Iraqi opposition groups 'staying home'
By MATTHEW GUTMAN
Mar. 27, 2003
Bewildered coalition forces, expecting either Iraqis to shower them with flowers or an easy time against their enemies, may been mulling over the same question as their governments: Where is the Iraqi opposition?
In planning the war, one of the Pentagon's central tenets, according to reports, was victory facilitated by the rebellion of Iraq's opposition parties against their oppressors.
But the millions of oppressed Shi'ites 65 percent of the population have yet to rout Saddam Hussein's militias. In fact, most of the 20-odd opposition groups have issued a simple order to their followers: "Stay at home."
The people are afraid, Hamed al-Bayati, spokesman for the Shi'ite opposition group, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.
"Those who even speak against Saddam or his sons have their tongues cut out in the town square," he said.
According to a Jordanian official, Saddam has dispatched two powerful irregular forces, the Ba'athist militia and the fedayeen, and hosts of spies to quash a nascent insurrection in the predominately Shi'ite south and in the Kurdish cities of the north.
One fedayeen interviewed by a Gulf satellite station said, "I am here to kill Americans, and those who won't kill them."
The official explained that the militia's shooting turncoats is an integral element in Saddam's strategy of a protracted war, whose financial and human costs will induce the US to withdraw.
Those found suspicious are taken to each city's Ba'ath Party headquarters where, a Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) official told the Post, "the worst travesties take place: rape, torture, murder. It does not matter what you did or did not do."
Most of Saddam-controlled northern Iraq is on lockdown. Only women and children issuing bribes to guards at checkpoints can travel outside the cities.
According to Bayati, the Americans are also to blame. Thousands of leaflets ordering potentially rebellious Shi'ites to remain at home and "out of the conflict" were dropped. "The people were told to stay in their homes with their weapons, otherwise the US forces might shoot them, mistaking them for Iraqi soldiers."
KDP officials say their people in semi-autonomous Kurdistan say they are awaiting American orders, and assurances of aid, to dispatch some 50,000-70,000 fighters. American special forces are already rumored to be aiding Kurdish forces neutralize the Ansar al-Islam stronghold near Halabja.
The source said that the Kurds are chaffing to deal Saddam a blow. "They are not an army, but everyone has a gun, from an AK-47 to a rocket-propelled grenade shopkeepers, butchers, cobblers, everyone."
The Iraqi irregulars are now hiding behind civilian shields turning Kurdish houses into military compounds, said the KDP official.
This promises the coalition forces a bloody and hard-fought campaign once they chose to target the periphery.
According to Shi'ite and Kurdish sources, the wounds of what they term the American betrayal in 1991 have yet to heal.
The Shi'ites rose up in cities such as Basra, expecting American aid, and were brutally crushed when it failed to materialize.
The Kurds suffered the same fate when they stormed Kirkuk, a campaign quickly smashed after they briefly seized the city. Iraqi helicopters then decimated them, killing thousands.
Both the KDP and Bayati said that their people will keep their weapons at bay until "America gives us assurances that it will help."
Beside Saddam's reign of terror, factionalism and disorganization have subdued the much-vaunted Iraqi opposition. While at least 20 groups identify themselves as opposition parties, none of them has raised a gun against Saddam.
More unsettling is that Ayatollah Seyyed Muhammad Baqer Hakim has ordered his people "to remain neutral," said Bayati.
Some find this defense disingenuous. Ofra Bengio, senior researcher at the Moshe Dayan Institute at Tel Aviv University, said that "the population has no way of knowing this. They are completely isolated and can't get information."
She says the Shi'ite opposition is disorganized because "they are organizations only on paper."
Bengio also believes that Iran has withheld the much discussed but little seen Iraqi Shi'ite Brigade that was to sweep into the south to defend its brethren, for fear of igniting another conflict with Iraq.
Jordan is particularly wary of the Shi'ite groups, which it believes will discard democracy in favor of a Shi'ite state modeled loosely after its patron, Iran. Replacing Saddam's Jordan-friendly regime which supplies Jordan with all its oil at bargain prices with a reactionary one is "very worrisome," said a Jordanian official.
Murmurings about the "day after Saddam" have begun. Bayati said the Shi'ite will refuse an American military government in the region, "even for one day after the war."
"There is a conflict of views," he said. "We believe the opposition parties need to take over immediately."
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