Saddam’s latest ploy began about six weeks ago, when U.S. intelligence noticed Iraqi forces moving around in the northern part of the country, near the stronghold of the Kurdish rebels. Soon the activity spread to the south, roughly in the direction of Kuwait. It involved all branches of the Iraqi armed forces, including the Revolutionary Guards, Saddam’s assault troops. Then two of Saddam’s key henchmen defected to Jordan two weeks ago, taking along their wives, the dictator’s daughters.
That was the strongest sign yet that Saddam’s regime may be in deep trouble. Sensing a chance to heighten Iraq’s isolation and hasten the dictator’s ultimate downfall, President Clinton promised to protect Jordan, one of Saddam’s few remaining friends in the world, after it gave sanctuary to the fugitives from Baghdad. But as Jordan’s King Hussein cautiously tilted away from Saddam, Iraq’s military movements continued, looking more ominous in the new context.
Last October, when Saddam made menacing moves toward Kuwait, Clinton responded with deployments of his own and forced the Iraqi dictator to pull back. This time the Pentagon was concerned enough to take quick action. A U.S. aircraft-carrier task force moved into the eastern Mediterranean. Near the Gulf of Aqaba on the Red Sea, 2,500 U.S. troops began a previously scheduled joint exercise with Jordanian forces, an operation suddenly invested with new significance.
In the Persian Gulf, another U.S. carrier was ordered to delay its rotation home until its replacement arrives. Supply ships moved into the gulf from the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, carrying enough tanks, ammunition and other equipment to sustain 22,000 U.S. troops for a month of ground combat. Back in the United States, the units that would use the gear were not quite put on formal alert; they were instructed merely to keep an eye on developments and be ready to move. And at Fort Hood, Texas, 1,400 troops from the First Cavalry Division were ordered to move to Kuwait this week to conduct a military exercise originally planned for two months from now.
The Iraqis insisted they were not mobilizing their armed forces and dismissed U.S. warnings as “the croaking of frogs.” It wasn’t clear what Saddam intended. The two defectors–Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel Hassan and his brother, Lt. Col. Saddam Kamel Hassan presumably had a lot to tell, but two CIA agents got only brief access to the men last week and didn’t learn much, according to intelligence sources in Washington. The defectors reportedly told other interrogators that Saddam had beer thinking about an attack on Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. So far, however, Iraq’s military moves weren’t nearly equal to such a task. The Revolutionary Guards had not crossed the 32d parallel into the “no go” zone proclaimed by Washington hast year.
U.S. intelligence thought Saddam may have been moving his troops around so that they could not coalesce against him and stage a coup. He has always kept his forces off balance, rotating commanders and moving units to new locations to keep officers and men from forming alliances.
In the long run the two defectors may be most useful in exposing Saddam’s nuclear-, chemical- and biological-warfare programs, over which Hussein Kamel presided for many years. But the Kamel brothers probably won’t be much help in overthrowing Saddam. Their reputation for brutality is almost as bad as his, and they do not seem to have any constituency in Iraq, having lost out in a power struggle against Saddam’s ruthlessly ambitious son Uday. Hussein Kamel forfeited his chance to stage a coup the moment he fled the country. “He didn’t pull the trigger, and neither did his brother, Saddam Kamel, who knows all about the security of the regime,” said a Western dip-Iomat in Amman. Saddam Kamel, who was in charge of the dictator’s personal guards, “knew all the radio codes, the telephone numbers, the size of the guard units–all the details you need to have to overthrow the regime,” said the diplomat. But since the brothers have betrayed him, “Saddam has changed all the codes, all the frequencies and all the drills,”
The defections gave King Hussein a chance to improve his relations with the Americans and the rich Arab nations, all of whom were alienated by Jordan’s support for Saddam after his invasion of Kuwait. The king told an Israeli newspaper the time had come for “change in Iraq.” Saudi Arabia’s intelligence chief, Prince Turki al-Faisal, breezed into Amman for a quiet talk with the defectors. Then Jordan’s foreign minister went to Saudi Arabia and was received by King Fahd, the first such contact since 1990. Jordanian officials predicted a summit soon for the two kings.
Hoping to drive a bigger wedge between Jordan and Iraq, a U.S. diplomatic team tried to persuade the king to sever his economic ties with Saddam. Administration sources said Saudi Arabia was offering cheap oil to replace the oil that Jordan now buys from Iraq, providing Saddam with a key source of income. But King Hussein was reluctant to inflict further hardship on ordinary Iraqis, which could hurt him at home. He carefully kept a door open to Saddam, sending the dictator a friendly telegram and allowing Sad-dam’s wife to visit Amman, in an apparently fruitless attempt to bring her daughters home. Saddam appeared to be on the ropes. But King Hussein, a wily survivor himself, knew that the Iraqi ruler could still lash out at vulnerable neighbors. Given Saddam’s rash and ruthless history, both the king’s hedging and Bill Clinton’s military buildup were probably prudent.
