[Nasional-e] What if Saddam escapes?

[Ambon]

 What if Saddam escapes?
   David M. Malone IHT  Friday, January 10, 2003



NEW YORK The assumption underlying U.S. planning for Iraq is that Saddam
will exit feet first after American-led military action. But what if he
flees before the fight?
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Before nearly every major recent military confrontation, at least one
last-ditch effort has been made to avoid military action. In the case of the
1991 clash between Iraq and a U.S.-led military coalition, the United
Nations secretary-general flew to Baghdad to plead unsuccessfully with
Saddam Hussein to comply with UN Security Council resolutions rather than
plunge the region into war.
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Before the NATO action against Kosovo in 1999, the United States sent
Richard Holbrooke to reason with President Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade,
again to no avail.
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Many leaders when facing military annihilation have found flight the better
part of valor. The Biafran leader Odumegwu Ojukwu was seemingly prepared to
fight to his last starving supporter, but when faced with the military
collapse of forces and personal risk he took off for the Ivory Coast in the
early 1970s.
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The Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, who had led his country since
1974, fled to Zimbabwe in 1991 when faced with the implosion of his regime.
Idi Amin Dada, the no less repulsive leader of Uganda from 1971 to 1979,
fled ahead of a Tanzanian in-vasion, eventually finding refuge in Saudi
Arabia.
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So far, Saddam gives every impression that he will fight to the last Iraqi.
Where other than perhaps in Saudi Arabia could he find himself safe from
international criminal justice or summary U.S. justice? His survival
instincts may prevail. A humiliating war crimes trial can hardly look
attractive.
.
The Arab League has urged Iraq to comply with UN demands, and might, as the
threat of military action draws closer, join a group of distinguished Arab
intellectuals who recently called on Saddam to stand down to avoid disaster.
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Others, including UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, might engage in a
last-ditch attempt to convince Saddam to avoid total military defeat, the
destruction of his regime and the annihilation of whatever his legacy to
Iraqis might be.
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What if Saddam accepted to leave his country, with his family and perhaps
some of his closest aides, as the shah of Iran did in 1979? What would be
the position of the United States? If Saddam attempts to pass power to
another Takriti thug or even a less offensive hack of the governing Ba'ath
Party, America and its allies could still insist on taking over the oil-rich
country, peacefully if possible.
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If power passed to a respectable Iraqi figure from the past or from exile,
would major Western powers still have the heart for a takeover of Iraq with
all of its associated responsibilities and risks? What precisely would be
the point? Would Washington's new attachment to spreading democracy in the
Arab world from Iraq prove more than a currently convenient mirage?
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The writer, a former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations, is president
of the International Peace Academy in New York.