Iraq Aims Flak at Sanctions Regime
IT LOOKS like bravado - but it isn't.
Iraq's decision to use its anti-aircraft systems against Allied planes patrolling the two "no-fly" zones just days after being pounded by cruise missiles and "smart" bombs is a carefully calculated political move.
Baghdad knows that its successes will be limited and the losses of anti-aircraft equipment will be heavy (so do the gunners, which may explain why the flak British aircraft saw on Friday [Dec 25] was so badly aimed) but that doesn't matter. The objective is not to win back control of the skies, which Saddam Hussein knows he cannot do. Instead, the Iraqi leader wants to use high-profile but small-scale incidents to deepen all the divisions which were created by the four days of US-UK attacks.
And the divisions now seem to be even deeper than had been predicted. On Sunday, representatives of 16 Arab parliaments - most of which have at best an advisory role - condemned the air strikes and called for efforts to lift the sanctions.
On Monday, a gathering of Arab foreign ministers called for this week to discuss the attacks was postponed for almost a month, apparently in recognition of the fact that it would merely highlight differences between Arab countries instead of producing a united front. The exchange of fire between Iraqi AA batteries and Allied planes on the same day led to renewed calls from Russia for a political solution to the problem.
And on Tuesday Iraq continued to stoke controversy by claiming that its air defences had shot down a Western warplane - a claim which even if not true, guarantees continuing media coverage of the incident throughout the Arab world and beyond. Baghdad appears to calculate that it now has a serious chance of blowing some holes in the economic blockade imposed by the UN, but it must keep the crisis on the boil in order to increase public pressure on any governments that are wavering - Russia being the most important possibility.
The loss of a few anti-aircraft batteries and the deaths of a score of soldiers would be a negligible price for the Iraqi regime to pay if it could break the sanctions regime.
The writer is a journalist based in the Arabian Gulf
Courtesy: Gulf Times
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