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Global Intelligence Update
Red Alert
January 6, 1999
More on Operation Desert Fox and the Apparent Coup Attempt
Summary:
* A detailed review of the evidence lends more weight to the
possibility that Operation Desert Fox was integrally related to a
failed coup attempt in Iraq.
Analysis:
Normally we don't revisit Global Intelligence Updates we have
issued until the story evolves to some degree. However, we
received several comments from our readers about our January 5
GIU on a possible coup attempt in Iraq that caused us to
reexamine the events and our analysis. This review has only
strengthened our belief that an abortive coup attempt took place
in Iraq in conjunction with the U.S. and British air strikes of
Operation Desert Fox. Furthermore, the additional information we
collected leads us to speculate that Operation Desert Fox was not
merely coincidental with the coup attempt, but rather was
integral to and even driven by the attempt.
The conventional time line for Operation Desert Fox begins around
December 10, when UN inspectors were embroiled in their last
round of standoffs with Iraq over access to disputed sites in
Iraq, including Ba'ath party headquarters in Baghdad. The next
point on the conventional time line occurred on December 16 when,
only hours after chief UN weapons inspector Richard Butler issued
a report stating that Iraq was continuing to be uncooperative,
the UN withdrew its inspectors from Iraq and U.S. cruise missiles
began striking Iraq. Three other incidents prior to the launch
of Desert Fox caught our attention, however.
The first two events occurred on December 14. A Saudi soldier
was shot and killed by an unidentified assailant in a vehicle
near an Iraqi border post near the Saudi town of Arar.
Speculation at the time was that smugglers may have been
responsible, which is an altogether possible explanation. Also
on December 14, U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf region were put
on Defense Condition Charlie, ostensibly due to a heightened
threat of terrorist actions from militants linked to Osama Bin
Laden. That, too, may have been the case, but we're not
convinced there wasn't more at work.
The most significant incident occurred just before the air
strikes on December 16, when Saddam Hussein announced a dramatic
restructuring and redeployment of the Iraqi armed forces. This
may have been merely coincidental and somewhat bad timing, but it
certainly wasn't initiated by forewarning of the U.S. cruise
missile attack. Our speculation, based on subsequent events, is
that Saddam's Presidential Decree Number 98, rearranging the
Iraqi armed forces, was prompted by Saddam uncovering a U.S.
sponsored coup plot. Moreover, it is possible that the discovery
of the coup plot and Saddam's moves against it were the actual
trigger for heightened U.S. preparation, including DefCon
Charlie, and the launch of Operation Desert Fox.
Examine this hypothesis: The U.S. had for some time been
actively pursuing factions within Iraq willing to carry out a
coup against Saddam Hussein. This could not be the Shiites in
the south or the Kurds in the north, because neither would be
accepted by Iraq's Sunni Arab neighbors as the new rulers of
Baghdad. Besides, they were geographically too far from Baghdad
to pull the coup off. For a variety of reasons, the coup had to
come from Sunni Moslem military commanders. And to this quest,
the U.S. finally recruited officers from within Iraq's 3rd Corps,
stationed to the south and southeast of Baghdad. As events later
demonstrated, the U.S. also apparently recruited at least some of
the Shiite opposition in southern Iraq to take part in sabotage
operations and to tie town units of the Republican Guard in
counterinsurgency operations.
The coup was to take place some time in mid December, perhaps
even during Ramadan. The U.S. would guarantee the operation air
cover in the no fly zones and strike key command and control and
Republican Guard facilities with cruise missiles. But in the
last stages of preparation, before the U.S. had pulled all of its
necessary forces into place and fomented the proper crisis with
Baghdad, the plot was uncovered. As Saddam moved quickly to
round up the conspirators and break up the threat to his regime
by redeploying and reorganizing the armed forces, the U.S. was
forced to move up the time table in hopes that, even crippled,
the coup could go forward.
Operation Desert Fox was launched on December 16, directly
coinciding with what was clearly a coup attempt from within the
Iraqi Army's 3rd Corps. While yesterday's GIU discussed this
coincidence, it now appears to have been more than mere
coincidence. Throughout December 16-19 there were reports of
scattered incidents of sabotage being carried out in Shiite areas
of southern Iraq. The London based newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat
cited Iraqi opposition forces on December 19 as claiming that
armed civilians had moved against the radio and television
building in Baghdad on December 17, but failed to capture it
during a three hour battle with security forces. Opposition
forces also claimed to have engaged in firefights with security
forces near Thawrah and Habibah, and that Iraqi forces had
shelled Shiites in Amarah Governate and near Umm al-Ni'aj lake in
the south.
The January 1 Al-Hayat report cited in yesterday's GIU outlined
the actions taken by and against the 3rd Corps during Operation
Desert Fox, including the executions of Brigadier General Ali
Ma'ruf al-Sa'idi and Lieutenant Colonel Sabah Dhiyab al-Khalidi.
These executions were ordered by Ba'ath party regional commander
Ali Hasan al-Majid, who Saddam had made commander of the newly
established southern area immediately before the start of the
missile attacks. On December 21, Al-Hayat published a report
from the opposition Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in
Iraq (SCIRI), claiming that clashes took place in the Rashid camp
in Baghdad on December 18. Five officers were then allegedly
executed in the camp, including Staff Brigadier Harden Jasim al-
Ubaydi, Brigadier Husayn Muhammad Hasan, intelligence officer
Staff Colonel Saddam Thamir al-Tikriti, colonel Sa'dun Jabbar
Muhsin, and Staff Lieutenant Colonel Nuri Husam Muhammad. SCIRI
also claimed that a group of officers of the 11th Mechanized
Division, part of the 3rd Corps, were executed for objecting to
"measures taken in preparation for suppressing a peoples' move."
Agence France Presse reported that, on December 19, two Iraqi
colonels, one from an armored division and one from the air
force, were executed in Baghdad's Taji barracks. The armor
colonel was reportedly from Hilla in Shiite southern Iraq, while
the air force colonel was reportedly from Saddam Hussein's home
town of Tikrit. The report came from the Iraqi Communist Party.
The January 1 Al-Hayat report cited an Iraqi official as claiming
that, while the U.S. provided air cover for the rebellious Iraqi
troops, an "Arab state neighboring Iraq" had provided them with
ground and logistical support. Several reports that emerged
during Operation Desert Fox seem to support this claim. Deutsche
Presse Agentur reported on December 18 that heavy weaponry,
ammunition, and equipment was seen being transported northward
through Kuwait toward Iraq on the 17th and 18th. Kuwaiti
eyewitnesses claimed that one of the convoys of U.S. flatbed
trucks, escorted by U.S. and Kuwaiti military police, carried at
least 31 tanks toward Iraq. The U.S. refused to comment on the
report. According to the Iraqi Information Ministry, Saudi
armored units, apparently on a reconnaissance mission, advanced
to the Iraqi border on December 17 before withdrawing. Saudi
Arabia denied the report. The Iranian news agency IRNA reported
that U.S. and British forces crossed from Saudi territory five
kilometers into Iraq on the night of December 18. Asked about
the Iranian report, a Qatari television correspondent in Baghdad
claimed to have received other reports of U.S. and British troop
movements into Iraq from sources within Iraq on the 17th. The
U.S. and Britain reportedly refused comment on the report.
On December 18, as what was clearly a coup attempt was mopped up,
the vice chairman of Iraq's ruling Revolution Command Council,
General Izzat Ibrahim, reportedly sent a letter to Saddam Hussein
noting that "we have instructed the armed forces to restrict
their mission to the protection of the borders of the homeland."
The letter, broadcast on Iraqi radio, noted that all internal
security had been arranged for using "other armed bodies." In
other words, the coup was finished and Iraq was, at least
internally, secure.
Capping this off was a report in the Dubai newspaper Al-Bayan on
December 20, which claimed that Iraqi opposition sources in Amman
had released details of a U.S. plan, devised by the CIA and
approved by Iraqi opposition groups and Britain, to capture
Baghdad and topple Saddam. The plan was to begin on the fifth
day of the U.S.-British air campaign, which was aimed at breaking
the back of the Republican Guards. The plan allegedly involved a
land attack from Kuwait, through Basra to Baghdad, carried out by
5,000 U.S. soldiers and 3,000 Iraqi soldiers from SCIRI, backed
by 15,000 troops from neighboring states. Kurdish troops from
northern Iraq were to have moved south, taking Mosul, Kirkuk, and
Tikrit before meeting the southern force in Baghdad. The ground
attack was to have received U.S. and British air cover. The plan
appears to roughly fit the events as they transpired, albeit the
events reflect what may have happened when Saddam uncovered the
plot before it was ready to commence. Whether this plan was fact
or fiction, the air war stopped short of five days, by which time
the Iraqi opposition forces which did take action had been
effectively crushed.
We also note -- though could the U.S. planners really have been
that brazen? -- the significance of Operation Desert Fox's
namesake. German General Erwin Rommel, the "Desert Fox," was
implicated in an assassination attempt on another dictator,
Hitler. Ironically, like Rommel, the coup plotters in Iraq did
not survive their attempt either.
On January 4, Saddam Hussein reportedly carried out a review of
the military. After that meeting, Saddam reiterated his
opposition to the U.S. imposed "no-fly" zones in northern and
southern Iraq, and began to actively challenge U.S. patrols in
those zones. Saddam has no desire to allow the U.S. to provide
cover for what may next time be a more coordinated and effective
coup attempt. The question is, how likely is another attempt?
Two of the officers executed in Baghdad were from Tikrit, one
from military intelligence and one from the air force. The U.S.
had evidently reached Saddam's inner circle. Even as the coup
was apparently uncovered, the U.S. moved ahead with a portion of
its part of the operation, launching the missile and air strikes.
U.S. troops even apparently prepared to support the ground
operation from Kuwait, but by the time the convoys rolled, the
coup attempt was all but over.
Even the air strikes may have been little more than a token
gesture to an already doomed conspiracy. At least the U.S. could
say it came through this time, unlike in the aftermath of the
Gulf War, when rebellions were put down by Saddam without any
U.S. intervention. Interestingly, according to the U.S. State
Department, the confrontation between the U.S. and Iraq in
November occurred simultaneously with a bloody crackdown on
Shiites in southern Iraq, led by Saddam's son Qussay. Was that
another aborted attempt at a coup?
So why hasn't this tale gone public elsewhere? The Iraqis are
not eager to publicize that a coordinated coup attempt was nearly
carried out. The U.S. is not eager to admit that one failed.
One thing this story does say is that Operation Desert Fox may
not have been driven by the impeachment hearings, nor even by the
UNSCOM difficulties, and the "window of opportunity" spoken of by
U.S. military officials may not have had anything to do with
Ramadan. The sudden and, on the surface rather pointless, U.S.
and British air strikes may have been part of a coup plot gone
awry, forced into action before all was prepared by Saddam
uncovering the plot.
If this attempt was as substantial and potentially well
orchestrated as it appears to have been, and it was uncovered and
uprooted, it will be a long time before the U.S. can try it
again. This means that the current tit for tat in the no fly
zones may not escalate much farther, except perhaps as a slap in
frustration by the U.S.
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