Kesher Talk

Observer article on Iraqi opposition funding was cut: I received this from AEI's Laurie Mylroie over the weekend:

This article--on State Dep't efforts to undermine the opposition Iraqi National Congress--was supposed to appear in The Observer today. But the news and editorial section of the paper was cut for World Cup coverage and this important piece got bumped.

INC funds
by David Rose

THE MIDDLE East, as several former spooks have stated since September 11, is hostile ground for western intelligence agencies, and for obvious reasons, Iraq is the most hostile territory of all.

Which makes it very strange that the US government, in the shape of the State Department, is currently doing all it can to shut down the only reliable pro-western source of intelligence on Saddam¹s dictatorship, the clandestine "information collection programme" run by the Iraqi National Congress. Whatever Bush may say about the "axis of evil," the INC is anathema in much of Washington, because it wants to replace Saddam not with another military strongman (the State Department Arabists' preferred option) but a pluralist democracy.

I have seen the INC information network in action in several countries bordering Iraq, and it is pretty impressive. Equipped with digital cameras, satellite phones and laptop encryption software, its agents run regular missions inside the country, exfiltrating information and, when necessary, dissident human beings. Some of the resulting intelligence is shared with journalists; some with western authorities ­ usually not the CIA, but the Defense Intelligence Agency, run by the INC's main US allies in the Pentagon.

This work is run on not much more than a shoestring. Since September, the State Department has repeatedly cut the INC¹s grant, approved by Congress in 1998. Last week, after yet another inspection at the INC London headquarters, US officials said further funds would only be paid if the INC stopped all intelligence gathering immediately. They could carry on with their TV station, but spying was out.

That, the INC leader Ahmad Chalabi says, is totally unacceptable: it would "disembowel" his organisation, turning it into precisely the posturing, irrelevant body its US Government critics frequently claim that it is.

Then that, I suppose is the point. Some war on terror. Drifting and divided, this US Administration is willfully seeking to make sure it continues to grope in the dark.

posted by Howard @ 6/03/2002 11:13:34 AM