northern Alliance forces took advantage of U.S. military support to seize control of the Afghan capital, Kabul, and grab power complicating efforts to build a post-Taliban government representative of all the Afghan people.
There is concern Iraqi opposition groups might attempt a power grab if Saddam is removed. "It may well be that the U.S. has drawn lessons from Afghanistan and does not want to encourage the formation of militias in Iraq," says Rend Rahim Francke, executive director of the Iraq Foundation, a group of Iraqi expatriates in Washington pushing for Saddam's overthrow. "It was problematic in the military campaign, and it was problematic after."