Regards, Ivan
Posted on 04/03/2003 3:14:27 PM PST by MadIvan
It is one minute before midnight in one of the world's great tyrannies. After three decades in power, one of the West's former allies turned ogres is in his palace vowing to fight to the last. His elite Presidential Guard is falling back to the capital. A hostile army is at the gates. No one can see how a bloody showdown can be avoided.
In the dead of night the army chief of staff goes to the dictator and says he has been talking to the enemy. We cannot hold out, he says. We have to surrender. The general pays for his outspokenness and is shot dead. But the tyrant's spell has been broken. The following dawn he flees with his entourage and a mound of Louis Vuitton suitcases and the city falls without a shot.
This may sound like the wishful thinking of the Pentagon. But this is not Iraq in 2003. This is Zaire in May 1997 and it is how the veteran kleptocrat Mobutu Sese Seko was finally ousted after more than 30 years of misrule. Then, right up to the last minute, it was hard to see how the capital could be spared a bloodbath. But what I and other correspondents in Kinshasa had failed to take into account was the "tip" factor.
From Africa to the Balkans, dictatorship after dictatorship in the past decade has appeared monolithic before suddenly imploding. With hindsight, there has always been a key moment when a tyrant's claims to omnipotence have suddenly rung hollow, precipitating an abrupt collapse. In Washington they call it the "tip" moment. This is what we are now waiting for in Baghdad.
Who can forget the haunted look on Nicolae Ceausescu's face on December 21, 1989 when he looked over central Bucharest from the balcony of the Central Committee building and heard the first tentative jeers from the crowd below? Until that moment, only in the small south-western town of Timisoara had people dared to rise up, and their protest had been bloodily put down. Yet the next day Ceausescu was on the run and three days later he and his wife, Elena, were executed.
Diehard elements of the Securitate then fought on for a few days in the sewers of Bucharest, in what may in time be seen as a lesser Balkan reflection of the resistance of the Fedayeen. But without the "head", the "limbs" soon withered, a lesson which almost certainly explains the US forces' determination to push on to Baghdad without subduing all the towns and villages in their rear.
Iraq 2003 is a far cry from Romania 1989, the doubters cry, and they may be right. A fortnight into the war there has been little sign of any appetite for a popular uprising. But after the West's betrayal of the 1991 rebellion by the Shias and Kurds this caution is only to be expected. And, anyway, the real lesson of Romania was not of people power, for the revolution was more of a palace coup. It is this scenario which will be exercising minds in the Pentagon - and no doubt in Saddam's inner circle.
Since the war started, night after night Iraqi state television has broadcast footage of the beaming faces of the fatigues-clad Iraqi cabinet. To an Iraqi viewer they may come across as Mesopotamian doughtiness personified. Yesterday the flamboyant Iraqi information minister confidently proclaimed that it was "silly" to talk of the US troops reaching the gates of the capital. Some of his acolytes no doubt even believe the official line. The self-delusion of courtiers is absolute. I remember drinking Laurent Perrier champagne with one of Mobutu's aides in his marbled villa as he confidently predicted: "You will play tennis with me at my home every weekend." A few days later I was traipsing through the looted remains of his home. He had fled into exile with hours to spare.
So we should not pay much attention to the nodding heads and stalwart grins on the Baghdad news. In public, Saddam's cronies have good reason to stick to the Ba'ath Party line. The fate of his sons-in-law who rebelled, repented and were then executed will not be forgotten. We in the West remember the appalling persecution of the Kurds and the Shias but the Ba'ath Party too has had its share of bloody purges. It may be that the "tip" will have to come from the streets or the army, and not the cabal.
So what of the concern that we are seen as invaders and not liberators and that for all their loathing of Saddam, Iraqis will rally round against the new colonial foe? Could that stave off a popular "tip"? Iraqi nationalism worked in the 1980s when Basra sided with Saddam rather than their besieging fellow Shias from Iran. Saddam - if he is alive, as again he failed to appear on television yesterday, surely the day above all others to rally the troops - will hope this spirit is alive again in Basra, and that Arab nationalism will work in the same way in Baghdad.
This is a concern for "tomorrow", when the West is running a post-Saddam Iraq. However benevolent and enlightened a new administration - and unless Washington is careful, it will appear to Iraqis as neither - Arab frustration with America and with its support for Israel will soon rise to the fore. But nationalism may not prove as much of an issue "today". There was a rage in Kinshasa in 1997 about the besiegers stealing their territory and yet it all fell away, and the troops marched in to mass crowds and applause. So too before Slobodan Milosevic fell he whipped up nationalist sentiment. Opponents were "western lackeys and traitors", yet when they took to the streets the security forces melted away.
The key to the "tip" may lie with the army, or rather the Republican Guard. For days they have been bombarded by the B52s. It may be that like the Serbs in Kosovo in 1999 they have lain low and are largely intact. But we cannot underestimate the trauma of being shelled day after day. Witness the overnight collapse of the Taliban in 2001. And talk of the guards retreating into Baghdad for a dogged rearguard action is all very well, but that may be the last thing Saddam wants.
So is there an Iraqi equivalent of Gen Mahele Lieko Bokungo, the Zairean commander who "did the decent thing"? Maybe not. But my money is on the fact that the talk of Arab exceptionalism is overblown. The "tip" is near, if it has not already happened.
Regards, Ivan
Enemy At The Gates. Sounds like a catchy title for a movie!!!
Seeing that these perks are about to be cut off, and indeed if they are identified they might go to prison, why would they even keep the uniform on, much less fight to the death?
. . . to God's ears!
Eeerie, isn't it, how the left hook into the east side of Baghdad by the 3rd ID resembles the left hook by the 2nd ACR and VII Corps? From what I've seen so far, it looks like the Tawakalna Division fought better than the Medina Division, even though Medina was defending Baghdad.
In the case of Saddam..200 assassination attempts can't be WRONG?
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