Article: U.S. May Be Refocusing On Iraq

Summary

Even with the cooperation several countries in the region have pledged, a U.S. air campaign against Afghanistan would be limited by geography and politics. Washington may now be turning to Iraq as an easier target. But although Baghdad may have offered support to Osama bin Laden at times, it was not likely involved in last week's terror attacks.

Analysis

Pakistan and some of the former Soviet republics bordering Afghanistan have agreed to cooperate in surgical, special operations against Osama bin Laden and some of his training camps in retaliation for the Sept. 11 attacks on America. However, it is becoming clear that an extended U.S. air campaign against Afghanistan would be severely limited by geography and politics.

Despite the pledge by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to cooperate, it is unclear whether he can honor that pledge and whether U.S. forces there would be sufficiently secure. In any case, mounting a sustained, punishing air campaign against Afghanistan is seen as extremely challenging logistically.

One of the goals of bin Laden and his followers is to demonstrate the limits of American power and the ability of the Islamic world to resist the United States. An inability to mount a meaningful air campaign against countries that host terrorist groups would undermine American credibility and prove bin Laden's point.

The United States is left with a dilemma. Washington must strike out at countries that support terrorism. But if Afghanistan is deemed the host country for last week's attackers, an air campaign of any magnitude against it will strain or exceed U.S. capabilities. U.S. planners have wrestled with this issue since Sept. 11.

One solution is to expand the set of countries considered hosts, which is what the United States has done in the past couple of days. Leaks from inside the intelligence community have shifted the focus away from Afghanistan, to some degree, and toward Iraq. And on Sept. 19 a major deployment of U.S. aircraft was sent to the Persian Gulf. It would be much easier to fly missions against Iraq than against Afghanistan from bases in the Persian Gulf.

The Israelis argued from the beginning that Iraq was deeply involved in last week's attacks, but their claims were a bit suspect because of their interest. They badly want Iraqi President Saddam Hussein crushed and his weapons of mass destruction -- existing or potential -- obliterated. They also do not want to see the United States enter into a dependent relationship with Pakistan. With all these factors in mind, Israel's claims of Iraqi culpability were given second place to Afghanistan.

Clearly U.S. intelligence is now taking a second, and quite public, look at Iraq. There is no question that Hussein is interested in any militant movement that would be prepared to strike at the United States. It is therefore possible that to the extent the attackers required state support, hardly valuable coming from Afghanistan, they would turn to Iraq.

But the attackers were also extremely sophisticated. They appeared to have minimized their direct contact with bin Laden and his bases in Afghanistan and elsewhere under the sound theory that U.S. intelligence might be listening to every word uttered, seeing every vehicle moving and intercepting every message.

That may or may not have been true, but it's what the attackers had to assume. One of the reasons they evaded detection is they were extremely disciplined in not being in contact with people under surveillance.

Close consultations with the Iraqis in the run-up to the operation would violate the attackers' operational procedures. If they assumed bin Laden was under scrutiny, they had to be certain that the Iraqis were being watched even more intensely. If there was direct contact between Iraq and the attackers just prior to the attack, then those meetings should have been monitored by U.S. intelligence capabilities.

A more likely scenario is that, in the course of their careers, some of the culprits had contact with Iraqi intelligence, either in Iraq or in a third country. Iraq undoubtedly provided support at various times. In that sense Iraq was certainly a host country.

But if the operation was planned and executed in conjunction with the Iraqis, then it is extraordinarily hard to imagine U.S. intelligence wouldn't have spotted it. So, while it is reasonable to assume the Iraqis helped bin Laden's forces at times, it's hard to believe they were directly involved in hatching the plot.

It must also be remembered that there is not a deep political affinity between Hussein and bin Laden. Although they share a hatred of the United States, beyond that they are a different generation of Arab.

Hussein takes his political bearings from a movement that is primarily secular, socialist, militarist and Arabist. Bin Laden comes from a very different, even hostile perspective: religious, believing in private property, and Islamic rather than Arabist.

Hussein's own political philosophy is not what would be called fastidious. His beliefs don't extend much behind his own interests. The same isn't true for bin Laden or the attackers. Men do not conduct suicide attacks out of self-interest. They do it out of belief. Therefore bin Laden might do business with Hussein, but he does not have the same sort of philosophical intimacy with him as with the Taliban.

Afghanistan hosted bin Laden. Iraq facilitated his operations at various points. But the fact is that although Washington can bomb Afghanistan, it cannot do so in a truly punishing manner. Iraq, on the other hand, is very convenient for an air attack. Such an attack would have the added benefit of striking at someone who, in the long run, is much more dangerous to American interests than are the Afghanis. Extending the list of nations that supported the attackers from one to two would solve a number of problems for the United States. U.S. strategy is beginning to take shape.

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