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...power. If Iraq's Sunni Muslim ruling elite were to be ousted wholesale, no alternative government could easily take charge of the country's highly politicized military and secret police. Fear of these institutions is the strongest glue binding Iraq's fractious populace, including its long-oppressed Shi'ite Muslim majority and its rebellious northern Kurds. "When the Iraqis stop fighting us," says a senior Bush adviser, "they may turn to fighting each other." The advisers believe postwar stability in Iraq and the region is better served if the country's next ruler is "someone in the clan...
...quietly striving to win friends inside Iraq. Frequently accused of violating the trade embargo against Baghdad in the run-up to the war, Iran last week announced openly that it would be sending food and medicine to Iraqi noncombatants, as is permitted under U.N. guidelines. Both countries have Shi'ite Muslim majorities, though the Baathist government of Saddam Hussein is dominated by Sunni Muslims. Tehran's ultimate goal, some analysts say, is to foment a takeover by Baghdad's Shi'ites. If the day ever comes that friendly Shi'ites do control Iraq, Iran might offer the new government...
...weapons work fast, then disappear. . They were used during the Iran-Iraq war, sometimes with devastating consequences for combatants, but with almost none for the environment. Since the gulf war began, allied planes and missiles have pounded Iraqi chemical- weapons plants, situated about 25 miles northwest of the Shi'ite holy city of Samarra, that manufacture mustard gas and nerve agents. Because the plants are surrounded by a 25-sq.-km (9.6-sq.-mi.) "exclusion zone," the likelihood of a deadly plume invading populated areas is small. Explosives would also tend to break the gases down into less deadly substances...
...Iraq. Syria's President Hafez Assad has long claimed to be the sole legitimate leader of the Pan-Arab Ba'ath Party, rival factions of which rule his country and Saddam's. Turkey has historical claims on Iraq's oil-rich Mosul province in the north. And Shi'ite-led Iran could easily justify a land snatch as a means of liberating the Shi'ite majority in Iraq, which is dominated by a Sunni minority. Should moves to sunder Iraq begin, the country's Kurdish minority might rise up to carve its own state out of the north. That...
...Lebanon north of the Chouf Mountains is expected to enjoy relative peace. Several of the dozen or so militias that sprang up during the country's 15 years of civil war have promised to disband their forces and transform themselves into political parties. The pro-Iranian Hizballah, a Shi'ite extremist group that is thought to hold most of the Western hostages in Lebanon, feels threatened by the recent Syrian deployment in its stronghold, Beirut's southern suburbs. But given the importance Damascus attaches to its relations with Iran, especially in the midst of the effort to isolate Iraq...