US Plans Small Invasion Force to Take Saddam Out From DEBKA-Net-Weekly 67, July 5 29 July: Our military sources describe the present plan as being for a US-UK force of up to 75,000 troops attacking in three synchronous bridgeheads. Force One This first contingent, also the smallest - no more than 30,000 to 40,000 troops - will attack from the north, setting out from US installations in southern Turkey, mainly the large air base at Incirlik. They will link up with US special forces already present in northern Iraq, US commando-trained Kurdish forces, Turkish special forces positionednear Mosul and Kirkuk and Turkish-trained Turkomans Its primary mission will be to “cleanse” the Syrian-Iraqi Western desert on the frontier with Syria of Iraqi missiles, especially the ones capable of carrying chemical and biological warheads. Its second objective will be to seize all of northern Iraq and drive out Iraqi forces, before going on to capture the oil towns of Kirkuk and Mosul. Force Two This one will drive across from Jordan. Ferried in by airplane or helicopter, or parachuted in, the task of Force Two will be to seize three or four main air bases in western and central Iraq, after they have been thoroughly pounded in a US air-cruise missile blitz. The captured bases will be converted for the use of American bomber and fighter squadrons, some diverted from the Persian Gulf and Red Sea. This action comes under the overall plan for the US military to operate from inside Iraq - unlike the doctrine followed in Afghanistan, where the US army operated from outside bases. Engineering units will prepare Iraqi installations such as H-3, H-4 and the massive al-Baghdadi air base for the influx of US warplanes and troops. Force Three This force will push into Iraq in two waves, the first, comprised mostly of US special forces, from bases in Eritrea, Jordan and the Sinai and from US navy ships, will fan out across central Iraq, including Baghdad; its paramount mission being to strike and seize the headquarters and habitations of Saddam Hussein, his family and close associates, as well as the country’s hidden depots of missiles and chemical and biological weapons systems. The second wave, having captured and occupied bases inside Iraq, will advance from there to take on the heaviest and most dangerous combat assignment: destroying the Iraqi leadership and its military power base. Washington’s military planners calculate that Saddam, rather than throw in the sponge, will throw his entire arsenal, including nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, against this force, an escalation that could bring forth an American nuclear response to take him out. DEBKA-Net-Weekly, our intelligence newsletter for subscribers, keeps readers ahead of the news on a broad range of key international strategic events – like the latest options explored by US war planners for the coming offensive against Iraq. To join this highly informed audience in our action-packed times, place your order for DEBKA-Net-Weekly order now. Click HERE ________________________________________ US Brands Palestinian Intifada Terrorism DEBKAfile Special Analysis 27 July: The speech delivered Friday night, July 26, by US ambassador John Negroponte at the UN Security Council in New York, snapped Washington’s last ties to some critical historical conventions on the Middle East conflict. Negroponte: “For any resolution to go forward, the United States – which has a veto in the 15-nation council – would want it to have the following four elements: -- An explicit condemnation of terrorism; -- A condemnation by name of the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, the Islamic Jihad and Hamas groups, groups that have claimed responsibility for suicide attacks on Israel; -- An appeal to all parties for a political settlement of the crisis; -- A demand for improvement of the security situation as a condition for any call for a withdrawal of Israeli armed forces to positions they held before the September 2000 start of a Palestinian uprising in which 1,467 Palestinians and 564 Israelis have died.“ Not surprisingly, the Arabs, who called the council meeting to condemn Israel for last week’s air raid on Gaza City, put off further debate on their draft until Monday. Just hours before the council session, Friday afternoon, Palestinian gunmen killed from ambush four Israelis driving on a road south of Hebron. DEBKAfile’s political analysts view the American UN ambassador’s landmark statement as strikingly significant in terms of the Bush administration’s war on global terror and its relations with the Arab and Muslim world, as well as its perception of the Israel-Palestinian conflict and the Jewish state’s future in the Middle East. The “Al Aqsa Intifada” Yasser Arafat declared in September 2000 is denied acceptance as a war of liberation or the uprising of an oppressed people against a brutal occupier. The American speaker, by the conditions he posed for any Security Council resolution, clearly branded the armed Palestinian campaign a war of terror, which Israel has every right to combat and defeat with diplomatic and military assistance from the United States. The conditions he laid down effectively negated the legitimacy of the uprising the Palestinians launched 22 months ago and precluded them from gaining any political capital from their resort to violence. DEBKAfile ’s Washington and Middle East sources examine the motives behind this dramatic departure. A. The approach of D-Day for the US assault on Iraq and its reliance on Israel as a rear base. For the upcoming military campaign, the United States needs clear road links from the Mediterranean to the Jordanian-Iraqi frontier, as well as safe access to the vital jumping off and rear bases the US command has positioned in Israel - ranging from air bases at its disposal to military stores and medical facilities, including hospitals for the swift intake of casualties from the front. US war planners rely on the Israeli military’s iron grip on terrorist strongholds in Palestinian towns for holding the Palestinians in check and keeping West Bank road links and US military installations safe from terrorists. B. The American military rear is equally open to threat from the Lebanese Hizballah. The Shiite extremists have built three fortified lines running from the Mediterranean in the west to Mt. Hermon in the east, parallel to the Lebanese-Israeli frontier. Those lines bristle with 10,000 missiles and rockets. Thanks to supplies from Iran and Syria, the Hizballah can field the third largest missile arsenal in the Middle East. While most of those lines menace Israel, some of the batteries face west from points along the Lebanese Mediterranean coast. They are aimed at preventing US warships and carriers from approaching the Lebanese coast and bringing northern Iraqi military targets on the Syrian border within range. The Hizballah may well regard the branding of the al Aqsa Brigades, Jihad Islami and Hamas as terrorist groups by the US ambassador as a call to arms, a challenge to make good on its political and military pact with Yasser Arafat, by “heating up” the Lebanese-Israel border. This could provoke a powerful Israeli military reaction, most likely directed at wiping out Hizballah training bases and command posts in Lebanon and destroying its triple-tier fortifications and missile batteries. Israel may go so far as to demolish Syria’s strategic infrastructure that supports the Hizballah. If the American war effort counts on Palestinian terrorism being held on a tight leash it requires the Hizballah military resources to be rooted out. C. The shakiness of some key Arab regimes, notably Saudi Arabia, and what is seen in Washington as their unreliability as American allies. The stand taken by the United States at the UN Security Council is a frank brush-off of Arab concerns and wishes regarding to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The Saudi de facto ruler Abdullah, in particular, has accumulated several black marks in Washington, aside even from the al Qaeda issue, thereby driving a rift in the royal house. Not only has he refused to take part in the American campaign against Iraq or permit American use of its territory as bases for attack (as reported repeatedly in DEBKAfile and DEBKA-Net-Weekly), but he and his faction in Riyadh are the sole source, aside from Iran, of the monetary aid funneled to the terror groups named in ambassador Negroponte’s Security Council statement. D. The American stand as articulated at the Security Council aims a snub at the European Union, rejecting its efforts to whitewash Palestinian terrorist groups and wean them away from suicide tactics to save them from being eclipsed in the American overhaul plan for the Palestinian administration (detailed in the three-part series DEBKAfile ran last week) . In recent weeks, a concerted effort was launched by the EU foreign affairs executive, Javier Solana, through his representatives in Palestinian areas, to induce the Palestinian Fatah-Tanzim, the Hamas and the Jihad Islami to publicly adopt a truce in their suicide attacks on Israelis. Rather than approaching the groups’ top men, the European emissaries met the heads of local cells, mainly in Jenin and Ramallah. DEBKAfile’s Palestinian sources insist, despite the many claims to the contrary, that this initiative got nowhere. The European messengers failed to reach the groups’ ringleaders and were systematically misled by their Palestinian interlocutors. Contd. in opp. col. Saudis, Gulf Emirs Bitterly Divided over US Iraq War; Mubarak to Stay out DEBKAfile Special Roundup from Mid East Sources 28 July: Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak has decided after much agonizing and consultation to keep Egypt out of the upcoming American campaign against Iraq. This exclusive information reaches DEBKAfilefrom sources in Cairo and Madrid – Mubarak’s last port of call. He has also decided not to permit the US to use Egyptian military bases for the campaign The Egyptian ruler thus places himself on the same Middle East square occupied by Saudi crown prince Abdullah since last year. In the last ten days Mubarak, hard pressed to make up his mind, sought advice from friends and allies in Europe. On July 20, he paid an unannounced call on Saudi king Fahd at his holiday palace on the shores of Lake Geneva, followed by a visit to the President of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Said Nayanan, who is vacationing nearby. Four days later, Mubarak came calling on French president Jacques Chirac in Paris and, on July 26, he held discussions in Madrid with Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar. According to our sources, the Egyptian ruler solicited support for his decision in all those visits. Mubarak’s stance has sharpened the divisions in the Arab world and heightened instabilities in at least one capital Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria now lead the opponents of an American military move against Saddam Hussein; Jordan, Kuwait and Qatar head the proponents. A. This realignment drops in the middle of a long festering dispute at the top level of the House of Saud. Fresh rumors picked up by DEBKAfile’s Gulf sources speak of a failed attempt on the life of the ailing king Fahd in Jeddah, on or around mid-May, shortly before he departed for his summer vacation in Geneva. This incident added fuel to the running feud between the Sudeiri faction of the royal house, led by Fahd and his full brother, defense minister Prince Sultan (the leading contender for the succession against Abdullah and father of the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar), and the group led by their half-brother, the regent Abdullah. B. Riyadh now shows an angry face to the Gulf Emirates siding with US action against Baghdad. The Saudis have stopped attending Gulf Security Cooperation Council meetings, refusing to sit at the same table as rulers they look down on as American collaborators. Saudi-Qatari ties have been effectively severed, with Qatari notables no longer welcome in the oil kingdom, while Saudi relations with Kuwait have likewise soured. C. On the flip side of the coin, Jordanian military and businessmen are suddenly welcome in Kuwait for the first time since the 1991 Gulf War when Jordan sided with Iraq. Jordan and Qatar have also struck up a warm friendship. The report of an attempt to murder King Fahd is the talk of the moment in the Gulf. It is claimed that the monarch’s bodyguard fought off a band of 5 to 7 intruders, who gained entry to the palace courtyard in Jeddah through one of the main gates after setting off a large explosive charge. Three of the would be assassins were killed; the rest fled when armed reinforcements poured in from neighboring princely palaces, together with a contingent of the special Saudi counter-terror force. The bodies were identified as Saudi members of al Qaeda who fought in Afghanistan, escaped through Iran and arrived home last January. The identity of one of the dead assailants seriously heated factional tempers in the royal family; he is said to have been a member of the Wahhabist Uteiba tribe, loyal adherents of crown prince Abdullah. For some months, the Sudeiri princes have warned Abdullah that his permissive policy toward returning al Qaeda fighters - and the lavish living allowances awarded them from religious institutions and charities - would lead to trouble in the kingdom. Some have hired out as bodyguards protecting the princes of Abdullah’s faction, religious leaders and tribal chiefs in the Jeddah district. Sudeiri prince Salman, governor of the Riyadh region, was fiercest in his criticism. He warned Abdullah that by making Saudi intelligence and security services grant the returning terrorists clearances as bodyguards for official personalities, he was effectively opening the door to al Qaeda’s penetration of the national security agencies. The nub of the argument, according to DEBKAfile’s Saudi experts, is that while the Sudeiris perceive Abdullah’s patronage of al Qaeda veterans as a major threat to their own security, the crown prince believes he is taking out insurance for his regime’s survival. The differences between the two factions appear to be irreconcilable. They have brought King Fahd out of semi-retirement and induced him to return to political life. Visitors at the palace in Geneva report that, while confined to a wheel chair, the king looks brighter and more alert than he has been for a long time. Among his Arab visitors this week were Mubarak and King Abdullah of Jordan, both of whom congratulated him on his safe escape. On Saturday, July 27, the Saudi king had two secret visitors from his Sudeiri clan: Prince Salman and deputy defense minister Abdul Rahman, the strongman of the military establishment. This unfolding showdown in the oil kingdom has not been lost on President George W. Bush in Washington. Confronted with crown prince Abdullah’s flat refusal to participate in the US offensive against Iraq or allow its use of Saudi bases (as reported repeatedly in DEBKA-Net-Weekly in recent issues), the Bush administration has turned back with a will to America’s traditional allies in Riyadh, the Sudeiri princes, favoring them against Abdullah’s sternly Islamist camp. The standoff between the two has yet to be resolved. It also has a Palestinian offshoot. Despite the clear anti-American, pro-al Qaeda stance adopted by the Saudi crown prince, some Israeli political circles are echoing the view current in some West European capitals that Abdullah’s peace initiative is still alive and the Saudis are working for a ceasefire with the Palestinian Tanzim, the Hamas and the Jihad Islami. Some European publications have even run an upside down picture of the reality in Riyadh, labeling Abdullah as the leader of the pro-American faction in the Saudi royal family, and Sultan and his brothers as the sponsors of al Qaeda. To keep the record straight amid a welter of misinformation, DEBKAfile’s Palestinian sources reiterate that no Saudis are involved in Palestinian issues at the moment – certainly not in any attempts to broker a ceasefire. They are far too busy with the trouble in their own house. ________________________________________ Contd. from opp. col. 2. On Tuesday, July 23, an important letter went out from Fayyad to Arafat’s Ramallah office. It contained a dry request to hand over, in the interests of regular accounting, the ledgers, bills, receipts and other documentation pertaining to the financial activities of the chairman’s bureau of the Palestinian Authority. The request also covered Palestinian-Israeli partnerships in onopolies for the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The new Palestinian finance minister is evidently determined to find out not only what Arafat’s men got up to with public funds, but also the extent to which some Israelis were involved. One way or another, Fayyad will eventually lay hands on this information and when he does, he will certainly relay it to Washington. He has thus laid a time bomb for high Palestinian Authority officials, but also created a potential source of embarrassment for some of the Israelis who contracted business with Arafat and his henchmen after the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords. Rejecting the broad European perception of Palestinian violence as a legitimate liberation struggle, the Bush administration resents the EU’s latest maneuver, regarding it as an EU attempt to rescue the three Palestinian terrorist groups – the al Aqsa brigades, the Hamas and the Jihad Islami and, by association, their ally, the Hizballah - from the consequences of their terrorist campaign. Solana’s efforts are treated in Washington as an impediment to the comprehensive US assault on global terror. Naming the very Palestinian groups fostered by the EU, the United States was meant to cut the ground from under the Solana initiative. American strategy at the UN Security Council is echoed in the Middle East by tangible advances in Washington’s program for building a new Palestinian administration, as DEBKAfile’s sources report. 1. Sunday, July 28, Israel is transferring its first down payment of NS.70 million (roughly $15 million) of frozen tax receipts due to the Palestinians directly to the new Palestinian finance minister Salam Fayyad. The Sharon government is making the transfer, apparently acting under American pressure, to a Palestinian official who is an American citizen and enjoys the trust of the Bush administration and the International Monetary Fund. The payment is designated first for urgent humanitarian needs, but a portion will also be earmarked for the creation of a new US-Palestinian-Israel mechanism to keep track of all incoming funds and make sure not a cent or shekel reaches Arafat’s tottering Palestinian Authority or its still dangerous terrorist arms. 7:11 PM 7/29/2002 ********************************** 9:54 PM 7/29/2002 Waiting for Bush DEBKAfile Special Analysis, 16 June, 2002 The Middle East statement/ communiqué/ address US President George W. Bush has promised this week has put the region on high suspense. Most of its prominent leaders have crossed the Atlantic to make sure of a word in the president’s ear in good time. The Palestinians have registered their basic demand for a Palestinian state in two years, even though their sponsor, Saudi foreign minister Saud al Faisal, who was the last White House visitor from the region, was more modest, demanding only a Palestinian homeland. In the view of DEBKAfile’s political sources, the principal goal of the Bush statement will not be solving the Palestinian issue, but generating the best possible circumstances for the coming US offensive against Iraq. Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, during his visit last April to the presidential ranch in Crawford, Texas, set out the oil kingdom’s price for backing the American offensive: Washington must show the Arab world a more “balanced” approach on the Palestinian-Israeli issue. This proposition kindled hopes in sections of the Bush administration, principally secretary of state Colin Powell, that Riyadh was not a lost case. Making Israel pay the price does not appear extortionate in those circles and might even win the Europeans round to at least token participation in the campaign against Saddam Hussein. At the same time, none of the parties is under any illusion that this trade-off can be anything but short lived, if not illusory. They are going through the motions in order to get the strike against Iraq moving. Even if Bush promises to force Israel to accept a Palestinian state within six months and evacuate every last settlement in three, they all know that Yasser Arafat will never turn away from terrorism to the end of his days, especially the suicide variety which he proudly regards as the apex of his achievement in the Muslim context. All the parties are equally aware that for the US president a terrorist is a terrorist and not to be tolerated. Therefore, the White House team will attempt the impossible, to draft a statement that suffices to win Saudi Arabia and Egypt round to supporting America’s war on Iraq – a doubtful prospect - as well satisfying Europe – which is just as dubious. The European Union as a bloc has finally decided that it does not like George Bush. This does not stop Eurocrats saying all the things Washington wants to hear, while at the same time sabotaging its policies. On Saturday, June 15, for example, Europe added to its black list of terrorist organizations the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an arm of Arafat’s Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestinian, whose leader is held in Jericho for ordering the assassination of an Israeli cabinet minister, and the Palestine Liberation Front. Hardly 24 hours went by before Europe announced the resumption of its $15 million subsidy to the Palestinian Authority – with more to come, after Israel failed to convince their representatives of Arafat’s direct implication in Palestinian terrorism. The flow of funds was interrupted when Washington protested Europe’s overt funding of the Palestinian suicide campaign against Israeli civilians. Once again, the European taxpayer will be financing Arafat’s suicide brigades. Israel is unlikely to be better satisfied than the Arabs and the Europeans. Prime minister Ariel Sharon would prefer no statement at all, but whatever Bush says, he will present it as a feat of his government’s diplomacy. The US President will most probably set his sights on the lowest common denominator for Arab- European-Israeli-Palestinian consensus in order to propel the Middle East into a new era. He will not be the first US leader to aim for this goal and fail. Saddam Hussein, Bashar Assad, Yasser Arafat and Hasan Nasrallah will unleash the flames of terror and violence to make sure he does, however forthcoming he may be. Five years ago, President Clinton made the grand gesture of appearing before the Palestinian National Council in the Gaza Strip and emotionally announcing US support for an independent Palestine. This solemn occasion, termed at the time as the greatest Palestinian political achievement, has long been drowned out by wave upon wave of terror and suicide killings that Arafat orchestrated in the interim. The Palestinian leader cares nothing for US presidential utterances; nothing can turn him away from the path of violence and bloodshed as long as he is convinced that this is the only way to vanquish and obliterate Israel. Top Nuclear Fist-Shaking in S. Asia and Mid East DEBKAfile Special Political-Military Analysis, 15 June, 2002 On Wednesday, June 12, out of the blue, the Iraqi foreign ministry issued a far from routine communiqué: It vilified Israel’s launch of a new spy satellite (Ofek-5 on May 28) as posing a “threat to Arab national security as a whole…providing additional evidence” of Israel’s “hostile and aggressive intentions towards Arab states” and exposing its quest to expand its “alien” presence and spread its hegemony over the region. Arab states were urged to “take all necessary measures to face and contain the repercussions” of the missile launch. After running the Iraqi communiqué, Space Daily noted that India and Turkey are among the potential customers of the Ofek-5 satellite intelligence data. The next day, June 13, the foreign ministry in Baghdad was busy again. A note was sent off to the UN secretary accusing the United States of being on the point of a nuclear attack on Iraq. Israel was charged merely with possession of nuclear weapons – not the intention to use them, although the Baghdad message pointed out that Israel had bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor exactly 19 years ago. The implication is clear: The Israeli space satellite was placed in orbit in advance of the projected American attack on Iraq. It was there also to service the Turkish armed forces taking part in that assault, as well as assisting India in its coming conflict with Pakistan. Another vital piece in this menacing mosaic appeared first in DEBKAfile and DEBKA-Net-Weeklyas early as September 7, 2001, a report that Israel had been commissioned by India to set up an electronic fence in Kashmir with six main electronic early warning stations based on the Israeli-made Green Pine radar system. These disclosures portend the two major conflicts expected to be fought this year being the most extensively electronics-based wars in military history. Both the US campaign against Iraq and the Indian-Pakistani conflict will unveil missile and surveillance systems never seen before. A strong nuclear dimension also appears unavoidable. On Saturday, June 15, the Washington Post reported Israel had armed three diesel submarines with newly-designed cruise missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. On May 11, 2001, thirteen months ago, DEBKA-Net-Weekly, Issue No. 12,revealed: India’s nuclear collaboration plan hinges on the three Israeli 1,925-ton 800-class German-made Dolphin-class submarines, which are armed with Israel-designed 1,500-km range Popeye Turbo cruise missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. This flotilla is sought as a second strike capability for the Indian air force and naval units present in the Arabian Sea opposite Pakistan. Israel maintains one or sometimes two of those submarines permanently in Persian Gulf waters as a sea-launched deterrent force – its second-tier, first strike capability, against Iran and Iraq. Picture: Israeli cruise missiles in American publications This month, on June 7, 2002, DEBKA-Net-Weeklyagain reported that Israeli Dolphin-class submarines, like other naval and air units, were permanently using the big air and naval base on Eritrea’s Red Sea Dahlak Archipelago, near the confluence of the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. All of a sudden, for some weeks now, the United States, India, Pakistan, Israel, Iran and Iraq have become exceptionally outspoken about war preparations. With uncharacteristic openness, they have burst into speech on the use of use of nuclear weapons. The announcement in Washington on Friday, June 14, of the expulsion of the first secretary at the Iraqi UN mission, Abdul Rahman Saad, for espionage, was another element in the rhetorical escalation. All in all, the war of words sounds as though it is nearing the point of spilling over into deeds. Most governments have three possible reasons for giving publicity to the types of weaponry in the hands of adversaries: 1. They are just about ready to make their first military move - in the case of Iran and Iraq, their military preparations would also entail a mega-terror attack, for which they need to soften up world opinion in advance. 2. As a hands-off signal from the potential victim’s intelligence service to the would-be aggressor that “all is known” and reprisals are store if he goes ahead. 3. When signs of popular unrest or military disaffection against the leadership of the enemy’s camp are detected. Certain revelations may have the power to whip up outright domestic opposition to the enemy government. In this context, Baghdad, conscious that the United States is on the threshold of a decisive military move, published its intelligence estimate that America plans a nuclear attack. The Iraqis have no certain knowledge of the form the American strike will take, whether nuclear bombs or only tactical devices, but it hopes exposure of this intent will put the Americans off whatever they plan. India and Pakistan may have crossed the point of no return in their war plans. It is now evident that the visits paid by defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld last week to New Delhi and Islamabad did little more than postpone the eruption for which both nuclear nations have set their faces. In the Middle East, a military clash between Israel on one side and Syria and the Lebanese Hizballah is very much in the cards. Since Damascus and Baghdad are bound by mutual defense treaties, the Hizballah is militarily affiliated to Teheran and Damascus - and all these parties are in close military and political alliance with the Palestinians – an Israel-Syrian border confrontation could quickly light the fire of war under the entire region. The belligerents in this case would proliferate to encompass the United States, possibly Britain, as well as Israel, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, the Hizballah and the Palestinians. India and Pakistan are fully engaged in this war of words. It cannot be ruled out therefore that a Middle East war will be accompanied by a war on the subcontinent. DEBKAfile’s military experts estimate that September is the next likely date for these chain-reaction conflicts to erupt into full-scale belligerence. The nuclear dimension of the India-Pakistan conflict is self-evident. DEBKAfile’s military sources on the Indian subcontinent report that behind the smiling, relaxed welcome the Pentagon leaders received from Indian and Pakistan leaders, they were shocked to find both smoothly discussing nuclear combat and the death of many millions in this war – their estimate is as high as 10-15 million - as inevitable and acceptable. India’s military chiefs and its Kashmir commanders are described as clamoring for the Vajpayee to go to war without delay. Intelligence reports from the field indicate that India’s front-line troops, including air force and naval units, are tired of waiting for the government in New Delhi to give the signal and growing restive. There are similar pressures in Pakistan. In Islamabad, high Pakistan officers told Rumsfeld that if India attacks, Washington had better be prepared for Pakistan to rally Muslims from all over Asia in a holy jihad against India. Having invested so much in an Islamic nuclear bomb, Pakistan would “lose face” if it was not used. An India-Pakistan war game played a few weeks ago at the US Naval War College charted this scenario: An al Qaeda terror attack triggers an Indian-Pakistani war. India invades Pakistan; Pakistan, whose army is half the size of India’s, falls back, firing off 3-4 nuclear missiles to cover its retreat and stop the Indian advance; India retaliates with 10-12 nuclear missiles. Israel’s border with Syria and Lebanon is just as incendiary. Week after week, President Bashar Assad has been building up the military tension since early April. DEBKAfile’s military sources report that Syria and the Hizballah have in those two months set up a missile wall along their border with Israel, made up of thousands of projectiles capable of pounding all of northern Israel and parts of its central heartland. Israel has held back from firing a single shot to interfere with this buildup out of a misconceived tactical reluctance to open a second front while its military hands are full keeping Palestinian terrorists from attack Israeli civilians. Encouraged by Israel’s passivity, the Syrian leader in early June ordered his army chiefs to extend its missile line along the Syrian-Lebanese frontier, including also the Syrian-Israel dividing line cutting through the Golan Heights. Part of this new array forms a defensive loop around the strategic Lebanese Beqaa valley, where the most important cluster of Syrian, Iranian and Hizballah bases is situated. For Syria, the Lebanese Beqaa is its main line of defense against an assault on Damascus from the west. A number of Israeli security and military chiefs disclosed last week that Israel was on the point of a strike against Syria in late April but pulled back at the eleventh hour. Their tone was one of frustration. Since late April, Syria has not let the grass grow under its feet. A military strike now would have to contend not just with one line of missiles but two, a far costlier operation in military and civilian casualties than it would have been six weeks ago. The conviction is gaining among Israel’s military strategists that, as the American campaign against Baghdad draws near, it will be harder to disentangle the Iraqi front from the Syrian-Palestinian arena, with possible Iranian involvement. This means that the delayed attack against Syria will force Israel to fight on three or four fronts - not just two, against Iraq and Iran as well, both of whom are possessed of limited nuclear capabilities. Under the shadow of these darkening clouds, the global war on terror declared by US President George W. Bush is fast losing its focal edge. Top US UAV Crashes over Iranian Passageway for al Qaeda Kurds DEBKAfile Special Report, 14 June, 2002 Iranian government spokesman Abdllah Ramezanzadeh handled with extreme care the Tehran press reports of a US unmanned plane crashing late last month near the city of Korba in Iran’s northwestern province of Kurdistan. He confirmed the crash, but said the wreckage had been scattered too widely in the mountainous region to establish the drone’s ownership. It was clear that he was clearly making a supreme effort to avoid saying the aircraft belonged to the United States. DEBKAfile’s military sources say publication of the report in the Iranian press was a symptom of the growing anxiety in Tehran over possible US and Israeli military action against Iran’s military industrial facilities manufacturing weapons of mass destruction and its soon-to-be-completed nuclear reactor at Bushehr on the Gulf. The northwestern area where the US drone was shot down is home to a vast number of these military installations, such as the Mu’allem Kalaych, where gas centrifuge equipment used to enrich uranium is reportedly stored and weapons-grade nuclear materiel manufactured. Another site in the area, called Qazvin, is a principal facility for chemical weapons. The Iranians are well aware that the United States cannot afford to demolish Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction without simultaneously striking theirs. Washington understands that action against Iraq alone would leave Iran the strongest power in the Gulf, an unacceptable consequence in view of Tehran’s attempts to sabotage Washington’s military and political designs in Afghanistan and its continuing provision of an escape route to al Qaeda fighters crossing in from Afghanistan and Pakistan. DEBKAfile’s military sources say Tehran has mostly itself to blame for the undue attention its northwest regions are winning from the United States. For reasons known only to themselves, Iranian leaders agreed to open a passageway through this sensitive area for Kurdish veterans of al Qaeda action in Afghanistan or Kashmir to transit on their way to the Kurdish provinces of northern Iraq. Iraqi authorities give those returning fighters a warm welcome and promptly recruit them to Baghdad’s “Kurdish national battalion”, currently deployed in an Iraqi army camp near the oil city of Mosul. The Iraqis hope to send their Kurdish fighters into battle against the anti-Iraqi Kurdish forces mustered by the US, which are currently being trained in northern Iraq by CIA and US Special Forces instructors. A separate group of Kurdish Afghan is on the move for the last four years from Iraq through Iran and heading west, via Syria, intoLebanon, to join the Hizballah guerrillas intermittently attacking Israel. Avid interest in Iranian Kurdistan was therefore to be expected, together with surveillance pilot-less craft and space satellites, on the part not only of America, but also Israel and whomsoever owns an interest in the goings-on in this remote and pivotal corner, such as Turkey. Top Overlapping Interests in Bush-Sharon Talks DEBKAfile Special Report, 11 June, 2002 President George W. Bush’s conversation with Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon on Monday, June 10, rounded off a series of White House consultations with Middle East leaders, starting with Saudi crown prince Abdullah and including Jordanian king Abdullah and Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. A scarcely noticed omission was Syrian foreign minister Farouk Shara, who called off his planned trip to Washington - for very good reason. Syria was the key issue on the Bush-Sharon agenda. The Palestinian issue figured no higher than third item down because of the broad consensus between the two leaders. The US president signed on to the Israeli prime minister’s proposition that Yasser Arafat’s administration has a long way to go towards reform before a possible Middle East summit can convene. According to the Bush statement in his joint appearance with Sharon before reporters, the conference is not there yet “because no one has confidence in the emerging Palestinian government.” That disposed of, DEBKAfile’s political sources in Washington report that Sharon gave the US president a detailed rundown of the Assad regime’s active backing of terror and its involvement in plans for mega-terror attacks in Israel. He said that Damascus, seat of the most extreme Palestinian organizations and transit station for al Qaeda operatives moving around the Middle East, was building a powder keg under Israel and regional stability by its massive arming and support of the Lebanese Hizballah; not just thousands of 220mm Katyusha rockets, missiles, artillery and ammunition, but also chemical warheads for the group’s short-range missiles. Syria, said the Israeli prime minister, is topping up Iranian airlifted supplies for the Hizballah of weapons systems and heavy weapons via Damascus. He added that President Bashar Assad is not acting on his own. He is the recipient of quiet political and financial support from the Saudi crown prince Abdullah. To all intents and purposes, the Saudi rulers are keeping their hands clean of abetting Islamic terrorists; instead, they pay the Syrian leader to act on their behalf. Assad pushes his Saudi patron’s real agenda in the Middle East while the crown prince is free to promote his Middle East peace plan in Washington behind a blameless façade. On May 21 or 22, the presidential palace in Damascus gave Hizballah leaders the green light - plus logistical and military support – to liaise with the Palestinians for concurrent terror operations inside Israel, by means of the seven or eight Hizballah cells planted across the border. In the Gaza Strip, they operate in conjunction with “popular resistance committees”, Islamic groups and Muhamed Dahlan’s security apparatus; in the West Bank and among Israeli Arabs, they are partnered by the Jihad Islami and the Israeli Islamic Movement under the overall command of West Bank general intelligence and al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades chief Col. Tawfiq Tirawi. Last month, Syrian military intelligence instructed Syria’s protege, Ahmed Jibril, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, to send Gaza Strip Palestinians a supply of motorized parachutes and gliders made in Spain, Italy and Germany to facilitate incursions across into Israel for mega-terror operations. In view of the explosive terror build-up orchestrated from Damascus - and coordinated at the strategic level also with Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein - Sharon is quoted by DEBKAfile’s political sources in Washington as advising Bush that a Middle East peace conference, like the one urged by the US State Department, would simply be the cue for a major flare-up on Israel’s northern frontier and/or a mega-terror attack to sabotage any peace efforts. The same applied to any serious consideration of the Saudi crown prince’s peace proposal. According to DEBKAfile’s military sources, Bush also conferred with Sharon on America’s military preparations for its campaign against Iraq, in particular, areas of overlapping interests, such as defending Jordan against Iraqi invasion or attack and US-Israel defenses against Iraqi chemical or biological attack on Israel or US military targets in the Middle East. Tuesday, June 11, the Israeli prime minister zipped round Washington, touring Capitol Hill, meeting leaders of Congress and members of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. Monday and Tuesday, he called on Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condaleezza Rice and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. He also conferred with American Jewish leaders, before taking off for home via London for a brief encounter with Tony Blair. Top Arafat Lends New Government Pro-Iraqi Tilt DEBKAfile Exclusive Intelligence Sources, 9 June, 2002 Yasser Arafat unveiled his new government with loud fanfare Sunday, June 9, in advance of Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon’s talks with US president George W. Bush in the White House Monday. No one expected much more than cosmetic reforms as a sop to international pressure. However, according to DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources, the new reforms are far from cosmetic. They are meant as a resounding slap in the eye for Bush – and a two-handed punch for Sharon. Last week, two visitors Arafat received in Ramallah urged him to overhaul his bloated, corrupt and terrorist-ridden government – first Egyptian intelligence chief Genera Omar Suleiman, followed by the CIA director George Tenet. They warned him that if he did not mend his ways, he would be even more isolated internationally than he is already. Fine, said the Palestinian leader, and proposed unearthing an old Palestinian legislative council act that he never signed into law limiting the number of Palestinian ministers to 19. Suleiman and Tenet eyed the proposal suspiciously; Egyptian president Hosni Mubarek enthusiastically. He went off to Camp David with Arafat’s plan to show Bush that the Palestinian leader deserves another chance. The US president was not convinced – fortunately, as it turned out. It took Arafat less than a week to show his hand. Instead of 19 ministers, he appointed 21 – simply to show the world who gives the orders – not Tenet, Suleiman or the reform faction in the Palestinian leadership – but Yasser Arafat. Next, he stressed the new cabinet had been appointed by “presidential decree” – not as a prerogative of the legislative council. This distanced the Palestinian regime still further from the democratic norms demanded by the international community, further centralizing his sole control But his most important action was the least conspicuous: the appointment of retired General Abdel-Razzaq al-Yahya as key interior minister and head of the newly-streamlined security force. The 73-year old retired army man is general depicted as a nonentity with no chance of exercising authority over such powerful security and intelligence figures as Tawfiq Tirawi and Muhamad Dahlan. However, DEBKAfile’s intelligence and military sources tell a different story. Al-Yahya who lives permanently in Amman is very close to the heads of Iraqi military intelligence in Baghdad and hobnobs frequently with Iraqi agents based in the Jordanian capital. In view of his pro-Baghdad inclinations, DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources in Tel Aviv and Amman see no obstacle to the new interior minister working in close harness with Tawfiq Tirawi, Arafat’s most trusted West Bank security chief and commander of the Fatah’s al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades - particularly when Tirawi maintains a strong working relationship with Iraqi military intelligence agents operating in the West Bank. Al-Yahya’s appointment will therefore strengthen the pro-Baghdad faction in the Palestinian leadership, which consisted until now of only one minister, Azzam al Ahmad, who stays on as minister for public works. Al-Ahmad is in fact Arafat’s liaison man with Saddam Hussein and one of the few Palestinians whom the Iraqi ruler trusts implicitly. Our sources also report that in the last few days, a new arrival has joined Arafat’s innermost circle, Samir Rochah, head of the Arabian Struggle Front, a stooge of Iraqi military intelligence. Nothing in the Palestinian leader’s milieu is ever fortuitous. Rocha’s turning up is another signpost to the Palestinian Authority’s pro-Baghdad tilt under Arafat’s lead. His reforms are therefore of deep significance for the Palestinian posture towards Israel and the internal balance of the Middle East, just as a pro-Iraqi departure by any government in the region would be. Top Bush and Tenet Meet Kurdish Leaders in Preparation for Iraq Assault DEBKAfile Special Analysis, 8 June, 2002 DEBKAfile’s sources in Washington and Jerusalem agree that the talks President George W. Bush is conducting with President Hosni Mubarak over the weekend at Camp David and his White House meeting next Monday, June 10, with Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, are no more than time fillers for Washington to gather itself for the main US offensive against Iraq. The promise of a presidential policy statement following those meetings is more of the same. Bush has nothing new to add to his Middle East vision of a Palestinian state alongside Israel and his regular finger-shaking at Arafat for “not doing more” to stem Palestinian terror. As things stand now, even this remote “vision” sounds farfetched. The presidential conception of a free, democratic state whose back is turned on terrorism and corruption and is ruled by leaders other than Arafat is more like a mirage than a vision. It therefore came as no surprise when DEBKAfile’s military and Middle East sources discovered that much of last week’s US diplomatic bustle and hustle around the Israel-Palestinian conflict was camouflage for a secret channel of activity that added another brick to America’s preparations for striking Iraq. CIA Director George Tenet, while on official business in Cairo, Jerusalem and Ramallah to reorganize Palestinian security forces for fighting terror, was secretly engaged on another mission: the setting up and training of a Kurdish military force to fight Saddam Hussein alongside the United States. According to one report, this assignment took him on an undercover visit to the northern Jordanian town of Anah, close to the Jordanian-Iraqi-Syrian frontier junction, where he met three groups: the commanders of the advance US Special Forces units and CIA combat contingents, who have been in Iraq under cover since mid-March, Kurdish leaders and officers of the Israeli force stationed in Jordan. According to another source, Tenet actually crossed the Euphrates into northern Iraq, where he inspected the Abu Arazi Oasis, one of the training installations for Kurdish recruits. The Kurdish leaders he met, Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and Masoud Barazani, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), are old foes who have come together to join the American military operation for unseating Saddam Hussein. Their price, according to DEBKAfile ’s intelligence sources, was a personal guarantee from the US president that America would use all its military might to protect the Kurdish tribes of North Iraq against Iraqi military punishment before, during and after the US campaign, so that the tragic events of 1996 are never repeated. Eight years ago, when CIA forces first tried to assemble a Kurdish army against Saddam, Kurdish renegades betrayed the operation to Iraqi military intelligence, passing enough information for Iraqi forces to wipe out the CIA training camps and bases in northern Iraq. President Bill Clinton ordered US intelligence officers to exit Iraq forthwith, leaving the Kurds to their fate. Iraqi tank columns massacred some three to four thousand Kurdish fighters, while several hundred escaped into Turkey, who handed them over to the Americans. Until recently, the Kurdish refugees in the US were denied any status; some were even indicted on charges of collaboration with Iraq. Last week, on the recommendation of the CIA director, President Bush and other top US officials, including defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, received the two Kurdish chieftains. None of the American moves have been lost on Saddam Hussein. DEBKAfile’s military sources report he has responded by relocating around six elite divisions of his Republican guard in the north and west, unwillingly tipping his hand on the Iraqi defense plan against a potential US-Kurdish-Turkish offensive coming from the north. Dividing those divisions into two armies, the Iraqi command moved one out of Kirkuk and stationed it along the Lesser Zab River that washes down from the mountains dividing Iraq from Iran into the Tigris. The second army is disposed in western Iraq along the Tharthar Wadi, 90 km northwest of Baghdad. This deployment indicates that Saddam expects the deep Kurdish push towards Baghdad to be part of a wholesale thrust of American, Jordanian or Israeli tank forces, accompanied by a US air and missile bombardment. Iraq’s military movements this week were the cue for the Jordanian army to go into a state of battle preparedness and spread out along the Iraqi frontier. Jordanian King Abdullah paid an unscheduled trip to the Saudi Red Sea town of Jeddah on Wednesday, June 5. Although the visit was officially related to “diplomatic efforts to ease Israeli-Palestinian tensions”, the Jordanian monarch is reported by DEBKAfile’s Middle East sources as petitioning the Saudi crown prince for support against Iraq. All these maneuvers are still in progress. DEBKAfile’s military sources predict their accompaniment by escalating Palestinian terrorist assaults against Israel. Yasser Arafat will do all he can to back up Saddam’s military moves and impede American efforts to unseat him. He knows that if the Iraqi ruler is weakened or finished, the Arafat regime will go the same way. His Baghda-Tehran-Riyadh-Damascus-Hizballah support-and-supply group is a vital element for his survival. Palestinian terrorists rely heavily on Iraq for arms, particularly explosives, which Iraqi military intelligence smuggles through Jordan to Syria, where its is relayed by Syrian military intelligence, the Hizballah and Ahmed Jibril’s PFLP couriers to destination. In the light of this fresh impetus in war preparations against Iraq, Mubarak and Sharon will not be surprised to find that their talks with the US president and their peace plans are not the most important item of business in the US capital. Top New US “hot pre-emption” Strategy Applies Equally to Indian-Pakistani, Israel-Palestinian Conflicts DEBKAfile’s Political Analysts, 3 June, 2002 In a lengthy speech to West Point graduates Sunday, President George W. Bush articulated a shift in his war on global terror. The familiar threats to “rout them out” or “find them wherever they are” were replaced for the first time by a warning to Americans “to be ready for pre-emptive action to defend our liberty and to defend our lives”. Warning of the continuing danger, he said, “We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt its plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge.” Last week, the former secretary of state George Shultz spoke of a war that is “not just one of hot pursuit, but of hot pre-emption”- a buzz phrase quickly adopted by the New York Times columnist William Safire. However, Shultz, addressing the US Foreign Service, defined his terms precisely: He refuted the oft-heard complaint (notably, in relation to the Palestinians) that it is impossible to distinguish “terrorists” from “freedom fighters.” President Reagan’s secretary of state ventured to do just that. Terrorists, he said, practice “random violence on as large a scale as possible against civilian populations to make their points or get their way,” he said. The battle must be taken to such forces before they strike, he added. New definitions for the war on terror are all the rage in Washington these days. A semantic barrage is filling an urgent need to clear minds on ways and means of combating terror and, no less urgently, to clear away yesterday’s truisms cluttering up today’s tactical terrain. Jim Hoagland, senior Washington Post strategic analyst, referring to the war buildup between India and Pakistan, wrote Sunday, June 2: “In two years – the time it has taken to go from Bill Clinton, Israel’s Ehud Barak and Colombia’s Andres Pastrana to Bush, Ariel Sharon and President-elect Alvaro Uribe Velez – key governments have shifted to fighting instead of trying to co-opt and legitimize ‘the hard men’ who organize bombers, shooters and arsonists to force political change through bloodshed. ”The US Air Force and Israel’s Defense Forces have already written out Shultz’s suggested strategy in steel and fire in Afghanistan and on the West bank. Uribe suggests he will do the same against Colombia’s narco-terrorists. And Pakistan, which professes to support America against the “terrorists” of al Qaeda while silently giving tangible support to the “freedom fighters” of Kashmir, has provided India with a golden opportunity to join the club of hot pre-emptors.” In the view of this columnist, India can no longer be deterred from hitting back in Kashmir. Hoagland has rightly drawn a line between the India-Pakistan conflict and the Palestinian-Israeli confrontation as a new spate of Middle East diplomacy fills the airwaves. Mostly, it boils down to nagging the Israeli government to accept that the time for fighting is over and it must return to negotiating. European diplomats, in particular, are pulling hard to drag Israel to an international conference table opposite the Palestinians. Part of this scene is the running argument between Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon and Israel’s security leaders, chief of staff Lt.-Gen. Shaul Mofaz and the Shin Beit director Avi Dichter. Ever since the completion of Operation Defensive Shield a month ago placed Israeli forces outside Palestinian West Bank towns, the IDF has adopted the tactic of short incursions into those towns whenever a fresh batch of terrorists formed up for action – with limited success. Forty terrorist attacks were foiled, but half a dozen slipped through at the cost of 30 Israeli lives. Whenever the troops enter their strongholds, the terrorists freeze. They spring into action again as soon as the IDF withdraws. Mofaz is pressing for the Israeli army to reoccupy those towns and stay there till Yasser Arafat is gone for good. Dichter wants them on the inside until buffer zones are in place. Sharon and defense minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer defend the present tactic of sending the army back into Palestinian territory for brief spells - and only on the basis of solid intelligence pinpointing a strike about to take off. DEBKAfile’s military analysts argue that Sharon’s formula is far from foolproof; solid intelligence data cannot be guaranteed in advance of every single strike. However, the prime minister is following the Bush lead: preemption, yes; reoccupation, no. All the same, an air of unreality descended on the meeting in Jerusalem Sunday, June 2, when EU executive Javier Solana pulled out his diary to fix a date in the second half of July for a Middle East conference. The Clinton way of “co-opting and legitimizing the hard men” is patently history, except for some Eurocrats and parts of Israel’s self-styled peace camp. If the conference ever takes off at all - DEBKAfile’s Washington sources reports that September is the earliest time - the Bush agenda is scarcely to “legitimize” Yasser Arafat, but rather to use it as a litmus test of Egyptian and Saudi intentions regarding America’s hot pre-emption of Islamic terror. The test will come in the form of an economic cooperation program between the Arab world, led by Saudi Arabia, and Israel. If Crown Prince Abdullah spurns this program, Bush will take it to mean continuing Saudi bad faith in the pursuit of Islamic terror. As for Egypt, the White House regards the peace plan President Hosni Mubarak is bringing to Washington on June 7 as yet another Clinton-era device to legitimize Arafat and co-opt one of his top terror guns, Muhamed Dahlan to a mock process of reforming the Palestinian Authority. Trusting the US president to go through with his master plan, Sharon is prepared to stick to his assigned role of limited pre-emption - even if sometimes suicide terrorists make it past the IDF blockade of their towns to kill Israelis and he must brave the just disapproval of his chief of staff and head of the secret service. Top Weekend Diplomacy to Tie Last Ends of Gaza Strip Deal DEBKAfile Exclusive, 29 May, 2002 While the summer Middle East conference and Palestinian Authority reforms grab world headlines, DEBKAfile’s exclusive military and intelligence sources report senior diplomatic and intelligence officials in Washington, Cairo, Riyadh, Jerusalem and at least one European capital, namely Berlin, working against the clock to reshuffle the components of the Middle East crisis into a new pattern. Its broad lineaments were first aired in DEBKAfilein mid-April. The idea is to assemble the package in advance of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s trip to Camp David on June 7. To bring the deal this far, the White House had to make the divergent strands of its policy team speak with one voice. Therefore, assistant secretary of state William Burns spent Wednesday, 29 May, in Cairo talking to Egyptian leaders, at the same time as the defense department’s policy chief Douglas Feith. The two officials will work together on the final configuration and execution of the new plan, on behalf of secretary of state Colin Powell, on the one hand, and vice president Richard Cheney and defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, on the other. German foreign minister Joshke Fischer, in Israel since Tuesday, May 28, will represent the European interest. CIA Director George Tenet flies to Cairo or Jerusalem on Friday, May 31, to take charge of the final stage of the process. He will be joined in Jerusalem on Friday by Mubarak’s political adviser Osama al Baz, who will inform the Israeli prime minister, defense minister and foreign minister that Egypt agrees to free Azzam Azzam, who has spent five years in an Egyptian prison on charges of spying for Israel. Israeli ministers will reciprocate by releasing the eight Egyptian seamen captured aboard the Palestinian arms smuggling vessel intercepted on the Red Sea last January. But beyond these two goodwill gestures, the deal entails granting Yasser Arafat the freedom to travel and return to Palestinian territory, an essential concession for making the Palestinian leader a figurehead of the reformed Palestinian Authority. Upon the release of Azzam, Israel will endorse the Tenet plan to consolidate the jungle of Palestinian security and intelligence organs into four new Palestinian intelligence bodies based in the Gaza Strip. They will come under the direction of Muhamed Dahlan and be closely supervised by Egyptian intelligence. The collaboration of these four bodies with Israeli security will create a useful intelligence junction for the United States, Egypt, Israel and the PA to fight terror – Palestinian and international. Under another provision, the Egyptian army will be moved up to the frontier with Israel to block off a primary Palestinian arms and personnel smuggling route that runs through tunnels from Sinai into the Gaza Strip.