The Four-Day War
Who did Saddam Hussein turn to after President Clinton launched Operation Desert Fox? Osama bin Laden.
by Thomas Joscelyn
07/19/2005 9:00:00 AM
"The British and the American people loudly declared their
support for their leaders decision to attack Iraq. It is
the duty of Muslims to confront, fight, and kill them."
-Osama bin Laden, as quoted in various press accounts,
December 26, 1998
"Oh sons of Arabs and the Arab Gulf, rebel against the
foreigner . . . Take revenge for your dignity, holy
places, security, interests, and exalted values."
-Saddam Hussein, January 5, 1999
THE "LONG SHORT WAR" with Saddam's Iraq, as author Christopher Hitchens has aptly described it, has had many tense moments. Perhaps never more so than in late 1998.
Tensions over Saddam's obstruction of weapons inspections had accrued for months; the United States continually threatened military intervention. Earlier in the year a strike was narrowly averted when U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan brokered a last minute peace deal. But the peace was an unquiet one and, finally, after months of playing Saddam's games, President Clinton decided to act.
On December 16, 1998 Operation Desert Fox commenced. The four-day bombing campaign would strike targets throughout Iraq including military and intelligence positions as well as sites suspected of manufacturing and storing weapons of mass destruction. The Arab and Muslim street had been incited to protest the effort to contain Saddam for months and, thus, the wisdom of the strike was immediately challenged. Would it be enough to make Saddam comply with the U.N.'s resolutions or would it (unnecessarily) hurt America's image around the world even more and, thus, strengthen Saddam's hand?
The costs and benefits of the strike would be weighed for months and nothing escaped the media's scrutiny: including Saddam's desire for revenge.
Indeed, as the current war in Iraq approached many forgot or ignored Saddam's response to the four-day war of December 1998. It is a shame because his response to that four-day bombing campaign--the largest since the first Gulf War--was telling. In his quest for revenge he had few options, but one of those was Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda.
Just days after Operation Desert Fox concluded one of Saddam's most loyal and trusted intelligence operatives, Faruq Hijazi, was dispatched to Afghanistan. He met with senior leaders from the Taliban and then with bin Laden and his cohorts on December 21.
While we cannot be sure what transpired at this meeting, we can be sure that it was not some benign event. In fact, within days of the meeting bin Laden loudly declared his opposition to the U.S.-led missile strikes on Iraq and called on all Muslims to strike U.S. and British targets, including civilians, around the world. According to press accounts at the time, bin Laden explained,
"The British and the American people loudly declared their
support for their leaders decision to attack Iraq. He
added that the citizens' support for their governments
made it "is the duty of Muslims to confront, fight, and
kill them."
Bin Laden's words sounded alarm bells around the world.
Countless media outlets scurried to uncover the details
of the relationship between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda.
Dozens of news outlets--foreign and domestic--reported on
the growing relationship and its ominous implications.
When assessing any news account the reader must take all
of the information with a grain of salt. But the sheer
weight of the evidence reported from so many different
sources paints a disturbing picture.
The meeting between Hijazi and bin Laden, it turned out, was not the first meeting between Saddam's envoys and al Qaeda. Nor were their conversations or cooperation limited to a few inconsequential contacts, as many in the U.S. intelligence community now claim. There were numerous reports that Saddam was training hundreds of al Qaeda operatives, that al Qaeda was receiving assistance in making chemical weapons in Sudan, that scores of Iraqi military officers had relocated to Afghanistan, and that Saddam might even use al Qaeda agents in a "false flag" operation against western targets.
The first alarm was rung by Milan's Corriere Della Sera on December 28. In the bluntest manner, the newspaper reported,
"Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Ladin have sealed a pact."
Saddam's regime and bin Laden's global terrorist network
had united against the common enemy, the U.S. and her
allies. In preparation for the coming terrorist war,
Saddam had even offered bin Laden safehaven.
Just days later, on January 1, 1999, the Paris-based, pan-Arab magazine Al-Watan Al-Arabi expanded on the details of the new terrorist alliance. High-level representatives from both organizations had been meeting for months. At one such meeting in the summer of 1998
"bin Ladin tried to feel the Iraqi official's pulse about
the possibility of being received in Baghdad."
But, according to this account, the Iraqi envoys were not authorized to grant his request.
Thus, according to the Corriere Della Sera account and then the Al-Watan Al-Arabi account, discussions of safehaven for al Qaeda in Iraq had gone both ways. Bin Laden had first requested safehaven from Saddam in the summer of 1998 and then Saddam had offered safehaven to bin Laden several months later. Many in the U.S. intelligence community downplay these discussions of safehaven as if they were meaningless. (This skepticism prominently manifested itself in the 9/11 Commission Report.) But, according to the press accounts, the discussions of safehaven were only part of the context for understanding the relationship.
For example, Al-Watan Al-Arabi's account provided startling details concerning joint Iraqi-al Qaeda cooperation on chemical and biological weapons in bin Laden's former safehaven, Sudan. The magazine reported that
"several western diplomatic and security sources which
have good relations with Sudan, warned in secret reports
they sent at the end of [1998] that Iraq, Sudan, and bin
Laden were cooperating and coordinating in field of
chemical weapons" at several facilities. (Just months
earlier, it should be noted, the Clinton administration
had destroyed one such suspected facility, the al-Shifa
plant, in retaliation for al Qaeda's attack on U.S.
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.) The magazine also
reported that there were several meetings in 1998 and at
one of these, "bin Laden also stressed to the Iraqi
envoys that he could reach areas, which the Iraqi
intelligence could not reach."
Other Arab news outlets made similarly striking claims. An editorial in the Arab news outlet, Al-Quds Al-Arabi explained that
"President Saddam Hussein, whose country was subjected to
a four-day air strike, will look for support in taking
revenge on the United States and Britain by cooperating
with Saudi oppositionist Osama bin Laden, whom the United
States considers to be the most wanted person in the
world."
The London-based Al-Majallah added even more details. According to the Saudi-backed publication,
"scores of Iraqi military intelligence men . . . arrived
in Afghan territory in December." Also in December, "the
Iraqi Embassy in Islamabad held a series of meetings
between an Iraqi security official and the leaders of a
number of Pakistani fundamentalist movements and elements
from the Taleban, with the knowledge of Pakistani
military intelligence."
The purpose of such meetings was to whip up support for Saddam in his confrontation with the U.S. and Britain.
Several Arab press publications reported that hundreds of bin Laden's "Arab Afghans" were already being trained in southern Iraq. Al-Ittihad (Abu Dhabi), Al-Ra'y al-Amm (Kuwait) and Al-Watan Al-Arabi (Paris) all ran reports in mid to late January citing evidence of Iraq's training al Qaeda operatives. These reports even indicated that more than two dozen al Qaeda operatives had already been arrested by Kuwaiti security officials for disseminating literature, which openly advocated the overthrow of the Kuwaiti monarchy and dissuaded Kuwaitis from taking up arms against the Iraqis. These reports became so widespread that even Moscow's Novosti reported on January 31, 1999 that
"hundreds of Afghan Arabs are undergoing sabotage training
in Southern Iraq and are preparing for armed actions on
the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border. They have declared as their
goal a fight against the interests of the United States
in the region."
(THE WEEKLY STANDARD has made numerous requests to the Kuwaiti government for more information on these detentions. The Kuwaiti government has not responded to these requests.)
REPORTS OF THE TERRORIST ALLIANCE were not confined to the foreign press.
In its issue dated January 11, 1999, Newsweek quoted an anonymous
"Arab intelligence officer who knows Saddam personally" as
warning that "very soon you will be witnessing large-
scale terrorist activity run by the Iraqis" against
Western targets. The Iraqi plan would be run under one of
three "false flags": Palestinian, Iranian, and the "al
Qaeda apparatus."
All of these groups, Newsweek reported, had representatives in Baghdad.
Newsweek was not alone in raising the specter of an Iraqi-sponsored "false flag" operation by al Qaeda. On January 14, 1999 ABC News reported the meeting between bin Laden and Hijazi in late December 1998 during its nightly broadcast. The report explained that bin Laden had "teamed up with
another international pariah [Saddam Hussein], one also
with an interest in weapons of mass destruction." The
report indicated that bin Laden had sought Saddam
Hussein's assistance in acquiring such weapons and that
Saddam was willing to comply [with] his request.
ABC News concluded the segment by asking, "What could bin
Laden offer Saddam Hussein?" The answer echoed the
possibility explicitly mentioned in Newsweeks account:
"Only days after he meets Iraqi officials, bin Laden
tells ABC news that his network is wide and there are
people prepared to commit terror in his name who he does
not even control."
Roughly two weeks later, on February 1, 1999, the New
York Post reported that Saddam was courting both bin
Laden and Abu Nidal--a long-time terror ally of Saddam
who relocated to Iraq in December 1998--as part of a
plan "to resort to terrorism in revenge for airstrikes
against his country." Saddam's plan was part of a "new
campaign to strike American targets and possibly
destabilize Saudi Arabia and Kuwait." The Post
cited "government counterterrorism specialists" as saying
that "emissaries of the two men have been secretly
meeting in Sudan, where both have extensive ties."
Even London's left-of-center Guardian, which opposed the current iteration of the Iraq war and ran numerous articles dismissing the possibility of a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda in the last few years, ran two pieces discussing the axis of Saddam and bin Laden on February 6, 1999. One of the accounts, for example, began
"Saddam Hussein's regime has opened talks with Osama bin
Laden, bringing closer the threat of a terrorist attack
using chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, according
to U.S. intelligence sources and Iraqi opposition
officials."
The reports continued throughout February and March. At a time when the Clinton administration was trying to induce the Taliban to end its support for bin Laden, there was rampant media speculation that bin Laden would relocate from Afghanistan to Iraq. For example, on February 13 the Associated Press reported,
"Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has offered asylum to bin
Laden, who openly supports Iraq against Western powers."
The Los Angeles Times reported a day later,
"diplomatic officials here [Islamabad] speculated that he
may have fled to Iraq, which reportedly offered the Saudi
dissident a haven earlier this month." The Times continued,
"In Washington, experts were betting that, out of all the
world leaders, the most likely to rescue bin Laden from
the U.S. was Iraqi President Saddam Hussein."
On February 18 a former CIA counterterrorism official, Vincent Cannistraro, engaged in similar speculation on National Public Radio's morning broadcast. He added that
"members of Osama's entourage let it be known that the
meeting [with Hijazi] had taken place."
Nor was the Clinton administration unaware of these reports. Behind the scenes, officials were engaging in similar conjecture.
According to the 9/11 Commission Report, Richard Clarke--
a highly publicized critic of the Bush administration--
sent an email to National Security Adviser Sandy Berger
on February 11, 1999. Clarke told Berger that if bin
Laden learned of U.S. operations against him, "old wily
Osama will likely boogie to Baghdad." Within a few days
of Clarke's email, Bruce Riedel of the National Security
Council staff also emailed Berger, warning that "Saddam
Hussein wanted bin Laden in Baghdad."
Clarke's fear that bin Laden would boogie to Baghdad was
not a momentary revelation. In November 1998, upon
reading the unsealed indictment of bin Laden, the 9/11
Commission Report notes that Clarke "who for years had
read intelligence reports on Iraqi-Sudanese cooperation
on chemical weapons" speculated to the National Security
Adviser Sandy Berger that a large Iraqi presence at
chemical facilities in Khartoum was "probably a direct
result of the Iraq-Al Qaeda agreement."
IN RESPONSE TO THE FOUR-DAY WAR, Saddam Hussein, in his darkest hour, turned to Osama bin Laden in his quest for exacting revenge. We know this because the worldwide media reported it. Countless analysts, reporters, and even Clinton administration officials knew something was afoot in one way or another. We know this was not the last of the reporting on the relationship between Saddam and bin Laden's al Qaeda. Reports continued right up until the eve of the war in Iraq.
However, from the first days of the Bush administration's presentation of its public case for going to war--and continuing to this day--we have been asked to assume, by many current and former intelligence analysts and media pundits, that Saddam was not successful in working with bin Laden to exact his revenge.
It is possible, perhaps, that all of these reports are wrong. It is left to the reader to decide.
Thomas Joscelyn is an economist and writer living in New York.
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