Bush Fine-Tunes Enemies List

by Mushahid Hussain

This is the preparation for striking Iraq for what has been euphemistically proclaimed as "regime change" -- the replacement of the old U.S. nemesis, Saddam Hussein, with a Hamid Karzai-like friendly government in another strategic part of the Muslim world.

A strategic part it indeed is, because Iraq has 11 percent of the world's known oil supplies.

The first phase of the U.S.-led campaign began on Oct. 7, 2001 with the launching of the war against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which ended a month later with its collapse.

The second phase was launched in January 2002 when U.S. President George W. Bush called for combating the "axis of evil," as he termed Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

None of these states were accused of involvement in the Sept. 11 acts of terrorism in the United States, supporting the Taliban or even remotely being connected with the al Qaeda network.

But since that period, the regimes in Iraq and Iran have been demonized and attacked.

The third phase in the U.S.-led "war on terror" has now begun with the rather categorical assertion by the United States, including officials like Vice President Dick Cheney on Aug. 7, that nothing short of "regime change" in Baghdad will satisfy the Bush administration.

In effect, Saddam's softened gestures -- like inviting a U.S. congressional delegation to visit Iraq with technical experts to verify what he says are unsubstantiated allegations of building chemical, biological and nuclear weapons -- carry no weight with U.S. policymakers.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has already dismissed this offer by Iraq as a "joke."

It is in this context of a new drawing of battle lines in the Middle East, as a prelude to a war against Iraq, that signs that U.S. officials are viewing Saudi Arabia as the newest enemy are significant.

On Aug. 6, the Washington Post referred to a high-level briefing to the Pentagon where Saudi Arabia, publicly perceived to be the closest Arab ally of the United States, was depicted as an "enemy" and labeled the "most dangerous opponent" of American interests in the region.

The "sins" of Saudi Arabia were listed in graphic language in the Post story: "Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and attacks our allies," the latter an obvious reference to Israel, America's best friend in the Middle East.

It continued: "The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader," going to the extent of terming Saudi Arabia's Muslim monarchy as the "kernel of evil."

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, there has been a lurking suspicion in American official circles about Saudi Arabia, more so when it was discovered that 15 of the 19 hijackers of the planes that rammed into U.S. buildings on that day were from that country.

While Osama bin Laden himself is originally Saudi, he was expelled from his home country and his citizenship was cancelled, prompting him to flee first to the Sudan in 1992 and to Afghanistan in 1996.

Bin Laden is as much an opponent of the Saudi government as he is of the United States.

The basic reason for the apparent change in U.S. attitudes is the Saudi reticence to support an American attack an Iraq as well as its growing cordiality with Iran, both defined now as the American arch enemies in the Muslim world.

The Saudis have also been vocal in supporting a Palestinian state under Yasser Arafat, an option ruled out by the United States.

Perhaps an American takeover of Iraq is also viewed by hawks in Washington as furthering the goal of lessening U.S. dependence on Saudi Arabia's oil, estimated at 25 percent of the world's reserves.

The stark differences between the United States and Saudi Arabia are apparent in two separate meetings a week apart, and geographically and politically, a world apart.

On Aug. 9, U.S. officials convened a high-level meeting of all factions of anti-Saddam Iraqi opposition in Washington, in the first such public event meeting on U.S. territory.

These Iraqi dissident groups were to meet with the U.S. Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, to exchange views and mobilize for the "regime change" in Baghdad, and presumably the post-Saddam scenario.

A week earlier on Aug. 3, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al Feisal was in Tehran meeting with his Iranian hosts. "We have always opposed any attack against an Arab or Muslim country," he said.

On Aug. 7, he reaffirmed that "the U.S. military will not be allowed use our soil in any way for an attack on Iraq."

Interestingly, the next day the Russian government's deputy chief of staff, Aleksei Volin, echoed the American view when he denounced Saudi Arabia as a "sanctuary for terrorists" given what he termed "mild" sentences for two Chechen hijackers accused of hijacking a Russian airliner to Saudi Arabia.

Any U.S. invasion of Iraq will politically polarize the Muslim world given the U.S. proximity to Israel -- the biggest supporter of "regime change." It will also add to pressures on key neighbors of Iraq like Jordan, Turkey and Iran.

Turkey, for instance, faces a general election in November, where the most popular party comprises former Islamists who have a clean reputation for good governance.

Turkey fears that toppling Saddam could result in chaos and instability that could lead to the creation of a Kurdish state on its borders, given Turkey's 18-year-old battling of a Kurdish insurgency inside its territory.

Iran would feel encircled if U.S. plans for Iraq go through, given the U.S. military presence already in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Central Asia and the Gulf states.

However, Iran itself is a factor in Afghanistan -- in its western province of Herat through its favorite warlord, Ismail Khan. It is also a factor in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through its support of Hamas and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah -- and in Iraq, through the Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution under the Tehran-based Ayatollah Baqr al Hakim.

Iran's capacity to destabilise American interests in the region is therefore tremendous, more than any other Muslim country.

To top it all, elections are scheduled for Oct. 10 in Pakistan, another key American ally which has hosted U.S. bases and allowed access to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Special Forces in Washington's "war on terror."

Given this volatile geopolitical scenario, the U.S. "war on terror" is increasingly looking like a search for new enemies, even from among those earlier deemed to be 'moderate Muslims' like Saudi Arabia, Yasser Arafat or Iran's President Mohammad Khatami. It is not a very conducive political environment for attacking Iraq.