Mission Awry

A war's senseless casualty

It was to have been a quiet peace mission, as the official Algerian announcement described it, "to try to stop the bleeding from which both the brotherly peoples of Iraq and Iran are suffering." Algerian Foreign Minister Mohammed Seddik Benyahia, 50, the gifted negotiator who helped mediate the release of the 52 American hostages from Iran early last year, and eight other senior Algerian officials were en route to Tehran to try to end the war that has racked Iran and Iraq for 19 months. But as Benyahia's Grumman Gulfstream II executive jet last week flew near the point where the borders of Turkey, Iran and Iraq meet, it was apparently attacked and shot down. Everyone aboard the plane was killed.

Iran immediately blamed Iraq for the incident, calling it "a calculated plot" to sabotage Benyahia's mission. As evidence, Tehran cited recorded exchanges between the Iranian control tower at Tabriz and the plane's crew. Three times, according to the Iranians, Tabriz warned the Algerians that two Iraqi fighter jets were in the vicinity and told the pilot to turn back toward Ankara. Later Iranian officials also claimed that fragments of a Soviet-built Iraqi air-to-air missile had been retrieved from the wreckage, which was found in mountainous Iranian territory close to the Turkish border. In Baghdad, Iraqi officials said they "categorically denied the Iranian accusation."

As a 40-man Algerian team was dispatched to the scene to investigate the crash, the soft-spoken Benyahia, a prominent figure in Algerian politics ever since the country's struggle for independence from France, was mourned as a senseless casualty of the conflict. Said Algerian President Bendjedid Chadli: "What makes it more painful is that he died while embarking on a noble peace mission."

The incident occurred three days after heavy fighting had resumed between Iranian and Iraqi forces in a southern salient of Iran's oil-producing province of Khuzistan. Spurred on by a major military victory in late March in which they recovered a large chunk of the province, Iranian forces had launched a second offensive that they hoped would rout the Iraqis from Iranian territory, which had been invaded in September 1980. Hundreds of Iranian commandos were dropped by helicopter behind Iraqi artillery lines in an attempt to recapture the Iranian city of Khorramshahr on the strategic Shatt al Arab waterway. Throughout the week, bloody battles raged near the city, where Iraq's armed forces had instructions to fight to the last man. Both sides suffered heavy casualties. At week's end Iran claimed to have won a major victory as Iraq ordered its forces to new positions near the border.

The war has proved costly to both sides. Western experts estimate that as many as 40,000 soldiers of the two countries have been killed. The conflict has realigned some of the powers in the region. In a rare convergence of interests, Libya, Syria and Israel are aiding Iran with arms. Saudi Arabia and the gulf states, which fear Iranian efforts to foment revolution among their dissident minorities, staunchly support Iraq, and have poured $25 billion into the war effort. Egypt has sent 60 pilots to aid the Iraqi air force, and Iran said last week that 400 Egyptian troops were fighting alongside Iraqi forces. The assistance was supposedly intended to help ease Egypt back into the Arab fold, by which it has been ostracized since the Camp David agreement. But in spite of the losses incurred, neither side seems ready to make the concessions necessary to resolve the conflict. With the tragic end of Benyahia's mission last week, peace seemed as distant as ever.

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