March 16, 2002	atimes.com

Front The unimagined consequences of ousting Saddam By Ehsan Ahrari As the mandarins of America's foreign policy arrive at a consensus to topple the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, no one really knows what will happen to Iraq as a major Middle Eastern state. That very issue speaks volumes of the arrogance of the United States in the aftermath of its military success of dismantling the rag-tag military forces of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Even in Afghanistan, the emerging political realities do not portend that it would become a stable or peaceful place any time soon. The "warlordism" of the pre-Taliban days is already evolving, as ethnic tensions between the Pashtuns and the Northern Alliance surfaced with a vengeance when one minister of the interim government, Abdul Rahman, was assassinated at the Kabul airport. All five alleged assassins belonged to a faction of the Northern Alliance, and two of them were top military generals. In the same vein, the military capability of the United States to dismantle the Saddam regime is indisputable. But the question of what or who would replace Saddam continues to remain unanswered. Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, reflected the Bush administration's befuddlement on that issue when he remarked, "The hard part is, what do you do after that [eliminating Saddam]?" It seems that the Bush White House is watching the "poll du jour" and looking for places to strike in its determination to fight global terrorism, as the opinion polls underscore a high level of public support for it. In the final days of the military campaign in Afghanistan, there were speculations about whether Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, or the Philippines would be the next country for a military campaign. Of those, Iraq did not fit the template of the al-Qaeda connection that has emerged as the precondition for selecting the next target state. A different rationale had to be found for Iraq. Finding a rationale was easy, because of the unfinished business involving Saddam Hussein from the days of Bush Senior's presidency. It seems that Bush, the son, was itching to pick up where his father had left off regarding Iraq. And Saddam Hussein is always willing to provide reasons that are wholly acceptable to the American people. He refuses to open his country to United Nations-sponsored inspections, and is suspected of building weapons of mass destruction. So George W Bush is more than willing to deviate from fighting terrorism, and is seemingly poised to dismantle Saddam's rule. A disconcerting reality, however, is that Arab countries that are "not even friends of the United States" appear to have much of a say in the evolving decision to strike Iraq, since a number of them have publicly opposed the possibility of such an action. The Bush administration's handy explanation is that those rulers are privately supporting the military option to oust Saddam. The strange similarity between post-Taliban Afghanistan and Iraq after Saddam would be the high potential of both countries disintegrating into smaller entities along ethnic or factional lines. Such a happenstance would create chaos of unimagined proportions in the areas surrounding Iraq. The Kurds would immediately seek the creation of an independent state of their own in northern Iraq. Both Turkey and Iran would strongly oppose that option. No one knows what actions those countries would take to forestall a Kurdish state. The central part of Iraq would emerge as a stronghold of Sunni Arabs. The Shi'ites in the areas contiguous to Iran would either seek a separate state, or would want to integrate with Iran. The Arab neighbors of Iraq would intensely oppose both options. No one is sure whether the national integrity of Iraq would remain intact after a US military campaign against Saddam. Since the United States has shown ample disdain toward "nation-building", even in post-Taliban Afghanistan, there is little hope that it would behave differently once its cherished objective of dismantling the much-hated regime of Saddam Hussein has been achieved. In the event of an American withdrawal from post-Saddam Iraq, its neighbors - especially Turkey - might hatch a plan of establishing their own hegemony on a considerably weak and disintegrating Iraq. The Middle East, after the potential ouster of Saddam, might edge closer to the era between the two world wars, except that this time the United States, not a number of European colonial powers, would be driven by the notion of expanding the borders of pax Americana. But the region itself is likely to be considerably more prone to additional cataclysmic changes, thereby escalating the level of chaos even further. Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is a Norfolk, Virginia, US-based strategic analyst. (Copyright 2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact ads@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)

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