Friday, May 28, 1999
MIDEAST
Overshadowed by Kosovo War, Action Against Iraq
Escalating
By JOHN DANISZEWSKI, Times Staff Writer
AIRO--While NATO jets have been slamming
targets in Yugoslavia for the past nine weeks,
the United States' other--and far less
visible--air war has intensified over Iraq.
Virtually unnoticed, U.S. and British aircraft
have responded to what the coalition partners
describe as provocations by Baghdad. The allied jet
fighters, flying from Turkey and the Persian Gulf,
have been chipping away systematically at Iraqi
radar posts, air defenses, and other military and
command facilities.
Despite the allies' use of laser-guided rockets
and
other precision munitions, Iraq claims that some of
the strikes have gone astray, destroying private
property, killing at least 20 civilians and leaving
scores injured.
Although one might think that the enormous
demands for air power in the Balkan conflict would
diminish allied activity over Iraq, if anything, the
pace of attacks has picked up slightly since the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization action in
Yugoslavia began.
According to an unofficial tally of actions
announced by the U.S. Central and European
commands, there have been about 19 strikes against
Iraq in April and May, roughly equal to the total for
all of January, February and March. In other
words, airstrikes have been taking place about every
third day.
In a way, the Yugoslav conflict has worked to
the
advantage of U.S.-British forces in the Persian Gulf,
Mideast analysts say, by distracting the attention of
the Arab world away from Iraq--and deferring any
action on the basic split in the U.N. Security
Council
over what to do about Iraq.
"The daily attacks are a war of attrition
against
Saddam [Hussein], and [yet] at the same time, they
do not arouse mass anger among Arabs," observed
Nabil Abdel Fattaj, a researcher at Cairo's Al
Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. "It
is not making headlines anymore."
And it is not only the Kosovo war that has put
Iraq on the back burner. In the Mideast, the top item
on the diplomatic agenda for the year is likely to be
Israel's new government under Ehud Barak and the
peace process.
U.S. officials say the bombings have exacted a
heavy toll on Hussein's regime.
"We have certainly degraded their ability to
respond," said Air Force Maj. Joseph LaMarca Jr.,
spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, which
oversees U.S. forces in the Gulf. He said Iraqi air
defenses have been weakened and noted that the
bombings may have fueled dissension in the Iraqi
military.
Since Iraq announced in January that it would
begin resisting the Western-imposed "no-fly" zones
in northern and southern Iraq, the U.S. military
said there have been about 180 Iraqi threats against
allied forces, including 111 violations of the no-fly
zones, nine cases of illuminating allied aircraft
with
radar, 16 firings of surface-to-air missiles and at
least 50 engagements with antiaircraft artillery,
LaMarca said.
U.S. officials deny that the coalition
airstrikes
are anything but defensive and say they are an
appropriate response to the Iraqi actions.
Among ordinary Iraqis, the mood is bleak, said
journalist Subhy Haddad, speaking from Baghdad.
"It seems that there is no end," he said with a sigh.
Three permanent Security Council
members--Russia, China and France--have urged
the lifting of economic sanctions against Iraq after
nine years, arguing that they have caused
intolerable suffering to the Iraqi people without
effect
on the regime.
The U.S. and Britain, however, insist that
Hussein's regime still poses an extreme danger to
Iraq's neighbors and must be contained.
In the absence of any consensus for a new
approach, the Security Council last week simply
extended for six months the existing oil-for-food
program that allows Iraq to sell limited amounts of
petroleum to pay for food, medicine and other basic
needs under U.N. auspices.
Looking ahead, the absence of meaningful focus
on Iraq probably means a prolonging of the agony of
that country's 20 million people, according to Gihad
Khazen, editor of the London-based Arabic
newspaper Al Hayat.
"It's a tragedy," Khazen said. "Saddam Hussein
is such a hated figure that the administration is
getting away with it."
Copyright 1999 Los Angeles Times. All Rights Reserved
