Word: iraqi
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...internecine conflict comes at a time when Saddam's political standing has begun to falter, say U.S. intelligence officials. Last week Washington succeeded in persuading the U.N. Security Council to continue, at least until May, the near total economic embargo that Baghdad desperately wants lifted. Middle-class Iraqi families are drawing from savings to pay for food. The dinar, which traded a year ago at 150 to the dollar, has plunged to 1,500 against the dollar. Crime is rampant in the capital, which has also experienced a rash of car-bomb attacks by dissidents and possibly Iranian agents. There...
Early in March, an elaborate coup plot against Saddam was hatched that required the cooperation of the feuding Kurds. But within hours of the attack, the entire plan collapsed. In the first stage, as planned, Talabani's 10,000 troops launched an opening skirmish against the Iraqi army's 5th Corps along the Kurdish border near Kirkuk. Barzani, who has a force of equal strength, refused to get involved in the coup. Shi'ite insurgents next failed to undertake their strike against Iraqi forces in the southern part of the country, and an Iraqi armored division that was to mutiny...
Though Saddam has lately faced takeover attempts almost every three months, his personal security force has had little trouble foiling each one. Talabani and the Iraqi National Congress, the umbrella for all Iraqi dissident groups, had long hoped that a combined assault by Kurds in the north, Shi'ites in the south and mutinous troops in Baghdad could succeed. Last November, the head of Iraqi military intelligence during the Gulf War, Major General Wafiq Samaraii, defected to Kurdistan with a promise that he could deliver an Iraqi division willing to attack Saddam. A brigade would capture the Iraqi leader...
...which has provided limited financial backing to Iraqi dissidents, was alerted by the Iraqi National Congress in February that the coup would soon take place. But the agency was skeptical. Talabani and the other plotters could not keep their mouths shut about the planning. The week before the coup, even reporters were picking up rumors that it was imminent. "If the press knew about the coup, you could be sure Saddam knew," said a U.S. intelligence analyst. He did. The week before the coup attempt, Saddam put his entire military on full alert. He never set foot in Tikrit. Samaraii...
...officials -- and quite a few others -- knew of plans for a coup last weekend against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Unfortunately, Saddam seems to have been among the cogniscenti. Led by Wafiq Samaraii, who headed Iraqi intelligence during the Gulf War but later lost his post in a purge, the plot was to be carried out by major sections of the Iraqi military, with simultaneous attacks mounted in both northern and southern Iraq. First reported by The New York Times this morning, the coup would have united Iraq's main opposition group with army contingents and Kurd and Shiite forces throughout...