Saddam's Capture: Was a Deal Brokered Behind the Scenes?
by David Pratt

When it emerged that the Kurds had captured the Iraqi dictator, the US
celebrations evaporated. David Pratt asks whether a secret political trade-off has
been engineered

Sunday, January 4, 2004
The Sunday Herald
http://www.sundayherald.com/39096

When it emerged that the Kurds had captured the Iraqi dictator,
the US celebrations evaporated. David Pratt asks whether a secret
political trade-off has been engineered

For a story that three weeks ago gripped the world's imagination,
it has now all but dropped off the radar.

Peculiar really, for if one thing might have been expected in the
aftermath of Saddam Hussein's capture, it was the endless political
and media mileage that the Bush administration would get out of it.

After all, for 249 days Saddam's elusiveness had been a symbol of
America's ineptitude in Iraq, and, at last, with his capture came
the long-awaited chance to return some flak to the Pentagon's critics.

It also afforded the opportunity to demonstrate the effectiveness of
America's elite covert and intelligence units such as Task Force 20
and Greyfox.

And it was a terrific chance for the perfect photo-op showing the
American soldier, and Time magazine's "Person of the Year", hauling
"High Value Target Number One" out of his filthy spiderhole in the
village of al-Dwar.

Then along came that story: the one about the Kurds beating the US
Army in the race to find Saddam first, and details of Operation Red
Dawn suddenly began to evaporate.

US Army spokesmen - so effusive in the immediate wake of Saddam's
capture - no longer seemed willing to comment, or simply went to
ground.

But rumours of the crucial Kurdish role persisted, even though it
now seems their previously euphoric spokesmen have now, similarly,
been afflicted by an inexplicable bout of reticence.

It was two weeks ago that the Sunday Herald revealed how a Kurdish
special forces unit belonging to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
(PUK) had spearheaded and tracked down Saddam, sealing off the al-Dwar
farmhouse long "before the arrival of the US forces".

PUK leader Jalal Talabani had chosen to leak the news and details
of the operation's commander, Qusrut Rasul Ali, to the Iranian media
long before Saddam's capture was reported by the mainstream Western
press or confirmed by the US military.

By the time Western press agencies were running the same story, the
entire emphasis had changed however, and the ousted Iraqi president
had been "captured in a raid by US forces backed by Kurdish fighters".

In the intervening few weeks that troublesome Kurdish story has gone
around the globe, picked up by newspapers from The Sydney Morning
Herald to the US Christian Science Monitor, as well as the Kurdish
press.

While Washington and the PUK remain schtum, further confirmation that
the Kurds were way ahead in Saddam's capture continues to leak out.

According to one Israeli source who was in the company of Kurds
at a meeting in Athens early on December 14, one of the Kurdish
representatives burst into the conference room in tears and demanded
an immediate halt to the discussions.

"Saddam Hussein has been captured," he said, adding that he had
received word from Kurdistan - before any television reports.

According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the delegate also confirmed
that most of the information leading to the deposed dictator's arrest
had come from the Kurds and - as our earlier Sunday Herald report
revealed - who had organised their own intelligence network which
had been trying to uncover Saddam's tracks for months.

The delegate further claimed that six months earlier the Kurds
had discovered that Saddam's wife was in the Tikrit area. This
intelligence, most likely obtained by Qusrut Rasul Ali and his PUK
special forces unit, was transferred to the Americans. The Kurds,
however, are said to have never received any follow-up from the
coalition forces on this vital tip-off and were furious.

Whatever the full extent of their undoubted involvement in providing
intelligence or actively participating on the ground in Saddam's
capture, the Kurds, and the PUK in particular, would benefit
handsomely.

Apart from a trifling $25 million bounty, their status would have been
substantially boosted in Washington, which may in part explain the
recent vociferous Kurdish reassertion of their long-term political
ambitions in the "new Iraq".

For their own part the Kurds have already launched a political
arrangement designed to secure their aspirations with respect to
autonomy, if not nationalist or separatist aspirations.

To show how serious they are, the two main Kurdish groups, the PUK
and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), have decided to close ranks
and set up a joint Kurdish administration, with jobs being divided
between the two camps. They have made it clear to the Americans that
their leadership has a responsibility to their constituency.

Last week Massoud Barzani, leader of the KDP, called for a revision
of the power-transfer agreement signed between the US-led coalition
and Iraq's interim governing council to recognise "Kurdish rights".

The November 15 agreement calls for the creation of a national
assembly by the end of May 2004 which will put in place a caretaker
government by June, which in turn will draft a new constitution and
hold national elections

"The November 15 accord must be revised and `Kurdish rights' within
an Iraqi federation must be mentioned," Barzani told a meeting of
his supporters.

"The Kurds are today in a powerful position but must continue the
struggle to guard their unity," he added.

This renewed determination to fulfil their political objectives is
shaking up other ethnic residents in northern Iraq, who fear at best
being marginalised; at worst victimised. Over the last week there have
been increasingly violent clashes between Kurdish and Arab students,
and between Kurds and Turkemens, in the oil rich city of Kirkuk.

Such ethnic confrontations point to another dangerous phase in Iraq's
power-brokering. If the Kurds did indeed capture Saddam first,
and a deal was struck about his handover to the US, then it's not
inconceivable that the terms might have included strong political
and strategic advantages that could ultimately determine the emerging
power structure in Iraq.

04 January 2004