THE GREAT TERROR
by JEFFREY GOLDBERG
In northern Iraq, there is new evidence of Saddam Hussein's genocidal war on the Kurds\ufffdand of his possible ties to Al Qaeda.
Issue of 2002-03-25
Posted 2002-03-25

In the late morning of March 16, 1988, an Iraqi Air Force helicopter appeared over the city of Halabja, which is about fifteen miles from the border with Iran. The Iran-Iraq War was then in its eighth year, and Halabja was near the front lines. At the time, the city was home to roughly eighty thousand Kurds, who were well accustomed to the proximity of violence to ordinary life. Like most of Iraqi Kurdistan, Halabja was in perpetual revolt against the regime of Saddam Hussein, and its inhabitants were supporters of the peshmerga, the Kurdish fighters whose name means "those who face death."

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If these charges are true, it would mean that the relationship between Saddam's regime and Al Qaeda is far closer than previously thought.

When I asked the director of the twenty-four-hundred-man Patriotic Union intelligence service why he was allowing me to interview his prisoners, he told me that he hoped I would carry this information to American intelligence officials. "The F.B.I. and the C.I.A. haven't come out yet," he told me. His deputy added, "Americans are going to Somalia, the Philippines, I don't know where else, to look for terrorists. But this is the field, here." Anya Guilsher, a spokeswoman for the C.I.A., told me last week that as a matter of policy the agency would not comment on the activities of its officers. James Woolsey, a former C.I.A. director and an advocate of overthrowing the Iraqi regime, said, "It would be a real shame if the C.I.A.'s substantial institutional hostility to Iraqi democratic resistance groups was keeping it from learning about Saddam's ties to Al Qaeda in northern Iraq."

The possibility that Saddam could supply weapons of mass destruction to anti-American terror groups is a powerful argument among advocates of "regime change," as the removal of Saddam is known in Washington. These critics of Saddam argue that his chemical and biological capabilities, his record of support for terrorist organizations, and the cruelty of his regime make him a threat that reaches far beyond the citizens of Iraq.

"He's the home address for anyone wanting to make or use chemical or biological weapons," Kanan Makiya, an Iraqi dissident, said. Makiya is the author of "Republic of Fear," a study of Saddam's regime. "He's going to be the person to worry about. He's got the labs and the know-how. He's hellbent on trying to find a way into the fight, without announcing it."

On the surface, a marriage of Saddam's secular Baath Party regime with the fundamentalist Al Qaeda seems unlikely. His relationship with secular Palestinian groups is well known; both Abu Nidal and Abul Abbas, two prominent Palestinian terrorists, are currently believed to be in Baghdad. But about ten years ago Saddam underwent something of a battlefield conversion to a fundamentalist brand of Islam.

"It was gradual, starting the moment he decided on the invasion of Kuwait," in June of 1990, according to Amatzia Baram, an Iraq expert at the University of Haifa. "His calculation was that he needed people in Iraq and the Arab world\ufffdas well as God\ufffdto be on his side when he invaded. After he invaded, the Islamic rhetorical style became overwhelming"\ufffdso overwhelming, Baram continued, that a radical group in Jordan began calling Saddam "the New Caliph Marching from the East." This conversion, cynical though it may be, has opened doors to Saddam in the fundamentalist world. He is now a prime supporter of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and of Hamas, paying families of suicide bombers ten thousand dollars in exchange for their sons' martyrdom. This is part of Saddam's attempt to harness the power of Islamic extremism and direct it against his enemies.
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