Word: iraq
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...agency offered no such guarantee. But in any case, as the Americans raced their Landcruiser toward the Turkish border and Iraqi troops began flooding the streets of Erbil, senior I.N.C. military officer Colonel Mukkadam Abu Khadim and his men were busy trying to stay alive. "The Mukhabarat [Iraq's secret police] had names and addresses," says Abu Khadim. "Those who didn't get away were seized." Of the 100 employees who worked for the rebel TV station, only 12 survived. Between 97 and 100 I.N.C. members were also killed on the spot; Abu Khadim says he interviewed an eyewitness...
...five years, the CIA has been running a modest mission to bind diverse factions of Kurdish and Iraqi dissidents into an opposition against Saddam Hussein. With Baghdad's re-entry into northern Iraq, that mission was obliterated. "Saddam has knocked out many of America's eyes and ears, and your good name was tarnished," says Professor Amatzia Baram of Israel's Haifa University, a leading Iraq expert. "U.S. credibility and reputation for protecting its friends has suffered a terrible blow." Even as the U.S. deploys F-117 Stealth fighter-bombers to temper Saddam's erratic outbursts, the CIA must rebuild...
When the U.S. and its allies established a safe haven for the Kurds in northern Iraq after the Gulf War, one goal was to use the territory as a base from which opposition groups could confront Saddam. The U.S. refused to support an all-out guerrilla war, but the White House and Congress did allow the CIA to spend between $10 million and $15 million a year running two clandestine operations. The smaller but more promising one was a paramilitary organization known as Wifaq (Iraqi National Accord), based in Jordan. Wifaq's 80 to 100 members included several prominent former...
...second CIA-sponsored effort in Iraq involved the I.N.C. An Erbil-based umbrella group founded in 1992, the congress included 19 Iraqi and Kurdish organizations. "The CIA financed the group but did not direct its activities," says an agency official. The I.N.C.'s main tasks were to gather information, distribute propaganda and recruit dissidents. Two years ago, it published a fake issue of Babil, the daily newspaper owned by Saddam's eldest son Uday. The expertly counterfeited copy, distributed for one day in Baghdad, exposed many of Saddam's atrocities. The tactic backfired, however, because readers were more frightened than...
...working for the CIA can amount to a kiss of death is unlikely to be mitigated by the news that the Clinton Administration will evacuate some 2,500 aid workers, clerks, drivers and translators employed with U.S. military and relief operations who fled to the Turkish border in northern Iraq. As for Abu Khadim and his men, they are still waiting in Salahuddin. "We are in great danger," he said. "The CIA couldn't help us; we are soldiers and had to fight. But now we are asking them to do something for us as soon as possible: evacuation...