Any Effort to Oust Iraqi President a Tall Order

WASHINGTON — It could take at least three to five years--and probably longer. A cheap version would cost $1 billion a year--and even doubling or tripling its budget would provide no guarantees. Countries in the neighborhood and key allies would have to host or collaborate in the plot--when already they are reluctant to participate.

All in all, a clandestine scheme to topple the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein does not look either as feasible or efficient as it might seem to outsiders, intelligence experts say.

“I don’t know anyone in the intelligence community who thinks there is a covert action solution that would change the regime in Iraq,” said Milton Bearden, who for six years in the 1980s ran the CIA operation to topple the Soviet-backed Afghan government, the most successful U.S. covert action in half a century.

And then there is the danger of the results.

“We succeeded in Afghanistan, but look what we left behind,” Bearden said. In that country, a rigidly Islamic regime is now in power, and a messy civil war rages on sporadically almost a decade after the Soviets withdrew.

Since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the CIA has sponsored at least four schemes to disrupt or disable Hussein’s government, with marginal success. Trying to replace him is an even bigger challenge.

Yet covert action is becoming the solution du jour in Washington.

The CIA has toyed with a range of plans since the crisis over weapons inspections erupted last fall, U.S. officials say. In the days since Feb. 23, when the Iraqi leader struck a deal on the inspections issue with the United Nations to avert U.S. military strikes, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) was the first of many in Washington to call for covert action to “bring Saddam Hussein to his knees.”

On Sunday, several of Specter’s colleagues urged the Clinton administration to adopt a formal policy of ousting Hussein, although they did so without specifically endorsing covert action.

“As long as Saddam Hussein is in power, we will be faced with this challenge of his unending zeal to acquire and use weapons of mass destruction,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a member of the Armed Services Committee, on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press.”

“We’ve got to change the objective in Iraq and say that we’re going to try to replace this dictatorship with a democracy,” said Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.) on the same program. Kerrey is vice chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence.

So what would it take to topple Hussein’s regime?

Only a minority among intelligence and Mideast experts believes that it is even doable. And they warn that the covert scheme would require a long-term commitment.

“This is not something that can be accomplished before the November election or even a year from now,” said a former CIA covert agent who requested anonymity. Success would be years, not months, away, the agent said.

Any plot would also have no chance of success by itself.

“It has to be part of a coordinated strategy that includes political, economic and military aspects as well,” said L. Paul Bremer, a former State Department counter-terrorism chief.

That means steps such as tightening economic sanctions through naval interdiction, expanding “no-fly” zones enforced by U.S. and European warplanes to cover all of Iraq, and expelling Hussein’s regime from the United Nations--at the same time the CIA and its Iraqi agents conduct clandestine activities inside the country, Bremer said.

Resources would have to be generous. CIA funding to undermine, but not oust, Hussein’s regime between 1992 and 1996 totaled about $100 million before U.S. agents in Iraq were forced to flee, U.S. officials say.

To actually topple Hussein would require many times that amount annually, on a par with the Afghan programs, which exceeded $10 billion over a decade.

The United States also could not go it alone. For Afghanistan, the Reagan administration had a co-financier in the Saudis, a front-line territory from which to operate in Pakistan, arms from China, support services from Egypt and widespread political backing in the West.

Finally, any scheme would have to be all-encompassing, experts say.

Hussein’s propaganda machine would need to be sabotaged, and clandestine outlets created as alternatives. A series of armed and independent cells would have to be set up to challenge or eliminate security forces, Hussein’s most important power prop. Daily life--ranging from commerce to entertainment--would have to be disrupted in diverse ways, to prove the scope of the challenge.

And while all this would need to happen countrywide, special emphasis would be required in the central Iraqi homeland of Hussein’s Sunni Muslim minority and his loyalist tribes.

The overall goal would be to undermine authority, reveal regime vulnerabilities and encourage either popular uprisings against Hussein or a betrayal by his inner circle, acting out of fear of its own demise.

But each aspect of such a scheme is prone to problems, the majority of experts say.

Opposition groups are deeply divided. Fighting between Kurdish rivals provided a pretext for Hussein’s forces in 1996 to retake part of Kurdistan in the north. The CIA was forced out at the same time.

Also, U.S. support for Hussein’s internal foes has been discredited since the Bush administration’s call for uprisings after the Gulf War sparked Kurdish and Shiite Muslim rebellions that were quashed when U.S. troops allowed Hussein to use his helicopter gunships.

Unlike Afghanistan’s, Iraq’s political and geographical terrain would not be supportive. The southern deserts do not provide cover for clandestine cross-border traffic, nor do many Gulf governments want to be seen supporting U.S. spy craft.

In Europe, France and Russia have already initialed oil deals with Baghdad to go into effect the moment sanctions are lifted--deals that any new regime might ignore.

Nor does the U.S. track record in targeting foes for ouster inspire confidence.

Despite repeated U.S. efforts to undo his rule, Fidel Castro will mark 40 years in power next year.

In Somalia, the failed 1993 manhunt for warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid resulted in the deaths of 18 Americans and the eventual withdrawal of more than 10,000 U.S. forces.

A 1989 CIA-backed military coup in Panama failed to topple Manuel Noriega, forcing President Bush to order U.S. troops into combat two months later. Operation Just Cause snared its prey not because of force but because a priest persuaded Noriega to give up plans for a guerrilla war and surrender to U.S. troops.

And conditions in these three small, poor countries do not compare with Iraq, an oil-rich nation of 22 million that still boasts the largest and best-armed military in the Gulf.

Even the Iraqi opposition doubts the efficacy of a covert plot.

“To engineer a coup from outside using exile groups is in the realm of science fiction,” said Ahmad Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, which ran a CIA-backed operation in Kurdistan until 1996. “It’s also too late for covert operations. It must be open.”

Chalabi is now making the rounds in Washington with his own plan, which includes:

* A U.S. declaration that Hussein’s regime is in violation of U.N. cease-fire resolutions.

* As punishment, a U.S. declaration of a military exclusion zone south of the 31st parallel, north of the 35th parallel and in the western desert adjacent to Saudi Arabia and Jordan--to be enforced by U.S. air power. Iraq would be forced to move its tanks and artillery or face aerial bombardment. This zone includes many of Iraq’s most productive oil fields, and vital land and sea routes.

* Formation of a provisional government.

* Escalation of an anti-Hussein propaganda campaign, including radio broadcasts countrywide.

* A U.S. indictment of Hussein as a war criminal.

* U.S. aid of $100 million to the Iraqi National Congress, using as collateral Iraqi assets frozen by economic sanctions. The money would pay for antitank weapons and troop-transport vehicles for 5,000 opposition forces.

* Once Iraqi military equipment has been removed from the south, landing of the Iraqi National Congress and its equipment at Umm al Qasr. Opposition forces would clear loyalist security forces, administer the area and use southern oil for income. A branch of the government also would be set up in northern Kurdistan.

* A move by the opposition military on Basra, Iraq’s key port in the south and second-largest city. A serious challenge to Basra, according to Chalabi, would be a turning point leading to the fall of Hussein.

Chalabi’s plan has elicited both praise and skepticism since he began talks with congressional leaders last week. One intelligence analyst called it “poetic, but farfetched.”

Chalabi is scheduled to testify Tuesday, along with former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, before a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on “Iraq: Can Saddam Hussein be overthrown?”

Staff writer Ralph Vartabedian contributed to this report.