[iwar] Special Forces already in Iraq

From: televr (yangyun@metacrawler.com)
Date: 2003-01-05 15:09:04
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Subject: [iwar] Special Forces already in Iraq
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US operatives are said to be active in Iraq

Agents target sites, gather intelligence

By John Donnelly, Globe Staff, 1/5/2003

WASHINGTON - About 100 US Special Forces members and more than 50
Central Intelligence Agency officers have been operating in small
groups inside Iraq for at least four months, searching for Scud
missile launchers, monitoring oil fields, marking minefield sites, and
using lasers to help US pilots bomb Iraqi air-defense systems,
according to intelligence officials and military analysts who have
talked with people on the teams.

The operations, which also have included small numbers of Jordanian,
British, and Australian commandos, are considered by many analysts to
be part of the opening phase of a war against Iraq, even though the
Bush administration has agreed to a schedule of UN weapons inspections.

On Jan. 27, the UN team will report on whether it has found evidence
of a program to develop chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. Soon
after, the Bush administration is expected to announce whether Iraq is
in ''material breach'' of UN resolutions and whether that is a trigger
to an invasion aimed at toppling the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, and
his government.

War preparations have been in full swing for months. The Pentagon says
that 60,000 troops are now in the Persian Gulf region; that number
could double in coming weeks.

Even as President Bush reiterated on Friday that it is not too late to
avert war if Saddam Hussein fully complies with the weapons
inspections by the United Nations, military analysts say that the
bombing, almost daily, by US jets over the mandated no-fly zone,
coupled with Special Forces and CIA officers operating inside Iraq,
means that a quiet, barely noticed fight has been unfolding.

''We're bombing practically every day as we patrol the no-fly zones,
taking out air defense batteries, and there are all kinds of CIA and
Special Forces operations going on. So I would call it the beginning
of a war,'' said Timur J. Eads, a former US special operations officer
for 20 years who took part in missions inside Iraq in the 1990s.

A US intelligence official said that the Iraq missions are separate
from the work of the UN inspectors, but that the two operations may be
moving in parallel.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that some
Special Forces members were following suspicious movements around
suspected weapons sites and that information could be turned over to
the UN teams. The administration refuses to do so, out of concern that
the reports might be passed to Iraqi officials.

The Iraqi government has also been highly suspicious of the UN
inspection teams, dating to 1998 when it found that a few people on
the teams were US Special Forces members, according to Eads and a
current Special Forces officer, who declined to be identified.

In the 1990s, Special Forces and CIA officers traveled undercover to
various parts of Iraq, mostly in the northern areas dominated by the
Kurds, where distrust of US intentions runs deep because of
Washington's unwillingness to remove Hussein in the early part of the
decade.

A large contingent of CIA and Special Forces is reported to be
operating relatively freely in northern Iraq, where Hussein's reach
has been weakened because the area falls under a no-fly zone and
because of the Kurds' antipathy toward a regime that has gassed their
people.

The Americans are reportedly working alongside fighters belonging to
Kurdish factions. They are also said to be identifying potential
leaders to work with in case of an invasion.

That tactic was used successfully in Afghanistan with the Northern
Alliance before the war there in 2001.

In another parallel to the covert operations in Afghanistan, CIA and
Special Forces members also are paying thousands of dollars to those
who cooperate with them, according to the official and the analysts.

In other parts of Iraq, Special Forces members are operating in small
teams on a variety of missions. These are taking place in areas
populated largely by Shiite Muslims around Basra, in the south, where
mistrust of the Baghdad government is rife; in the western desert near
the Jordanian border; and even close to Baghdad, according to the
analysts.

''Just as we did prior to the Gulf War, they are getting as absolutely
close to the urban areas as they can,'' said an analyst who spoke with
a Special Operations team leader after he returned from Iraq in late
November. ''They are extremely careful, of course, and they're getting
only as close to Baghdad as the commands will let them go.

''They also have been a big help in the air strikes over the last
several months,'' the analyst said. ''Many of the strikes on radar
sites have been directed by guys on the ground using lasers. British,
Australian and Jordanian commandos are also inside, too, although not
in huge numbers.''

One goal of the operations will probably be to have spies in Baghdad
to watch Iraqi military movements, the analysts said.

''I would be very shocked if people are not already in Baghdad,'' said
Eads, chief Washington lobbyist for EMC Corp., the Hopkinton data
storage company. ''Somebody is sitting there watching what defenses
are being built, how they guard key structures. Whether that's a US
citizen watching, I don't know. But there are a lot of computer
salesmen passing through Baghdad now.'' He was referring to business
executives who may also double as spies.

Near Jordan, the effort is ''to identify likely areas for mobile
missile operations,'' said Daniel Goure of the Lexington Institute, a
Washington-area think tank.

Goure, who during the Gulf War worked in the Pentagon under Paul
Wolfowitz, now the deputy defense secretary, said he received his
information from ''friends in the Pentagon.''

''They want to see if there are tracks, if there are hide sites for
the Scuds, and all the rest,'' Goure said of a mission designed to
protect Israel, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia from Scud attacks.

Such retaliatory Iraqi missile launchings were unleashed on Israel and
Saudi Arabia during the 1991 Gulf War. ''The Special Forces teams are
also doing prep work in case they have to do extended operations,''
including searching for suitable areas for bases.

US military and CIA officials continued to decline comment officially
on the activities.

''We do not comment about current operations, ongoing operations,
supposed or otherwise,'' Lieutenant Colonel Martin Compton said at US
Central Command in Tampa.

The activity, Goure and others said, surely has not escaped notice of
the Iraqis. Several articles in the British press have referred to US
and British commandos inside Iraq. Mohammed al Douri, Iraq's
ambassador to the United Nations, was in Baghdad late last week and
could not be reached for comment, a spokesman for the Iraqi mission said.

The analysts said that acknowledging the presence of Special Forces
and CIA officers inside Iraq would not put the troops or operatives at
increased risk. The Boston Globe is withholding details of recent
operations that may compromise future missions.

''The Iraqis won't like this activity, obviously, but they expect some
of this as well,'' Goure said. He also said that if the Special Forces
and CIA members were not ''shooting at someone, I think you can view
this as no different than what we are doing from the air, spying on
them. You wonder what's the big deal with this.''

But Naseer H. Aruri, professor emeritus of political science at the
University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, said the Bush administration
was being duplicitous in conducting undercover operations while
agreeing to the UN weapons inspections.

''Certainly, the Arab world and the Islamic world would see it as
being inconsistent with the weapons inspections, as well as an
infringement on Iraq's sovereignty,'' Aruri said. ''It makes clear
that the public acceptance of the UN mission and inspection process
was more of a tactic than anything else.''

James M. Lindsay, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who was
a member of the National Security Council during the Clinton
administration, said that few countries outside the Middle East would
object.

''They are doing this in parallel with the UN weapons inspectors,'' he
said. ''These efforts are not going to come as a surprise to the
Brits, or the French, or the Russians, or the Chinese. What really
matters is whether they are caught doing it publicly, because that
would create political problems for the administration.''

Lindsay also said, however, that this could change if the operations
became more visible. ''It's one thing to go in and make contacts with
potential opposition leaders,'' he said. ''It's another thing to go in
and blow up economic installations.''

Ruth Wedgwood, a specialist on international law and a member of the
Defense Policy Board, an advisory panel to the Pentagon, said that
Iraq was in a ''legally unique situation, in that it is the one
country in the world forbidden... to develop capabilities of producing
weapons of mass destruction.''

If Iraq violates the terms of UN Security Council Resolution 687,
enacted April 3, 1991, which was reinforced by another resolution
passed late last year, ''one has a perfectly plausible legal argument
that the cease-fire is over,'' Wedgwood said.

She also said that from a US policy standpoint, she understood the
need for the Special Forces. ''If we are going to go in at some point,
we need to make appropriate preparations. You don't build up 30,000 or
60,000 troops for nothing,'' added Wedgwood, who is a professor of
international law and diplomacy at Johns Hopkins University.

A key part of the current US strategy is the willingness to spend
money to bribe Iraqi military leaders rather than attack or kill them,
Eads said. ''I bet we're approaching many of those commanders now and
saying. ... `We'll give you $10,000 and a trip to Morocco, or wherever
you want, as long you lay down your arms when we come through here,'''
he said.

John Donnelly can be reached at donnelly@globe.com

This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 1/5/2003.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company. 


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