RFE/RL IRAQ REPORT
Vol. 4, No. 6, 2 March 2001
A Review of Developments in Iraq Prepared by the Regional
Specialists of RFE/RL's Newsline Team
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HEADLINES:
* ARMENIAN FOREIGN MINISTER MEETS SADDAM
* U.S. CONDEMNS IRAQ'S HUMAN RIGHTS RECORD
* IRAQI WMD AND ACM DEVELOPMENTS CONTINUE...
* ŠBUT INSPECTIONS UNLIKELY TO RESUME
* U.S.-BRITISH STRIKES SAFEGUARD OWN PLANES
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ARMENIAN FOREIGN MINISTER MEETS SADDAM HUSSEIN. Armenian
Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanyan met with Iraq's President
Saddam Husseyn while in Baghdad to open Yerevan's embassy.
Oskanyan delivered a letter from Armenian President Robert
Kocharian to Saddam Husseyn, Iraqi television reported on
26 February. Oskanyan said that Yerevan has been following,
"with great sympathy and sorrow, the grave injustice done
to Iraq since 1991." Saddam Hussein told Oskanyan that "the
Armenians have never complained of any Arab country in
which they have lived. They always assimilated quickly into
the Arab community, while maintaining their special
character."
After returning to Yerevan, Snark reported on 27
February, Oskanyan said that the bilateral talks had
focused on economic cooperation. Oskanyan added that the
cancellation of sanctions "is important in the viewpoint of
Iraq and further development of Armenia-Iraq relations."
Also, Oskanyan participated in the opening of the Armenian
embassy, Iraqi state television reported on 25 February.
Oskanyan was accompanied by Minister of Energy Karen
Galustian, some parliamentarians, and Armenian business
representatives. The Armenian delegation was greeted at the
airport by Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, Foreign
Ministry representatives, and other Iraqi officials.
According to the Iraqi News Agency, Oskanyan expressed the
hope that Iraq will open an embassy in Armenia soon. (Bill
Samii)
U.S. CONDEMNS IRAQ'S HUMAN RIGHTS RECORD. The U.S.
Department of State's 25th annual report on human rights
practices around the world noted that the Iraqi
government's human rights record "remained extremely poor."
The report also comments on events in the Kurd-controlled
northern part of the country. The State Department relied
on information from Amnesty International, the Supreme
Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Iraqi
Communist Party, the Iraqi National Congress, Human Rights
Watch, and the UN, although it noted that the UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights' Special Representative for
Iraq was not allowed to visit the country.
The report's first section discusses respect for the
integrity of the person and points out that the regime has
a long record of executing its perceived opponents.
Sometimes political detainees are killed en masse, and at
other times government agents target family members of
defectors. The security forces beheaded a number of
suspected female prostitutes and the men involved in their
business. Disappearances also appear to be common, and
there is still no information on Assyrians and Yazidis who
were arrested in 1996. Nor has Baghdad been forthcoming
about Kuwaitis and Saudis who disappeared in 1990-91 or
Iranians who were captured in the 1980-88 war.
Torture is commonplace, the report says, and Iraqi
asylum seekers have displayed the scars to substantiate
their claims. Tongue amputation has been introduced as a
punishment for those who criticize Saddam Husseyn. Women in
custody frequently are raped.
Although Shia Muslims make up the majority of the
population, the regime continues to target them. It refuses
to comment on the death of Ayatollah Abol Qasem Khoi during
his house arrest, nor will it say what happened to his
companions. The situation is similar in the case of
Ayatollah Mohammad Mohammad Sadiq al-Sadr, who was murdered
in Najaf in February 1999. Hundreds of Fayli Kurds, who are
Shia, and others of Iranian origin have been in detention
since the 1980s. The government targets the Shia community
with arbitrary detention and arrest. Political
organizations formed by the Shia (or by the Assyrians) are
not recognized. Shia mosques and sites have been
desecrated, Shia religious instruction is interrupted, and
government agents stationed at Shia mosques interfere with
the worshippers. Pilgrims to Najaf and Karbala are subject
to harassment, and the Ashura processions are blocked.
The second section of the report covers civil
liberties in Iraq and points out that the government does
not permit freedom of speech or the press, and political
dissent is not tolerated. Foreign journalists are
accompanied by Ministry of Culture and Information
officials who make it almost impossible to interact with
locals, and broadcasts from outside the country are
periodically jammed. Freedom of association and of assembly
are restricted. Freedom of religion of the Shia, Christians
(Assyrians, Chaldeans, Roman Catholics, Armenian Orthodox),
Yazidis, Jews, and Mandeans is restricted. The government
has forcibly relocated and deported Kurdish and Turkoman
families as part of its Arabization process.
In the Kurd-controlled northern part of the country,
there are many political parties, social groups, and
cultural organizations. But there have been reports of
political killings and terrorism, too. KDP forces
reportedly entered Assyrian villages and attacked the
inhabitants, and Assyrian groups report being the victims
of Muslim mob violence. The KDP and PUK allegedly maintain
their own unofficial prisons and will not give
international inspectors access to them. (Bill Samii)
IRAQI WMD AND ACM DEVELOPMENTS CONTINUE... Iraq is
continuing low-level research and development in the
nuclear field, according to a recently released
"Unclassified Report to Congress on the Acquisition of
Technology Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction [WMD]
and Advanced Conventional Munitions [ACM]" prepared by the
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. What hampers Iraq's
nuclear program the most is problems in procuring
sufficient fissile material. The report offers the
qualification that it is difficult for the U.S. and UN to
make an accurate assessment of Iraq's WMD programs, because
UN inspectors have not returned to the country since
Operation Desert Fox in December 1998, and the UN's
automated video monitoring system is not functioning.
Iraq may not need to continue its R&D activities,
however, because it already has three Hiroshima-type
nuclear bombs, three implosion-type nuclear bombs, and
three thermonuclear devices, and these are stored in an
underground bunker in the Hemrin Mountains. Furthermore,
Iraq has already tested a nuclear bomb, according to a
detailed report in the 25 February edition of London's
"Sunday Times." Relying mainly on an Iraqi defector who
identified himself as a "military engineer who was a member
of the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission," the report states
that the device was tested in September 1989 in an
underground tunnel 150 kilometers southwest of Baghdad in a
militarized zone near Lake Rezzaza. The warhead's gun
assembly, which used an explosive charge to drive pieces of
highly enriched uranium together, was purchased from Russia
in the late 1980s, according to the defector, and the HEU
came from South Africa via Brazil. The Iraqis were able to
avoid U.S. satellite detection of the test through
information provided by Russia, and all evidence of the
test, including the clean-up personnel, was eliminated.
Although UNSCOM inspectors eventually found evidence
of the Iraqi nuclear research program, the defector told
the "Sunday Times," they missed the most successful part.
UNSCOM apparently overlooked a military organization called
Group Four that handled all stages of the bomb's assembly
and was also involved in missile development, launch
systems, and uranium acquisition. Group Four also acquired
Russian and American nuclear bomb designs with help from
India. The defector added that Group Five dealt with
thermonuclear devices. The defector's legitimacy and the
validity of his claims were confirmed in interviews with a
Western nuclear scientist, other defectors from the Iraqi
nuclear program, South African intelligence officers, and a
representative of the Iraqi National Congress.
The CIA report indicates that Iraq was capable of
resuming its chemical and biological warfare research
within weeks of the December 1998 air raids. It adds that
"[f]ollowing Desert Fox, Baghdad again instituted a
reconstruction effort on those facilities destroyed by the
U.S. bombing, including several critical missile production
complexes and former dual-use CW production facilities."
Also, Baghdad has tried to purchase dual-use items. Iraq
admitted to having a biological warfare program in 1995.
Because the information on the program could not be
verified, UNSCOM assessed that the knowledge base is
maintained and the industrial infrastructure for producing
BW agents is in place.
Work continues on Iraq's L-29 Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
program, according to the report. This UAV is a converted
jet trainer, and it is believed that refurbished models of
this aircraft have been modified to deliver chemical or
biological weapons. Iraq also is developing Short Range
Ballistic Missile systems, and the report says that "Iraq
probably retains a small, covert force of Scud-type
missiles." (Bill Samii)
ŠBUT INSPECTIONS UNLIKELY TO RESUME. Baghdad has refused to
permit inspections by the UN Monitoring, Verification, and
Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International
Atomic Energy Agency's Iraq Action Team, and statements by
Foreign Minister Mohammad Said al-Sahaf indicate that such
inspections will not occur any time soon. After the first
day (27 February) of talks in New York on weapons
inspections, Sahaf referred to Security Council resolution
687, which mentions the goal of establishing a WMD-free
zone in the Middle East. Sahaf said Iraq wants to focus on
this proposal for a regional disarmament scheme and
inspections should begin in Israel. Sahaf insisted that
Baghdad has fully complied with Security Council
resolutions requiring it to eliminate its nuclear,
biological, chemical warfare, and ballistic missile
programs. Sahaf did not meet with UNMOVIC, and he referred
to its chief, Hans Blix, as "a detail from a bad
resolution" in an allusion to resolution 1284, which
created UNMOVIC. (Bill Samii)
U.S.-BRITISH STRIKES SAFEGUARD OWN PLANES. United States
and Britain planes on 16 February targeted six Iraqi
command centers, including radar and communications
centers, in order to prevent Iraq from being able to fire
upon and bring down allied planes in future raids.
U.S. officials explained the necessity of this massive
raid by pointing out that Iraqi air defenses had fired some
13 missiles at allied pilots in the first six weeks of this
year, compared to one missile per month prior to that time.
What's more, Iraq's radar-tracking equipment is growing
more sophisticated. Chinese workers have helped Iraq link
its radar systems with fiber-optic lines, making it more
difficult for U.S. and British planes to counter the radar
by electronically jamming it.
Nigel Vinson, a military analyst at the Royal United
Services Institute in London, discussed the high-tech
contest between the allied planes and Iraq's surface-to-
air-missile systems with RFE/RL. Vinson said that this
month's attack was intended to keep Iraq from making its
command-and-control network more inaccessible to allied
planes, which largely defend themselves by electronically
jamming radar sites trying to track them. "We know that in
recent weeks assistance from the Chinese has been
forthcoming in terms of laying fiber-optic cables between
the various air-defense nodes, particularly in southern
Iraq. The purpose behind this is to reduce the electronic
emissions given out by the air-defense facilities which,
normally, the Americans either would jam or spoof
[electronically deceive], or indeed collect intelligence
data from."
Vinson said there is another reason that the Iraqi
improvements with Chinese equipment worry the allies: it is
a sign that Iraq's military is increasingly modifying its
once standard Soviet-era air-defense systems with newer
equipment from a variety of sources. The result is that
Iraq's air-defense systems are becoming amalgams of
Western, old East European, and Far Eastern technologies
that behave in non-standard ways. That makes them less
predictable for the U.S. and British planes that are their
targets and increasingly difficult to counter. Vinson said,
"[That] makes them extremely difficult to counter because
their radar frequencies are unknown, their operational
profile is unknown."
Vinson added that British pilots flying over Iraq have
become particularly concerned by the upgrading of Iraqi air
defenses because they have less sophisticated capabilities
for dealing with non-standard threats than do their U.S.
counterparts. "The U.K., albeit one of the most
sophisticated European air forces, is lagging behind [the
United States], and it felt that either the Iraqi air-
defense network needed to be degraded, sooner rather than
later, or alternatively, the threat to the U.K. aircraft
would be such that they would be unable to operate with
impunity above the skies of Iraq."
Vinson said that U.S. pilots are less threatened
because they have supporting aircraft which are
specifically designed to smother surface-to-air-missile
radar sites under broad blankets of electronic noise. In
addition, the U.S. pilots have the ability to strike the
radar sites from tens of kilometers away. By contrast,
British planes use laser-guided bombs which must be
launched from only a distance of a few kilometers. Britain
is moving to improve its own systems. But its newest attack
warplane, the GR-4 Tornado, has suffered software problems
that have delayed its introduction into service.
During this month's raid, the allies hit about 40
percent of the targets they sought to destroy or damage.
Vinson told RFE/RL that the low hit rate has caused many
defense analysts to call the strikes only a qualified
success and to predict that there will be more such raids
in the future. "The raid has been judged a qualified
success and is being graded by people within the U.S. as a
B-minus or a C-plus, by which they mean that a number of
targets were degraded but not all of the six targets that
were engaged were sufficiently destroyed. Which leads one
to believe that at some point in the future there may well
be a return attack on these particular command-and-control
and surface-to-air [missile] sites."
Some analysts argue that there are no signs that Iraq
was able to counter the allied attack through measures of
its own, such as jamming, even though Iraqi forces are
seeking to develop such capabilities. In parts of the
country, Iraq has deployed some systems to try to jam the
satellite-based Global Positioning System (GPS) that NATO
members use to help guide missiles to their targets. Vinson
said it is uncertain whether Iraq's GPS jammers are
homemade or were smuggled in. Such doubts go a long way
toward explaining why both the United States and Britain
are today so eager to tighten military sanctions upon Iraq.
A 26 February report in London's "Times" daily
highlighted the issue's urgency. It said that UN staff in
Baghdad often are refused access to airplanes arriving at
Saddam International Airport. In recent months planes from
many countries have been flying to Iraq without first
seeking approval from the UN Sanctions Committee. That
makes it difficult to know what is going in and out of the
country. (Charles Recknagel)
Copyright (c) 2001. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free
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