Saddams Capture: Was A Deal Brokered Behind
The Scenes?
By David Pratt
The
Sunday Herald (Scotland)
04 January, 2004
When
it emerged that the Kurds had captured the Iraqi dictator, the US celebrations
evaporated. David Pratt asks whether a secret political trade-off has
been engineered
For a story that three weeks ago gripped the world's imagination, it
has now all but dropped off the radar.
Peculiar really,
for if one thing might have been expected in the aftermath of Saddam
Hussein's capture, it was the endless political and media mileage that
the Bush administration would get out of it .
After all, for 249
days Saddam's elusiveness had been a symbol of America's ineptitude
in Iraq, and, at last, with his capture came the long-awaited chance
to return some flak to the Pentagon's critics.
It also afforded
the opportunity to demonstrate the effectiveness of America's elite
covert and intelligence units such as Task Force 20 and Greyfox .
And it was a terrific
chance for the perfect photo-op showing the American soldier, and Time
magazine's "Person of the Year", hauling "High Value
Target Number One" out of his filthy spiderhole in the village
of al-Dwar.
Then along came
that story: the one about the Kurds beating the US Army in the race
to find Saddam first, and details of Operation Red Dawn suddenly began
to evaporate.
US Army spokesmen
- so effusive in the immediate wake of Saddam's capture - no longer
seemed willing to comment, or simply went to ground.
But rumours of the
crucial Kurdish role persisted, even though it now seems their previously
euphoric spokesmen have now, similarly, been afflicted by an inexplicable
bout of reticence.
It was two weeks
ago that the Sunday Herald revealed how a Kurdish special forces unit
belonging to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) had spearheaded
and tracked down Saddam, sealing off the al-Dwar farmhouse long "before
the arrival of the US forces".
PUK leader Jalal
Talabani had chosen to leak the news and details of the operation's
commander, Qusrut Rasul Ali, to the Iranian media long before Saddam's
capture was reported by the mainstream Western press or confirmed by
the US military.
By the time Western
press agencies were running the same story, the entire emphasis had
changed however, and the ousted Iraqi president had been "captured
in a raid by US forces backed by Kurdish fighters".
In the intervening
few weeks that troublesome Kurdish story has gone around the globe,
picked up by newspapers from The Sydney Morning Herald to the US Christian
Science Monitor, as well as the Kurdish press.
While Washington
and the PUK remain schtum, further confirmation that the Kurds were
way ahead in Saddam's capture continues to leak out.
According to one
Israeli source who was in the company of Kurds at a meeting in Athens
early on December 14, one of the Kurdish representatives burst into
the conference room in tears and demanded an immediate halt to the discussions.
"Saddam Hussein
has been captured," he said, adding that he had received word from
Kurdistan - before any television reports.
According to the
Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the delegate also confirmed that most of
the information leading to the deposed dictator's arrest had come from
the Kurds and - as our earlier Sunday Herald report revealed - who had
organised their own intelligence network which had been trying to uncover
Saddam's tracks for months.
The delegate further
claimed that six months earlier the Kurds had discovered that Saddam's
wife was in the Tikrit area. This intelligence, most likely obtained
by Qusrut Rasul Ali and his PUK special forces unit, was transferred
to the Americans. The Kurds, however, are said to have never received
any follow-up from the coalition forces on this vital tip-off and were
furious.
Whatever the full
extent of their undoubted involvement in providing intelligence or actively
participating on the ground in Saddam's capture, the Kurds, and the
PUK in particular, would benefit handsomely.
Apart from a trifling
$25 million bounty, their status would have been substantially boosted
in Washington, which may in part explain the recent vociferous Kurdish
reassertion of their long-term political ambitions in the "new
Iraq".
For their own part
the Kurds have already launched a political arrangement designed to
secure their aspirations with respect to autonomy, if not nationalist
or separatist aspirations.
To show how serious
they are, the two main Kurdish groups, the PUK and the Kurdistan Democratic
Party (KDP), have decided to close ranks and set up a joint Kurdish
administration, with jobs being divided between the two camps. They
have made it clear to the Americans that their leadership has a responsibility
to their constituency.
Last week Massoud
Barzani, leader of the KDP, called for a revision of the power-transfer
agreement signed between the US-led coalition and Iraq's interim governing
council to recognise "Kurdish rights".
The November 15
agreement calls for the creation of a national assembly by the end of
May 2004 which will put in place a caretaker government by June, which
in turn will draft a new constitution and hold national elections
"The November
15 accord must be revised and 'Kurdish rights' within an Iraqi federation
must be mentioned," Barzani told a meeting of his supporters.
"The Kurds
are today in a powerful position but must continue the struggle to guard
their unity," he added.
This renewed determination
to fulfil their political objectives is shaking up other ethnic residents
in northern Iraq, who fear at best being marginalised; at worst victimised.
Over the last week there have been increasingly violent clashes between
Kurdish and Arab students, and between Kurds and Turkemens, in the oil
rich city of Kirkuk.
Such ethnic confrontations
point to another dangerous phase in Iraq's power-brokering. If the Kurds
did indeed capture Saddam first, and a deal was struck about his handover
to the US, then it's not inconceivable that the terms might have included
strong political and strategic advantages that could ultimately determine
the emerging power structure in Iraq.
©2003 newsquest
(sunday herald) limited.