Keeping Hands Off

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

Is George Bush supporting Saddam Hussein? The question sounds insane, but a number of critics charge that he is, in effect, by not helping the rebels fighting to oust the archdemon. Bush, after all, denounced the Iraqi dictator as being in some respects "worse than Hitler," organized a multinational crusade to crush his military power and repeatedly called for his overthrow. For the past four weeks, Shi'ite Muslims in the south and Kurds in the north have been trying to accomplish just that. Yet after Bush met with his top national security advisers last week, the President made it clear that U.S. military forces now occupying southern Iraq will give no overt assistance to the rebels.

That decision, moreover, was made in full knowledge that Saddam is likely not just to defeat the insurrections but to massacre their supporters by the thousands. That is already happening in the south, where Saddam loyalists reportedly have regained control of nearly all the towns once captured by the Shi'ites and are taking a fearsome revenge. Refugees by the thousands have fled across the American lines, seeking succor and narrating tales of torture and mass executions. (

Now, predicts a U.S. official, "it's going to get really ugly" for the Kurdish fighters who have taken much of northeastern Iraq. "Saddam's probably going to use helicopter gunships, fixed-wing bombers, chemical weapons, napalm -- the works." U.S. forces earlier had forbidden the Iraqi military to fly warplanes and had actually shot down two. Washington had further hinted that it might attack helicopters flying against the rebels and retaliate, presumably by bombing, if Saddam used chemical weapons or napalm against his own people. But by the end of last week those warnings were exposed as a bluff that did not work. Saddam's forces did use all kinds of aircraft to devastating effect in an assault that Baghdad claimed had recaptured the northern oil center of Kirkuk -- and the U.S. made no attempt to stop them.

To some columnists and Middle East experts, this policy seemed a disgraceful combination of cynicism and moral abdication. Several critics accused the President of reverting to his pre-August view of Saddam as a force for stability in the region, at least in the sense of being preferable to chaos. As to the moral argument, some in the Administration acknowledged discomfort. One official conceded, "It seems to me just like Hungary in 1956. Having called on people to overthrow their repressive leadership, we just sit back and watch them get slaughtered." Other commentators came up with a different analogy: the Red Army halting outside Warsaw in 1944 and doing nothing to stop a Nazi massacre of the Jewish ghetto residents who had risen in revolt.

White House officials rejected the charges. "The only pressure for the U.S. to intervene is coming from columnists and commentators," said a senior presidential aide. He and other Bush advisers contend that the American public overwhelmingly wants U.S. troops to be brought home as rapidly as possible. Another White House official adds that "our coalition partners," both European and Arab, "don't want us getting involved in Iraq's internal affairs" either. If the U.S. were to choose sides, it would be exceeding the U.N. mandates under which it fought the war, and with little support abroad or at home.

And for what? A number of experts contend that the U.S. knows next to nothing about those who are fighting, what they want and whether they might be able to run part or all of the country. "There are no real groups competing for power," says a U.S. analyst. "The Baathists have destroyed them all." . Bush's advisers fear that if some loose combination of rebels won, they would not be able to exercise effective control over the institutions dominated by Saddam's fellow Sunni Muslims -- the army, the security police and the Baath party -- that have kept Iraq together. The country could well splinter into rival fragments that might be gobbled up by neighboring Iran, Syria and Turkey, leading to instability throughout the Middle East. Or the rebels might provoke other multi-ethnic states to splinter. The Kurds, for example, have said they seek only autonomy within a federated Iraq, but American officials think that after a successful rebellion the Kurds would declare outright independence. That in turn would inspire agitation among Kurdish minorities in Turkey, Syria and Iran to join a Greater Kurdistan.

Alternatively, Iraq might sink into a long-running, multisided civil war, like Lebanon -- and "Lebanon" now rivals "Vietnam" as a one-word summation of the Administration's worst nightmares. The Kurds and Shi'ites, says a Bush adviser, were "fighting the Sunnis for years before we got there, and they'll continue killing each other long after we've gone." U.S. forces, moreover, might not be able to stay out of such a bloody quagmire. Having helped depose Saddam, Washington might be obliged to get involved in selecting and propping up a successor government. But the U.S., observes an Administration official, "has a history of horrible results when it tried to impose governments on other countries."

The principal holdout against a hands-off policy was George Bush. The President was so eager to see Saddam overthrown that he insisted on warnings to the Iraqi leader not to use maximum force against the insurgents. The threats, however, scared Saddam less than they did congressional leaders of both parties, who rushed to the White House to urge Bush to do nothing that would interfere with the speedy return of American soldiers. Finally, when it came time last week to put up or shut up on his warnings to Saddam, Bush decided to shut up. His spokesman Marlin Fitzwater made it official: "We do not intend to involve ourselves in the internal conflicts in Iraq."

That probably means no one will save the Iraqi rebels. Like the U.S., Iraq's neighboring powers would dearly love to see Saddam overthrown. But also like the U.S. -- though for different reasons -- they are unwilling to give the insurrectionists enough help to assure their victory. Overwhelmingly Shi'ite Iran has allowed some Iraqis who either defected or were taken prisoner during the 1980-88 war between the two countries to infiltrate back into Iraq and join the Shi'ite rebels in the south. There are widespread suspicions that Iran has smuggled some arms to them too, though Tehran denies it. In any case, the southern rebels say they have not received enough help to be effective. The Iranians "are very stingy," complains a Shi'ite opposition leader.

Though Iran would no doubt be delighted to have a congenial Shi'ite regime as a neighbor, its principal short-term goal appears to be to end its isolation and woo investment from the West to help rebuild its shattered economy. What Iran needs is, in a word, money. That dictates soft-pedaling attempts to export Islamic fundamentalist revolution and professing devotion to Middle Eastern stability. Tehran figures the best way to achieve its goals is to cool its "Great Satan" rhetoric and keep things quiet enough to convince Washington that withdrawal of its troops would be safe.

Turkey is too afraid of abetting nationalist sentiments among its own Kurdish minority (an estimated 7 million in a population of 56 million) to risk helping Kurds in Iraq. Foreign Ministry officials in Ankara did meet recently with heads of the Iraqi Kurdish insurrection but offered them only "moral support" -- and only on condition that they forswear any ambitions to set up an independent Kurdistan.

Syria has encouraged the formation of a joint-action committee representing all of Saddam's opponents and has arranged a meeting for the group -- in Beirut, not Damascus. As that suggests, Syria is also cautious about getting too close to the rebels, even though Syrian leader Hafez Assad and Saddam nurture a long-standing mutual hatred. The allied crushing of Saddam's offensive military power has already effectively removed him as Assad's rival for Middle East power and influence. Though Assad doubtless would like to see the job finished by Saddam's personal downfall, he would not necessarily want that to be accomplished by the rise of either Shi'ites or Kurds. His ideal outcome would be a friendly military regime set up by a coup organized by pro- Syrian Baathist generals.

The U.S. also nourishes some hope that Saddam will eventually be replaced by his own military. Some U.S. officials argue that the rebellions make Saddam's demise less likely because Iraq's Sunni elite has been forced to close ranks around the dictator to save their own skins. Once the insurrection is quelled, goes the theory, the Sunnis may feel free to dump the leader.

If not? Then, Washington hopes, the cease-fire resolution shaping up in the U.N. Security Council will defang and humiliate Iraq so completely that it will never again be a threat to its neighbors, no matter who holds power in Baghdad. The resolution would require Iraq to destroy all its chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missiles under the eyes of international inspectors, turn over all nuclear material that could be fashioned into atomic weapons, and pay reparations to Kuwait out of future oil revenues. The U.S. sold the other four permanent members of the Security Council on the resolution last week. Though a hitch developed when the Soviets tried to exempt missiles with a range of 200 miles or less, the U.S., British and French objected so violently that Moscow dropped the idea. Some of the 10 rotating members, who have no veto power, raised objections to other provisions, but the outlook is for the resolution to pass this week in the shape Washington wants.

Acceptance of the terms is the only way Iraq can bring the worldwide trade embargo to an end. Once the cease-fire is approved, U.N. observers would move in to monitor a demilitarized zone on both sides of the Iraq-Kuwait border; after they are in place, Washington will feel free to bring home the rest of its soldiers. That may not do much to make the Middle East less of a breeding ground for war or to bring democracy to Iraq. But the U.S. and its allies at least will have fought off a threat to world oil supplies, defeated a naked aggression and destroyed the offensive military power of a world-class bully -- and, for the moment at least, that, in the Bush Administration's view, is enough.

With reporting by Dan Goodgame/Washington and Robert T. Zintl/Tehran, with other bureaus