Tekst: Doodseskaders in Irak?

[Dr. Marc-Alexander Fluks]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

[De story wordt in de Nederlandse media gecovered door BNR Nieuwsradio;
 elders heerst kennelijk volop censuur]


Bron:  Newsweek
Datum: 8 januari 2005
URL:   http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek/
Ref:   http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3037886/site/newsweek/


The Salvador Option
-------------------
The Pentagon may put Special-Forces-led assassination or kidnapping
By Michael Hirsh and John Barry

Jan. 8 - What to do about the deepening quagmire of Iraq? The Pentagon's
latest approach is being called "the Salvador option"—and the fact that
it is being discussed at all is a measure of just how worried Donald
Rumsfeld really is. "What everyone agrees is that we can’t just go on as
we are," one senior military officer told NEWSWEEK. "We have to find a way
to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing
defense. And we are losing." Last November’s operation in Fallujah, most
analysts agree, succeeded less in breaking "the back" of the
insurgency—as Marine Gen. John Sattler optimistically declared at the
time—than in spreading it out.

Now, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option
that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration's
battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the
early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the
U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly
included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel
leaders and sympathizers. Eventually the insurgency  was quelled, and many
U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success-despite
the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-
hostages scandal. (Among the current administration officials who dealt
with Central America back then is John Negroponte, who  is today the U.S.
ambassador to Iraq. Under Reagan, he was ambassador to Honduras.)

Following that model, one Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces
teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely
hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target
Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into
Syria, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions. It
remains unclear, however, whether this would be a policy of assassination
or so-called "snatch" operations, in which the targets are sent to secret
facilities for interrogation. The current thinking is that while U.S.
Special Forces would lead operations in, say, Syria, activities inside
Iraq itself would be carried out by Iraqi paramilitaries, officials tell
NEWSWEEK.

Also being debated is which agency within the U.S. government—the
Defense department or CIA—would take responsibility for such an
operation. Rumsfeld's Pentagon has aggressively sought to build up its
own intelligence-gathering and clandestine capability with an operation
run by Defense Undersecretary Stephen Cambone. But since the Abu Ghraib
interrogations scandal, some military officials are ultra-wary of any
operations that could run afoul of the ethics codified in the Uniform Code
of Military Justice. That, they argue, is the reason why such covert
operations have always been run by the CIA and authorized by a special
presidential finding. (In "covert" activity, U.S. personnel operate under
cover and the U.S. government will not confirm that it instigated or
ordered them into action if they are captured or killed.)

Meanwhile, intensive discussions are taking place inside the Senate
Intelligence Committee over the Defense department's efforts to expand
the involvement of U.S. Special Forces personnel in intelligence-gathering
missions. Historically, Special Forces' intelligence gathering has been
limited to objectives directly related to upcoming military operations-
"preparation of the battlefield," in military lingo. But, according to
intelligence and defense officials, some Pentagon civilians for years
have sought to expand the use of Special Forces for other intelligence
missions.

Pentagon civilians and some Special Forces personnel believe CIA civilian
managers have traditionally been too conservative in planning and
executing the kind of undercover missions that Special Forces soldiers
believe they can effectively conduct. CIA traditionalists are believed to
be adamantly opposed to ceding any authority to the Pentagon. Until now,
Pentagon proposals for a capability to send soldiers out on intelligence
missions without direct CIA approval or participation have been shot down.
But counter-terrorist strike squads, even operating covertly, could be
deemed to fall within the Defense department’s orbit.

The interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is said to be among
the most forthright proponents of the Salvador option. Maj. Gen.Muhammad
Abdallah al-Shahwani, director of Iraq’s National Intelligence Service,
may have been laying the groundwork for the idea with a series of
interviews during the past ten days. Shahwani told the London-based Arabic
daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat that the insurgent leadership—he named three
former senior figures in the Saddam regime, including Saddam Hussein's
half-brother—were essentially safe across the border in a Syriasanctuary.
"We are certain that they are in Syria and move easily between Syrian and
Iraqi territories," he said, adding that efforts to extradite them "have
not borne fruit so far."

Shahwani also said that the U.S. occupation has failed to crack the problem
of broad support for the insurgency. The insurgents, he said, "are
mostly in the Sunni areas where the population there, almost 200,000, is
sympathetic to them." He said most Iraqi people do not actively support
the insurgents or provide them with material or logistical help, but at
the same time they won’t turn them in. One military source involved in
the Pentagon debate agrees that this is the crux of the problem, and he
suggests that new offensive operations are needed that would create a fear
of aiding the insurgency. "The Sunni population is paying no price for the
support it is giving to the terrorists," he said. "From their point of
view, it is cost-free. We have to change that equation."

Pentagon sources emphasize there has been no decision yet to launch the
Salvador option. Last week, Rumsfeld decided to send a retired four-star
general, Gary Luck, to Iraq on an open-ended mission to review the entire
military strategy there. But with the U.S. Army strained to the breaking
point, military strategists note that a dramatic new approach might be
needed—perhaps one as potentially explosive as the Salvador option.

With Mark Hosenball
--------
(c) 2005 Newsweek, Inc

**********
Dit bericht is verzonden via de informele D66 discussielijst (D66 at nic.surfnet.nl).
Aanmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SUBSCRIBE D66 uwvoornaam uwachternaam
Afmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SIGNOFF D66
Het on-line archief is te vinden op: http://listserv.surfnet.nl/archives/d66.html
**********