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Belarus HeadlinesResults Page:SADDAM IS HIDING OUT IN BELARUSDate Added: Thursday, April 24th, 2003Contributed by: RCN Administrator
As DEBKA-Net-Weekly went to press this week, there were increasing indications that the deposed Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein has been hiding in Belarus since late March or early April. With his sons, Uday and Qusay, their families and an entourage of close and trusted aides, Saddam appears to be the guest of President Aleksandr Lukashenko at a villa estate in the walled Zhdanovidhi military compound 10 miles west of Minsk.
The villa estate was built in the seventies especially for Soviet ruler Leonid Brezhnev under the supervision of Yuri Andropov, the KGB chief who later stepped into his master's shoes. For Saddam, this sanctuary is very much a home from home. The villa estate like his palace compounds in Baghdad contains residential spaces atop underground bunkers that are linked by tunnels to his host's presidential palace at Drozdy three miles away. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources, Saddam's sanctuary is guarded by ground-air missile batteries and two cordons of Belarus security agents, members of the local KGB, or Committee of State Security. The inner cordon of members of Lukashenko's praetorian guard is posted inside the villa estate along with the personal bodyguards of Saddam and family. The outer ring consists of Belarus KGB Spetsnaz commandos, trained by the Russian FSB General Security Bureau. Our sources have received exclusive information that a Russian intelligence general is a fellow-guest of Saddam's in the compound. His identity is unknown except that he is reportedly a staff member of the Russian First Chief Directorate based in Yasenevo on assignment as liaison man between Saddam and the former Russian prime minister and KGB chief Yevgeny Primakov. In this capacity he spent five to six months before the war in close proximity to the Iraqi ruler, going everywhere with him. This unnamed Russian general makes his reports in two copies: one each to Primakov and Russian president Vladimir Putin. According to the information reaching Washington, he never leaves the small house assigned him on the estate sheltering Saddam, suggesting that he may be held in semi-detention as surety for the Belarus and Russian presidents keeping Saddam and his entourage safe. The Getaway DEBKA-Net-Weekly has learned that Saddam flew out of Baghdad international airport on March 29 or 30, when it still bore his name. He was picked up with a party of some 300 by two Boeing 727 airliners hired in Europe for a long-term charter in the last week of March by a Brussels-based electronics firm fronting for the Belarus KGB. When the hired planes landed at Minsk military airfield on 25th or 26th of March, they had all their identifying marks painted out, before taking off on what was logged as a charter flight to Damascus. After landing at Damascus military air base for refueling, the two planes flew off and came in low over Baghdad airport. A short while later they were flying over Syria on course for Minsk carrying the fleeing Iraqi ruler and entourage. Our experts are convinced that Lukashenko would never have ventured on so reckless a course as providing asylum for the man most wanted by the United States without a firm nod from Putin. The last DEBKA-Net-Weekly issue (No. 105 published on April 11), ran an article captioned Washington-Moscow Blowout over Saddam, which revealed that the US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, when she visited Putin at the Kremlin on April 5, warned him that the US government is fully aware that Russian intelligence knows where Saddam Hussein is hiding. We have since discovered that she was referring to Zhdanovidh. According to our sources, the occupants of the White House and US intelligence chiefs did not fall off their seats when they learned about the collaboration between Putin and Lukashenko and their foreign intelligence agencies. DEBKA-Net-Weekly reveals for the first time that President George W. Bush and his administration's intelligence and security advisers discovered the full extent of Russian-Belarus-Iraqi dealings from documents in the Iraqi intelligence archives opened up in Baghdad by US forces. More Intelligence Data Uncovered in Baghdad. Saddam Hussein and his undercover agents were adepts in the cloak-and-dagger arts. They spread their nets in many corners of the world. Iraq's wide-ranging links with foreign services are now being laid bare by the American experts poring over the rich store of documents discovered at Iraqi command and intelligence centers in Baghdad, Tikrit, Faluja and a number of air force facilities. Saddam's services maintained especially strong connections with Russian intelligence, Western intelligence sources familiar with the documentation questioned by DEBKA-Net-Weekly report. Particularly intense was the relationship with the counterintelligence department of the Russian General Security Bureau, the FSB, and GRU military intelligence. It was no ad hoc arrangement; the Russians relayed materials useful to Iraq day by day and Baghdad was free to ask questions or request clarifications from Moscow. The exchanges of information took place via Russian liaison offices operating out of the Russian embassy in Baghdad. One of those bureaus was in constant contact with the 5th Directorate of the GDI, or Department of Iraqi General Intelligence, while the second was run by plainclothes GRU officers with diplomatic immunity. They liaised with Iraqi military intelligence headquarters, the MSS, located in Baghdad's Aladhamia district. Western intelligence agencies now going through Iraq's domestic and foreign intelligence headquarters with a fine tooth comb believe that the unnamed Russian general who liaised between Moscow and Saddam and his sons, stayed in Baghdad up until April 6. Using the cover of a private intelligence consultant, he was also likely the point man between the Iraqi leader and the headquarters of the First Chief Directorate at Yasenevo near Moscow. The Iraqis maintained three independent liaison bureaus. One worked out of the offices of Syrian air force intelligence in Damascus; its primary task was to maintain contact with Russian military intelligence officers operating in the Syrian capital. The bureau is still functioning and now operates out of the Iraqi embassy building in Damascus. Two other Iraqi offices are still open, in Moscow and in Minsk, functioning on Iraqi diplomatic premises as if the war never happened. Iraq's espionage service also maintained ties with other intelligence agencies in Eastern Europe such as the Croatian Security Information Service, or SIS, elements of Croatian military intelligence, the OSH, Belarus' KGB, Ukrainian military intelligence agency, the SID, Serbia's counter-espionage service and the intelligence arm of the Albanian Liberation Army, which according to material found in Iraq ran espionage and information-gathering networks in Italy, Switzerland, France, Luxembourg, Germany, Denmark and Britain. The documents found in Baghdad also indicate that the Iraqi MSS had a limited intelligence relationship with Chinese central intelligence, the French DGSE and Germany's BND. Iraqi intelligence maintained particularly close ties with sister agencies in the Muslim world, especially with Pakistani military intelligence, or SIS, and Indonesia's central intelligence agency, BAKIN. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources believe the revelations turned up in the Iraqi intelligence archives, if exposed, could cause earthquakes in many governments and intelligence agencies around the world, including countries such as Britain, Australia, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Germany, France Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore – and even the United States itself. But it could take months if not years for the experts to finish picking over the treasure trove of secret materials. DEBKA-Net-Weekly continues to follow this developing story. Top The Warless War 1. Saddam and His WMD “ Relocated Not Destroyed There is more than one common factor between the wars the United States fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some may make uncomfortable reading. Both ended in America's military victory at an unbelievably low cost in life; both expelled their targets from the territorial bases from which they committed their crimes; both cleared the way for enlightened government. However, both targets eluded capture and remain at large with sufficient resources to dog the steps of the United States and its allies and inflict enormous harm all over again. Saddam, after his first sanctuary in Minsk has been detected, has the resources to keep on moving and activate the illegal weapons he still commands. Five weeks after the Iraq War began “ and one week after it ended “ DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources cite documents turned up by coalition forces in Baghdad which confirm Saddam Hussein and his regime did indeed possess nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. However, though on the run, he retains control of sufficient stocks of unconventional weapons, intelligence assets and money to wage war on the United States from bases and hideouts outside Iraq, where some of his WMD systems are also tucked away. So cunningly were they hidden that not a single banned weapon system has so far come to light amid the wreckage of the mighty Baath military, intelligence and political machine, with which a tyrant and his two sons held sway over 24 million Iraqis. Although they have lost a land larger than California and almost the size of Spain, most of Saddam's elite escaped in one piece, just as most of the Taliban's leaders and Osama bin Laden's operational core got clean away from conquered Afghanistan to continue operations from new bases in other countries. The rank and file of the Taliban army melted into the local populace in Afghanistan and along the border with Pakistan. Taliban-al Qaeda fighting elements relocated in the Gulf, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Central Asia and Far Eastern countries such as the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia. All they left behind were large weapons depots. Here too is an analogy for Iraq, albeit on a different scale. A huge army of 45 Iraqi army divisions “ some half-million troops“ has disappeared as if the ground had swallowed them up. Failing a mass exodus from the country, the missing troops can only be accounted for by having shed their uniforms and gone home to their families. They have melted into the general population like the Taliban and al Qaeda of Afghanistan. The resemblance between the two wars may stem from the fact that both were conceived by the same pair of strategic brains: US Central Command chief General Tommy Franks and his main sponsor in government, US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and intelligence experts, the two men fathered a bold and innovative concept according to which even big wars can be waged and won without large-scale and decisive battles. This revolutionary concept was first practiced in Afghanistan, where it was proved that massive ground forces were not needed for victory. The Afghan campaign hinged heavily on a combination of aerial might and small ground contingents made up of special forces and local militias backed up by commandos from allied neighbors “ in this case, Russia and Uzbekistan. The superfluity of massive aerial power in actual combat was demonstrated again in the Iraq War. Iraqi strategists knew that the Iraqi air force was no match for the advanced technology of the American air force and therefore kept its aircraft grounded. Indeed, there is no air force on earth today sophisticated enough to take on America's state of the art air might. Stealth bombers and ageing B-52 warhorses were used for limited sorties against ground targets, but no major role was played by fighter planes and assault helicopters“ even against enemy tank columns. The same applied to aircraft brought to the Gulf theater aboard half a dozen US and British carriers. That's not to say that fighter-bombers were not a key component of the overall war plan. Their role was preventive; many months before the war began, they carried out sorties to destroy Iraq's stationary and mobile radar and air defense and anti-missile systems in the allied no-fly zones and inside the country. And, one important footnote: While the Iraq War marginalized the direct combat role of fighter planes, bombers and assault helicopters, it highlighted the inestimable importance of flying transports for ferrying men and machines “ even entire armored divisions“ from point A to point B. 2. Deep, Advance Penetration Tipped the Scales Another stitch in time “deep-cover US agents who made contact and entered into negotiations with Iraqi field commanders well in advance of the invasion - was pivotal to the US victory in Iraq. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence and military sources report that, months before the war, several hundred American undercover agents organized in tight teams penetrated deep into Iraq, soon to become the key intelligence arm run by the US war command inside enemy territory. The common practice in the past was to use small groups of agents for direct contact with the enemy. They were operationally on their own and logistically self-sustaining. The deep penetration of Iraq was carried out this time by well-endowed units. They were protected by special forces, some of which stayed behind to baby-sit Iraqi commanders promising to cooperate with US invasion forces. They were given air support for continuous contact with those Iraqi commanders, logistical back-up and a supply line to make good on the US promises made to the turncoat Iraqi officers. The US war command also set up a special communications network for their use. The "deep enemy penetration" tactic was first employed for the 1991 Gulf War, when US intelligence officers went behind the front lines in Kuwait armed with personal data on targeted Iraqi battalion and divisional commanders. Their mission was to negotiate surrender terms before coalition forces came on the scene. Most of that data was provided by Saudi, Kuwaiti or Egyptian military and general intelligence from interrogations of the Iraqi officers' relatives living in Middle East countries, Europe and the United States. The first Gulf War, smaller in scale than the current conflict, entailed a limited penetration operation aimed at winning over a small number of Iraqi commanders. Its effect was nonetheless dramatic. The coalition troops were greeted upon landing with white flags mushrooming in the hands of surrendering Iraqi units along the routes from Kuwait up to the approaches of Baghdad. This time round, US war planners were more ambitious. They were determined to persuade large numbers of Iraqi field commanders that capitulation was the better part of valor “especially the officers of the elite Special Republican Guards and Fedayeen Saddam divisions“ in order to keep US and British casualties down to a minimum. The plan was to close as many bargains as early as possible to show Saddam and his sons Qusay and Uday that the ground had been stolen from under their feet and their best bet was to go into exile before hostilities got under way. To cast a wide net, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources report Washington enlisted all its own intelligence resources plus friendly services for an unprecedented worldwide intelligence effort both inside the United States and overseas. The mission of identifying and opening up lines of communication to 90 percent of Iraq's military commanders was entrusted to the CIA, FBI and DIA, as well as the intelligence services of Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran and most Gulf states. British, Australian, Netherlands and Danish intelligence went to work on their large Iraqi expatriate communities, pumping them for information on their kinsmen serving in the Iraqi military. Many Willing Ethnic Hands For this war, the Americans could take their pick of willing intelligence sources inside Iraq “unlike the first Gulf conflict. Opposition groups - Kurds, Turkomens and some Arab Sunni tribal leaders“ fell over themselves to make contact with the US war command; so did some Iraqi Shiite anti-Saddam groups. A special case was the armed Iranian opposition Mujahiddeen I-Khalq, fighting from bases in Iraq for more than a decade to overthrow the clerical regime in Tehran. This group played a double role in the war. The Mujahiddeens Washington office turned itself into a liaison bureau for contacts between anti-Saddam opposition forces inside Iraq and the CIA. The group's armed force in Iraq served Saddam as a reserve military contingent for oil field sabotage. The tune played by this many-stringed American intelligence instrument was "better than stunning," a Western intelligence source told DEBKA-Net-Weekly. US, British and Australian special forces were armed with a flood of data for forging contacts with Iraqi field commanders. Two months before the war got underway the number of Iraqi officers willing to lay down arms spiraled under the stimulus of added incentives for commanders who "brought friends.'' As the Western intelligence source told it: "Iraqi commanders competed over who could bring the highest-ranking officer into the surrender chain for the most advantageous deal." Quite soon, deal was leading to deal at a bewildering rate. "US officers found it hard to keep up with the plethora of individual surrender arrangements and the promises to be met." The biggest human intelligence breakthrough achieved by the Americans, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources, was landing Iraqi General Waqil Massiri, Officer for Special Tasks. A close associate of Saddam and his sons, Massiri enjoyed unrestricted access to the commanders of the Special Republican Guard divisions and the Fedayeen Saddam, thanks mainly to being married to the daughter of Saddam's most notorious cousin -- General Ali Majid Al-Tikrity, who was known as "Chemical Ali" for organizing the poisoning of thousands of Kurds in Halabja. Ali Majid was given command of the southern warfront. Our sources report that it was Massiri who brokered the contact between the Americans and General Maher Safiyan al-Tikriti, commander of Special Republic Guard units in Baghdad, which opened the door for the US 3rd Infantry Division and Marine 1st Expeditionary Force to push into the heart of the capital without a real fight. The surrender agreements included a US pledge not to conduct air or ground attacks on Iraqi units giving themselves up. Commanders and men were given safe conduct and immunity from pursuit during and after the war and allowed to rejoin their families as civilians. The Iraqi commanders' promised, for their part, not to attack American or British troops or sabotage strategic infrastructure such as bridges, intersections, dams, and gas, oil, water and electrical facilities. They also pledged not to mine or booby-trap military installations, equipment or defense lines. The procedure for putting this agreement into effect was simple: on an agreed signal from US forces, Iraqi officers and soldiers were to shed their uniforms, quit their positions and “leaving their weapons and personal military gear behind“ go home. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and intelligence sources, many Iraqi officers and men jumped the gun, making off even before US forces signaled or appeared. These deals partly explain how Iraq's 45 army divisions seemed to go up in smoke leaving a comparatively small number of military casualties in hospitals and few prisoners of war in US and British hands. A few officers were taken prisoner by mistake and released. Except for Iraq's air force chief -- a member of Saddam's immediate family “Iraqi military commanders are conspicuously absent from the US-issued 55-card pack of wanted high-ranking Iraqis. Less Bridges to Cross Those pre-war transactions also explain why not a single bridge over the Euphrates, Tigris, Diyala or Lesser Zab rivers was blown up and the country's oil resources came out of the war by and large undamaged, save for a small number of oil fields torched in southern Iraq. But some DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources question whether this comprehensive enemy surrender project, which undoubtedly saved many American and British lives, was not of assistance to Saddam as well. Intelligence information received in recent hours indicates that Saddam, his sons and trusted Iraqi military commanders knew exactly which officers and units had agreed to lay down their arms together with the arrangements and timetables for their surrender. Our sources do not know whether it was Massiri himself or Chemical Ali who gave them away to Saddam. But no sooner had the surrender agreements been signed when the officers who signed them were ordered to present themselves immediately to their superiors - sometimes to Saddam himself or his sons. Fearing the worst, that they would be executed for treason, they were astonished to find themselves recruited as double agents. Their officers, voicing understanding for their desire to protect themselves and families, advised them to continue to guarantee their safety from Iraqi retribution by naming and describing the US liaison officers with whom they dealt, plus the frequencies and codes used in their communications. They were allowed to leave unharmed after giving up this information and told stay in touch with their American contacts until they and their men could go home. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence and military experts believe that Saddam and his sons used this data to pass misleading insider tip-offs to US forces about their own whereabouts and movements. One result may have been the three abortive American raids against locations after the US war command and the CIA were assured from an "inside source" that Saddam, Qusay and Uday, were present. In fact, all three were somewhere else. Furthermore, his foreknowledge of which units would evacuate which bridges or positions “and when“ enabled Saddam or his double to safely make his famous televised street appearances in various Baghdad neighborhoods not far from American forces. It must be said that the deposed Iraqi ruler exhibited iron nerve and boldness in the way he managed his survival by using intelligence stratagems. His minute knowledge of his commanders' surrender deals and coalition troop movements, their timetables and the fate of the various defense lines, enabled him and his henchmen to win the game of hide and seek and eventually make good their escape ahead of capture. Several thousand Iraqi regime officials were also able to arrange their orderly departure from Iraq. To get away, they were not forced through a grueling battle such as the Tora Bora ordeal Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar and Ayman al-Zawahri experienced to escape Afghanistan. Saddam, his sons and associates made a quiet, almost leisurely, departure from their country. Intelligence as Prime Weapon The Iraq War was therefore essentially an intelligence campaign, a strategic battle of wits. The first round ended in a tie because, like bin Laden in Afghanistan, Saddam and his sons are still on the loose with their weapons of mass destruction. One of the few clauses of the surrender agreements entered into by the Iraqi commanders affected the disposition of Iraq's mighty conventional arsenal, often displayed in celebratory parades. The heavy weapons, missiles and aircraft supposed to have been left behind undamaged after Iraqi officers and men made their getaway under white flags, are nowhere to be found. Iraq was known to have deployed at least two thousand tanks and a huge number of missiles, rocket launchers and heavy artillery. All but a handful has been spirited away. Preliminary assessments suggest that the Iraqi tank and artillery positions and depots struck in the early part of the war by massive coalition air and cruise missile strikes were decoys. The real arsenal could be in several places - scattered around barely accessible hideaways across Iraq; moved out of Iraq before the war via Syria and several Gulf countries “or even sold on the international black market. All the coalition teams have turned up so far are huge ammunition dumps. Ordnance fetches low prices on world markets, is perishable and hard to transport, unlike tanks and artillery which are in demand. As for Iraq's missing missiles, just two weeks before the war began, UN weapons inspectors located a few of the 100 to 120 Samoud 1 and Samoud 2 missiles Iraq was known to possess. About 20 were destroyed under the eyes of the inspectors, leaving at least 80 unaccounted for. Could they too have been smuggled out and sold? Some international black market may also be handling even more precious merchandise plundered by Saddam and his family, the thieves of Baghdad. Coalition military officials and Interpol experts believe that Saddam or his sons were responsible for smuggling Iraq's weapons into the hands of arms dealers and may also have set up the looting of the Baghdad Archeology Museum of its most valuable artifacts as part of the same deal. Earlier this week, US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he does not believe Iraqi's conventional or unconventional weapons will be found any time soon. Efforts, he said, must now be directed toward finding those people who can shed light on their whereabouts, a process that could take years. Those willing to talk about Iraq's WMD usually know only bits and pieces of the story. The people who can shed light on the entire picture are, like the weapons themselves, no longer in Iraq. As usual, Rumsfeld was being realistic. Top Washington's Ultimatum to Iran Targeted: Tehran's N-Bomb Program alongside that of North Korea That the mass Iraqi Shiite pilgrimage to Karbala this week passed off peacefully “contrary to most predictions“ did not happen of itself. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Gulf sources, no more than 3,000 agitators seriously tried to turn the estimated two million worshippers into an anti-American mob. They did not succeed. Iran, which was at first bent on stirring up trouble by means of the armed Badr Brigade militants and agents it pumped into Karbala and Shiite districts of southern Iraq, changed its orders at the last moment. Western intelligence sources present at the ceremonies easily identified the Iranian agents and militiamen whose weapons were barely concealed under their robes. However, they were also seen to conduct themselves quietly, exhibiting no signs of violence. A similar impression of quiescence was gained by the sources keeping a close watch on the secret forward base the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (Pazdaran) had improvised for the pilgrimage at the southern Iraqi town of Al Amarah. That base was strikingly inactive despite the presence of some very heavy Iranian brass: Brigadier-General Iraj Masjedi, Head of the Ramezan Headquarters of Iran's Revolutionary Guards; Lt.-Colonel Muhammad Obeidavi, from the Revolutionary Guards Fajr headquarters; Lt.-Col Hamid Taghavi, from the Revolutionary Guards Ramadan headquarters, and Colonel Mahmoud Farhadi, Intelligence chief at Revolutionary Guards Zafar base. Tehran called off its dogs of revolution at Karbala after receiving through unofficial channels a stern ultimatum from Washington that had nothing to do with Iraq: Iran was cautioned not to exploit the US-North Korean dispute over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program (the subject of subsequent talks in Beijing Thursday, April 24), to activate its nuclear facilities and confront Washington with a fresh nuclear crisis. DEBKA-Net-Weekly carried three exclusive reports last October exposing the Iranian-North Korean partnership in the manufacture of two or three nuclear bombs. Iran was warned not to proceed with the development of nuclear devices using the materials and components it had stocked. Iran was required to sign the Protocol of the Non-Proliferation Treaty which allows unscheduled inspections without notice of the nuclear installations of member nations. The general tone of the American warning left no room for doubt about Washington's intentions. The French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, who arrived in Tehran Thursday, April 24, advised his Iranian hosts that the Bush administration was in no mood to suffer Iranian defiance on the nuclear issue any more than North Korean intransigence. He suggested that Iran would do well to discuss freezing its nuclear program for the time being or risk direct American action. To cool American tempers and buy time, the Iranians let the Karbala pilgrimage go by without incident. However, in the view of DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Iran experts, the regime in Tehran is incapable of lying down under American ultimatums. The ayatollahs will simply bide their time and then go back to developing their nuclear weapons program, confronting Washington with the need to force its will on them one way or another. Tehran is where the next serious crisis is brewing, alongside the Korean nuclear standoff.Results Page: SADDAM IS HIDING OUT IN BELARUS-1054924845Date Added: Thursday, April 24th, 2003Contributed by: RCN Administrator
As DEBKA-Net-Weekly went to press this week, there were increasing indications that the deposed Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein has been hiding in Belarus since late March or early April. With his sons, Uday and Qusay, their families and an entourage of close and trusted aides, Saddam appears to be the guest of President Aleksandr Lukashenko at a villa estate in the walled Zhdanovidhi military compound 10 miles west of Minsk.
The villa estate was built in the seventies especially for Soviet ruler Leonid Brezhnev under the supervision of Yuri Andropov, the KGB chief who later stepped into his master’s shoes. For Saddam, this sanctuary is very much a home from home. The villa estate like his palace compounds in Baghdad contains residential spaces atop underground bunkers that are linked by tunnels to his host’s presidential palace at Drozdy three miles away. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence sources, Saddam’s sanctuary is guarded by ground-air missile batteries and two cordons of Belarus security agents, members of the local KGB, or Committee of State Security. The inner cordon of members of Lukashenko’s praetorian guard is posted inside the villa estate along with the personal bodyguards of Saddam and family. The outer ring consists of Belarus KGB Spetsnaz commandos, trained by the Russian FSB General Security Bureau. Our sources have received exclusive information that a Russian intelligence general is a fellow-guest of Saddam’s in the compound. His identity is unknown except that he is reportedly a staff member of the Russian First Chief Directorate based in Yasenevo on assignment as liaison man between Saddam and the former Russian prime minister and KGB chief Yevgeny Primakov. In this capacity he spent five to six months before the war in close proximity to the Iraqi ruler, going everywhere with him. This unnamed Russian general makes his reports in two copies: one each to Primakov and Russian president Vladimir Putin. According to the information reaching Washington, he never leaves the small house assigned him on the estate sheltering Saddam, suggesting that he may be held in semi-detention as surety for the Belarus and Russian presidents keeping Saddam and his entourage safe. The Getaway DEBKA-Net-Weekly has learned that Saddam flew out of Baghdad international airport on March 29 or 30, when it still bore his name. He was picked up with a party of some 300 by two Boeing 727 airliners hired in Europe for a long-term charter in the last week of March by a Brussels-based electronics firm fronting for the Belarus KGB. When the hired planes landed at Minsk military airfield on 25th or 26th of March, they had all their identifying marks painted out, before taking off on what was logged as a charter flight to Damascus. After landing at Damascus military air base for refueling, the two planes flew off and came in low over Baghdad airport. A short while later they were flying over Syria on course for Minsk carrying the fleeing Iraqi ruler and entourage. Our experts are convinced that Lukashenko would never have ventured on so reckless a course as providing asylum for the man most wanted by the United States without a firm nod from Putin. The last DEBKA-Net-Weekly issue (No. 105 published on April 11), ran an article captioned Washington-Moscow Blowout over Saddam, which revealed that the US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, when she visited Putin at the Kremlin on April 5, warned him that the US government is fully aware that Russian intelligence knows where Saddam Hussein is hiding. We have since discovered that she was referring to Zhdanovidh. According to our sources, the occupants of the White House and US intelligence chiefs did not fall off their seats when they learned about the collaboration between Putin and Lukashenko and their foreign intelligence agencies. DEBKA-Net-Weekly reveals for the first time that President George W. Bush and his administration’s intelligence and security advisers discovered the full extent of Russian-Belarus-Iraqi dealings from documents in the Iraqi intelligence archives opened up in Baghdad by US forces. More Intelligence Data Uncovered in Baghdad. Saddam Hussein and his undercover agents were adepts in the cloak-and-dagger arts. They spread their nets in many corners of the world. Iraq’s wide-ranging links with foreign services are now being laid bare by the American experts poring over the rich store of documents discovered at Iraqi command and intelligence centers in Baghdad, Tikrit, Faluja and a number of air force facilities. Saddam’s services maintained especially strong connections with Russian intelligence, Western intelligence sources familiar with the documentation questioned by DEBKA-Net-Weekly report. Particularly intense was the relationship with the counterintelligence department of the Russian General Security Bureau, the FSB, and GRU military intelligence. It was no ad hoc arrangement; the Russians relayed materials useful to Iraq day by day and Baghdad was free to ask questions or request clarifications from Moscow. The exchanges of information took place via Russian liaison offices operating out of the Russian embassy in Baghdad. One of those bureaus was in constant contact with the 5th Directorate of the GDI, or Department of Iraqi General Intelligence, while the second was run by plainclothes GRU officers with diplomatic immunity. They liaised with Iraqi military intelligence headquarters, the MSS, located in Baghdad’s Aladhamia district. Western intelligence agencies now going through Iraq’s domestic and foreign intelligence headquarters with a fine tooth comb believe that the unnamed Russian general who liaised between Moscow and Saddam and his sons, stayed in Baghdad up until April 6. Using the cover of a private intelligence consultant, he was also likely the point man between the Iraqi leader and the headquarters of the First Chief Directorate at Yasenevo near Moscow. The Iraqis maintained three independent liaison bureaus. One worked out of the offices of Syrian air force intelligence in Damascus; its primary task was to maintain contact with Russian military intelligence officers operating in the Syrian capital. The bureau is still functioning and now operates out of the Iraqi embassy building in Damascus. Two other Iraqi offices are still open, in Moscow and in Minsk, functioning on Iraqi diplomatic premises as if the war never happened. Iraq’s espionage service also maintained ties with other intelligence agencies in Eastern Europe such as the Croatian Security Information Service, or SIS, elements of Croatian military intelligence, the OSH, Belarus’ KGB, Ukrainian military intelligence agency, the SID, Serbia’s counter-espionage service and the intelligence arm of the Albanian Liberation Army, which according to material found in Iraq ran espionage and information-gathering networks in Italy, Switzerland, France, Luxembourg, Germany, Denmark and Britain. The documents found in Baghdad also indicate that the Iraqi MSS had a limited intelligence relationship with Chinese central intelligence, the French DGSE and Germany’s BND. Iraqi intelligence maintained particularly close ties with sister agencies in the Muslim world, especially with Pakistani military intelligence, or SIS, and Indonesia’s central intelligence agency, BAKIN. DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence sources believe the revelations turned up in the Iraqi intelligence archives, if exposed, could cause earthquakes in many governments and intelligence agencies around the world, including countries such as Britain, Australia, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Germany, France Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore ?and even the United States itself. But it could take months if not years for the experts to finish picking over the treasure trove of secret materials. DEBKA-Net-Weekly continues to follow this developing story. Top The Warless War 1. Saddam and His WMD ? Relocated Not Destroyed There is more than one common factor between the wars the United States fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some may make uncomfortable reading. Both ended in America?s military victory at an unbelievably low cost in life; both expelled their targets from the territorial bases from which they committed their crimes; both cleared the way for enlightened government. However, both targets eluded capture and remain at large with sufficient resources to dog the steps of the United States and its allies and inflict enormous harm all over again. Saddam, after his first sanctuary in Minsk has been detected, has the resources to keep on moving and activate the illegal weapons he still commands. Five weeks after the Iraq War began ?and one week after it ended ?DEBKA-Net-Weekly?s intelligence sources cite documents turned up by coalition forces in Baghdad which confirm Saddam Hussein and his regime did indeed possess nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. However, though on the run, he retains control of sufficient stocks of unconventional weapons, intelligence assets and money to wage war on the United States from bases and hideouts outside Iraq, where some of his WMD systems are also tucked away. So cunningly were they hidden that not a single banned weapon system has so far come to light amid the wreckage of the mighty Baath military, intelligence and political machine, with which a tyrant and his two sons held sway over 24 million Iraqis. Although they have lost a land larger than California and almost the size of Spain, most of Saddam?s elite escaped in one piece, just as most of the Taliban?s leaders and Osama bin Laden?s operational core got clean away from conquered Afghanistan to continue operations from new bases in other countries. The rank and file of the Taliban army melted into the local populace in Afghanistan and along the border with Pakistan. Taliban-al Qaeda fighting elements relocated in the Gulf, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Central Asia and Far Eastern countries such as the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia. All they left behind were large weapons depots. Here too is an analogy for Iraq, albeit on a different scale. A huge army of 45 Iraqi army divisions ?some half-million troops ?has disappeared as if the ground had swallowed them up. Failing a mass exodus from the country, the missing troops can only be accounted for by having shed their uniforms and gone home to their families. They have melted into the general population like the Taliban and al Qaeda of Afghanistan. The resemblance between the two wars may stem from the fact that both were conceived by the same pair of strategic brains: US Central Command chief General Tommy Franks and his main sponsor in government, US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly?s military and intelligence experts, the two men fathered a bold and innovative concept according to which even big wars can be waged and won without large-scale and decisive battles. This revolutionary concept was first practiced in Afghanistan, where it was proved that massive ground forces were not needed for victory. The Afghan campaign hinged heavily on a combination of aerial might and small ground contingents made up of special forces and local militias backed up by commandos from allied neighbors ?in this case, Russia and Uzbekistan. The superfluity of massive aerial power in actual combat was demonstrated again in the Iraq War. Iraqi strategists knew that the Iraqi air force was no match for the advanced technology of the American air force and therefore kept its aircraft grounded. Indeed, there is no air force on earth today sophisticated enough to take on America?s state of the art air might. Stealth bombers and ageing B-52 warhorses were used for limited sorties against ground targets, but no major role was played by fighter planes and assault helicopters ?even against enemy tank columns. The same applied to aircraft brought to the Gulf theater aboard half a dozen US and British carriers. That?s not to say that fighter-bombers were not a key component of the overall war plan. Their role was preventive; many months before the war began, they carried out sorties to destroy Iraq?s stationary and mobile radar and air defense and anti-missile systems in the allied no-fly zones and inside the country. And, one important footnote: While the Iraq War marginalized the direct combat role of fighter planes, bombers and assault helicopters, it highlighted the inestimable importance of flying transports for ferrying men and machines ?even entire armored divisions ?from point A to point B. 2. Deep, Advance Penetration Tipped the Scales Another stitch in time ?deep-cover US agents who made contact and entered into negotiations with Iraqi field commanders well in advance of the invasion - was pivotal to the US victory in Iraq. DEBKA-Net-Weekly?s intelligence and military sources report that, months before the war, several hundred American undercover agents organized in tight teams penetrated deep into Iraq, soon to become the key intelligence arm run by the US war command inside enemy territory. The common practice in the past was to use small groups of agents for direct contact with the enemy. They were operationally on their own and logistically self-sustaining. The deep penetration of Iraq was carried out this time by well-endowed units. They were protected by special forces, some of which stayed behind to baby-sit Iraqi commanders promising to cooperate with US invasion forces. They were given air support for continuous contact with those Iraqi commanders, logistical back-up and a supply line to make good on the US promises made to the turncoat Iraqi officers. The US war command also set up a special communications network for their use. The ?deep enemy penetration? tactic was first employed for the 1991 Gulf War, when US intelligence officers went behind the front lines in Kuwait armed with personal data on targeted Iraqi battalion and divisional commanders. Their mission was to negotiate surrender terms before coalition forces came on the scene. Most of that data was provided by Saudi, Kuwaiti or Egyptian military and general intelligence from interrogations of the Iraqi officers? relatives living in Middle East countries, Europe and the United States. The first Gulf War, smaller in scale than the current conflict, entailed a limited penetration operation aimed at winning over a small number of Iraqi commanders. Its effect was nonetheless dramatic. The coalition troops were greeted upon landing with white flags mushrooming in the hands of surrendering Iraqi units along the routes from Kuwait up to the approaches of Baghdad. This time round, US war planners were more ambitious. They were determined to persuade large numbers of Iraqi field commanders that capitulation was the better part of valor ?especially the officers of the elite Special Republican Guards and Fedayeen Saddam divisions ?in order to keep US and British casualties down to a minimum. The plan was to close as many bargains as early as possible to show Saddam and his sons Qusay and Uday that the ground had been stolen from under their feet and their best bet was to go into exile before hostilities got under way. To cast a wide net, DEBKA-Net-Weekly?s intelligence sources report Washington enlisted all its own intelligence resources plus friendly services for an unprecedented worldwide intelligence effort both inside the United States and overseas. The mission of identifying and opening up lines of communication to 90 percent of Iraq?s military commanders was entrusted to the CIA, FBI and DIA, as well as the intelligence services of Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran and most Gulf states. British, Australian, Netherlands and Danish intelligence went to work on their large Iraqi expatriate communities, pumping them for information on their kinsmen serving in the Iraqi military. Many Willing Ethnic Hands For this war, the Americans could take their pick of willing intelligence sources inside Iraq ?unlike the first Gulf conflict. Opposition groups - Kurds, Turkomens and some Arab Sunni tribal leaders ?fell over themselves to make contact with the US war command; so did some Iraqi Shiite anti-Saddam groups. A special case was the armed Iranian opposition Mujahiddeen I-Khalq, fighting from bases in Iraq for more than a decade to overthrow the clerical regime in Tehran. This group played a double role in the war. The Mujahiddeens? Washington office turned itself into a liaison bureau for contacts between anti-Saddam opposition forces inside Iraq and the CIA. The group?s armed force in Iraq served Saddam as a reserve military contingent for oil field sabotage. The tune played by this many-stringed American intelligence instrument was ?better than stunning,? a Western intelligence source told DEBKA-Net-Weekly. US, British and Australian special forces were armed with a flood of data for forging contacts with Iraqi field commanders. Two months before the war got underway the number of Iraqi officers willing to lay down arms spiraled under the stimulus of added incentives for commanders who ?brought friends.? As the Western intelligence source told it: ?Iraqi commanders competed over who could bring the highest-ranking officer into the surrender chain for the most advantageous deal.? Quite soon, deal was leading to deal at a bewildering rate. ?US officers found it hard to keep up with the plethora of individual surrender arrangements and the promises to be met.? The biggest human intelligence breakthrough achieved by the Americans, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly?s intelligence sources, was landing Iraqi General Waqil Massiri, Officer for Special Tasks. A close associate of Saddam and his sons, Massiri enjoyed unrestricted access to the commanders of the Special Republican Guard divisions and the Fedayeen Saddam, thanks mainly to being married to the daughter of Saddam?s most notorious cousin -- General Ali Majid Al-Tikrity, who was known as ?Chemical Ali? for organizing the poisoning of thousands of Kurds in Halabja. Ali Majid was given command of the southern warfront. Our sources report that it was Massiri who brokered the contact between the Americans and General Maher Safiyan al-Tikriti, commander of Special Republic Guard units in Baghdad, which opened the door for the US 3rd Infantry Division and Marine 1st Expeditionary Force to push into the heart of the capital without a real fight. The surrender agreements included a US pledge not to conduct air or ground attacks on Iraqi units giving themselves up. Commanders and men were given safe conduct and immunity from pursuit during and after the war and allowed to rejoin their families as civilians. The Iraqi commanders? promised, for their part, not to attack American or British troops or sabotage strategic infrastructure such as bridges, intersections, dams, and gas, oil, water and electrical facilities. They also pledged not to mine or booby-trap military installations, equipment or defense lines. The procedure for putting this agreement into effect was simple: on an agreed signal from US forces, Iraqi officers and soldiers were to shed their uniforms, quit their positions and ? leaving their weapons and personal military gear behind ?go home. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly?s military and intelligence sources, many Iraqi officers and men jumped the gun, making off even before US forces signaled or appeared. These deals partly explain how Iraq?s 45 army divisions seemed to go up in smoke leaving a comparatively small number of military casualties in hospitals and few prisoners of war in US and British hands. A few officers were taken prisoner by mistake and released. Except for Iraq?s air force chief -- a member of Saddam?s immediate family ?Iraqi military commanders are conspicuously absent from the US-issued 55-card pack of wanted high-ranking Iraqis. Less Bridges to Cross Those pre-war transactions also explain why not a single bridge over the Euphrates, Tigris, Diyala or Lesser Zab rivers was blown up and the country?s oil resources came out of the war by and large undamaged, save for a small number of oil fields torched in southern Iraq. But some DEBKA-Net-Weekly?s intelligence sources question whether this comprehensive enemy surrender project, which undoubtedly saved many American and British lives, was not of assistance to Saddam as well. Intelligence information received in recent hours indicates that Saddam, his sons and trusted Iraqi military commanders knew exactly which officers and units had agreed to lay down their arms together with the arrangements and timetables for their surrender. Our sources do not know whether it was Massiri himself or Chemical Ali who gave them away to Saddam. But no sooner had the surrender agreements been signed when the officers who signed them were ordered to present themselves immediately to their superiors - sometimes to Saddam himself or his sons. Fearing the worst, that they would be executed for treason, they were astonished to find themselves recruited as double agents. Their officers, voicing understanding for their desire to protect themselves and families, advised them to continue to guarantee their safety from Iraqi retribution by naming and describing the US liaison officers with whom they dealt, plus the frequencies and codes used in their communications. They were allowed to leave unharmed after giving up this information and told stay in touch with their American contacts until they and their men could go home. DEBKA-Net-Weekly?s intelligence and military experts believe that Saddam and his sons used this data to pass misleading ?insider tip-offs? to US forces about their own whereabouts and movements. One result may have been the three abortive American raids against locations after the US war command and the CIA were assured from an ?inside source? that Saddam, Qusay and Uday, were present. In fact, all three were somewhere else. Furthermore, his foreknowledge of which units would evacuate which bridges or positions ?and when ?enabled Saddam or his double to safely make his famous televised street appearances in various Baghdad neighborhoods not far from American forces. It must be said that the deposed Iraqi ruler exhibited iron nerve and boldness in the way he managed his survival by using intelligence stratagems. His minute knowledge of his commanders surrender deals and coalition troop movements, their timetables and the fate of the various defense lines, enabled him and his henchmen to win the game of hide and seek and eventually make good their escape ahead of capture. Several thousand Iraqi regime officials were also able to arrange their orderly departure from Iraq. To get away, they were not forced through a grueling battle such as the Tora Bora ordeal Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar and Ayman al-Zawahri experienced to escape Afghanistan. Saddam, his sons and associates made a quiet, almost leisurely, departure from their country. Intelligence as Prime Weapon The Iraq War was therefore essentially an intelligence campaign, a strategic battle of wits. The first round ended in a tie because, like bin Laden in Afghanistan, Saddam and his sons are still on the loose with their weapons of mass destruction. One of the few clauses of the surrender agreements entered into by the Iraqi commanders affected the disposition of Iraq?s mighty conventional arsenal, often displayed in celebratory parades. The heavy weapons, missiles and aircraft supposed to have been left behind undamaged after Iraqi officers and men made their getaway under white flags, are nowhere to be found. Iraq was known to have deployed at least two thousand tanks and a huge number of missiles, rocket launchers and heavy artillery. All but a handful has been spirited away. Preliminary assessments suggest that the Iraqi tank and artillery positions and depots struck in the early part of the war by massive coalition air and cruise missile strikes were decoys. The real arsenal could be in several places - scattered around barely accessible hideaways across Iraq; moved out of Iraq before the war via Syria and several Gulf countries ?or even sold on the international black market. All the coalition teams have turned up so far are huge ammunition dumps. Ordnance fetches low prices on world markets, is perishable and hard to transport, unlike tanks and artillery which are in demand. As for Iraq?s missing missiles, just two weeks before the war began, UN weapons inspectors located a few of the 100 to 120 Samoud 1 and Samoud 2 missiles Iraq was known to possess. About 20 were destroyed under the eyes of the inspectors, leaving at least 80 unaccounted for. Could they too have been smuggled out and sold? Some international black market may also be handling even more precious merchandise plundered by Saddam and his family, the thieves of Baghdad. Coalition military officials and Interpol experts believe that Saddam or his sons were responsible for smuggling Iraq?s weapons into the hands of arms dealers and may also have set up the looting of the Baghdad Archeology Museum of its most valuable artifacts as part of the same deal. Earlier this week, US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he does not believe Iraqi?s conventional or unconventional weapons will be found any time soon. Efforts, he said, must now be directed toward finding those people who can shed light on their whereabouts, a process that could take years. Those willing to talk about Iraq?s WMD usually know only bits and pieces of the story. The people who can shed light on the entire picture are, like the weapons themselves, no longer in Iraq. As usual, Rumsfeld was being realistic. Top Washington’s Ultimatum to Iran Targeted: Tehran?s N-Bomb Program alongside that of North Korea That the mass Iraqi Shiite pilgrimage to Karbala this week passed off peacefully ?contrary to most predictions ?did not happen of itself. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly?s Gulf sources, no more than 3,000 agitators seriously tried to turn the estimated two million worshippers into an anti-American mob. They did not succeed. Iran, which was at first bent on stirring up trouble by means of the armed Badr Brigade militants and agents it pumped into Karbala and Shiite districts of southern Iraq, changed its orders at the last moment. Western intelligence sources present at the ceremonies easily identified the Iranian agents and militiamen whose weapons were barely concealed under their robes. However, they were also seen to conduct themselves quietly, exhibiting no signs of violence. A similar impression of quiescence was gained by the sources keeping a close watch on the secret forward base the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (Pazdaran) had improvised for the pilgrimage at the southern Iraqi town of Al Amarah. That base was strikingly inactive despite the presence of some very heavy Iranian brass: Brigadier-General Iraj Masjedi, Head of the Ramezan Headquarters of Iran?s Revolutionary Guards; Lt.-Colonel Muhammad Obeidavi, from the Revolutionary Guards Fajr headquarters; Lt.-Col Hamid Taghavi, from the Revolutionary Guards Ramadan headquarters, and Colonel Mahmoud Farhadi, Intelligence chief at Revolutionary Guards Zafar base. Tehran called off its dogs of revolution at Karbala after receiving through unofficial channels a stern ultimatum from Washington that had nothing to do with Iraq: Iran was cautioned not to exploit the US-North Korean dispute over Pyongyang?s nuclear weapons program (the subject of subsequent talks in Beijing Thursday, April 24), to activate its nuclear facilities and confront Washington with a fresh nuclear crisis. DEBKA-Net-Weekly carried three exclusive reports last October exposing the Iranian-North Korean partnership in the manufacture of two or three nuclear bombs. Iran was warned not to proceed with the development of nuclear devices using the materials and components it had stocked. Iran was required to sign the Protocol of the Non-Proliferation Treaty which allows unscheduled inspections without notice of the nuclear installations of member nations. The general tone of the American warning left no room for doubt about Washington?s intentions. The French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, who arrived in Tehran Thursday, April 24, advised his Iranian hosts that the Bush administration was in no mood to suffer Iranian defiance on the nuclear issue any more than North Korean intransigence. He suggested that Iran would do well to discuss freezing its nuclear program for the time being or risk direct American action. To cool American tempers and buy time, the Iranians let the Karbala pilgrimage go by without incident. However, in the view of DEBKA-Net-Weekly?s Iran experts, the regime in Tehran is incapable of lying down under American ultimatums. The ayatollahs will simply bide their time and then go back to developing their nuclear weapons program, confronting Washington with the need to force its will on them one way or another. Tehran is where the next serious crisis is brewing, alongside the Korean nuclear standoff.
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PUTIN PROPOSAL WOULD ABSORB BELARUS INTO RUSSIADate Added: Thursday, August 15th, 2002Contributed by: RCN Administrator
Russian President Vladimir Putin engaged in talks in Moscow Aug. 14 with Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko to outline his vision for a union state between the two countries. As presented, Putin’s proposal amounts to a total absorption of Belarus into Russia. The move will help Putin deflect charges that he has sold out his country to Western interests and will ingratiate him to Belarus’ oft-annoyed neighbors.
Lukashenko has in the past viewed the union state as an ideal vehicle for expanding his power. He assumed that although a Russian leader would be in charge of the overall union, he could slide into the number two spot -- his logic being that it is better to be the second-most important person in a country of 153 million than the top dog in a country of only 10 million. This idea was especially attractive during the Boris Yeltsin years, when the former Russian president was flitting in and out of major heart surgery, raising the possibility that Lukashenko could inherit the leadership of both states. An additional clause in Lukashenko’s proposals would guarantee political equality between Belarus and Russia, which would greatly increase his role in any future state. But Putin poured cold water on this dream at the last meeting between the two presidents in St. Petersburg in June, when he scoffed at the idea of equality between the states and left Lukashenko fuming. At the most recent meeting this week, Putin called for the creation of a joint state based on the Russian Federation’s constitution and expressed his desire to use the Russian ruble as a joint currency beginning in January 2004. Implementing such a plan would amount to a de facto Russian annexation of the far smaller and weaker Belarus. The "new" nation would encompass Russia’s existing 89 regions as well as Belarus’ seven. Putin’s timetable for the merger is an aggressive one. Both states would hold referendums in March 2003, and a vote on a joint president would occur in 2004. Not coincidentally, Putin is up for re-election in 2004. Lukashenko was understandably put off by the proposal and said so upon his return to Minsk. However, if the union state is to actually go anywhere, it will do so on Russia’s terms. Moscow is not only the senior partner in terms of economic, population, political and military heft, but it also subsidizes Belarus’ energy consumption and overall economic well-being. In the arena of domestic politics, Putin’s plan is a masterstroke. The president’s bold pro-Western policies have stirred significant resentment in Russia from nationalists, and there are concerns that a red-brown (Communist and nationalist) coalition might be able to challenge Putin and his Unity party in parliamentary and presidential elections in 2003 and 2004. On the whole, Russians would jump at the chance to expand their country; most still feel the old Soviet borders are Moscow’s natural right. Therefore, even talk alone of annexing Belarus could be sufficient to guarantee Putin and Unity’s success at the polls. It also will boost the president’s credibility while he pushes for controversial -- and painful -- economic reforms to ensure Russia’s accession into the World Trade Organization. Discussion of a merger also would prove popular abroad. Europe is critical of Belarus’ shoddy human rights record, and the country has almost been kicked out of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development due to policies that practically suffocate the private sector. Washington fumes at Minsk’s ties to Baghdad, and its closest neighbors complain of everything from unpaid energy bills to archaic customs procedures. Even the mechanics of preparing for an annexation of Belarus could reinforce Putin’s position. Constitutional revisions would be required that the canny Putin would almost certainly use to correct a wide array of flaws within the existing constitution and to tinker with an equally large number of other provisions. Examples include strengthening the role of the federal government verses the regions, unifying presidential control over Russia’s various as-yet-unprivatized corporations or formally turning developing economic reforms into constitutional law. But for Lukashenko, the future is much less certain. Putin is already maneuvering to discredit and oust the Belarusian president. Now he has figured out a way to do so that will keep Russia united behind that goal. Lukashenko’s foreign policy ever since his inauguration has been simply loyalty to Russia. Both he and Belarus have no other friends or power groups to whom they can look for assistance now that Putin has turned on them, leaving Lukashenko in political limbo, where the only bright spot is the exit sign.
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BELARUS-RUSSIAN TIES NEARING BREAKING POINTDate Added: Wednesday, August 14th, 2002Contributed by: RCN Administrator
Russian President Vladimir Putin met with his counterpart in Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, Aug. 14 to discuss creating a joint economic and political body. Although the two leaders put on a more positive face than they did for their last meeting in June, relations between Belarus and Russia have been spiraling downward ever since Putin became Russia’s leader three years ago.
Events since Sept. 11 have put the two country’s policies on a collision course. Putin now appears to be maneuvering to ensure Lukashenko’s fall from power, which would further Putin’s own goals of greater ties with Europe. For most of the post-Cold War era, Belarus was the only true ally of the Russian Federation. This was largely because no one else would have Belarus. The government’s appalling treatment of Western diplomats has kept European communication links to a minimum, and constant flirtations with states such as Iraq have earned it American enmity as well. By largely keeping the Soviet economic system, Belarus divorced itself from international markets, and only Russia’s continuing economic concessions -- made largely for political reasons -- have kept the economy chugging along. The Russian government during the rule of Boris Yeltsin had a cozy relationship with Lukashenko that served Minsk well. As a reward for his loyalty, Russia provided Belarus with currency stabilization loans along with near-free natural gas, oil and electricity, allowing Belarusians to enjoy a standard of living far better than their small, isolated state should have been able to provide. In addition, the deal served Lukashenko personally. He and Yeltsin pushed for the creation of a joint state -- the Russia-Belarus Union -- that would consolidate both countries’ economies and political systems. Lukashenko figured that were he the vice president of the new union, then when the often-unpredictable (and frequently tipsy) Yeltsin tumbled aside, he would inherit the leadership of both states. But then Putin came along and ruined his plans. Not only is the current Russian president younger, healthier and far more alert than his predecessor, he intensely dislikes the Belarusian president both professionally and personally. Putin has held Lukashenko and his cherished union state at arms length since assuming the presidency in January 2000. When Putin allowed former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic -- another firm, if eccentric, ally of Russia -- to twist in the wind as he was being forced out of office in late 2000, Lukashenko probably correctly sensed that the future could hold a similar fate for him. Since Sept. 11 that distance has only widened as Putin has sought to cozy up to the West. At a June 25 summit in St. Petersburg, Putin publicly slammed the very idea of the Union state, all but killing the idea. Since then relations have turned downright chilly. Minsk has insisted that Russian energy firms provide diesel fuel to Belarus’ inefficient Soviet-style agricultural cooperatives. A much-bigger-dollar issue has been Minsk’s opposition to Moscow’s efforts But the move that must have really got Putin’s attention was the decision by Belarusian courts July 17 to de jure nationalize the Zapad-Transnefteprodukt pipeline, a Soviet-era line that transports about one-third of all diesel fuel produced in Russia. The threat to Russia is clear. If relations do not improve, Russia could see its strategically essential oil and natural gas pipelines -- the Druzhba and Yamal lines -- fall to the same fate. Such energy links to Europe are the cornerstone of Putin’s new foreign policy because they give Europe a reason to integrate Russia into the Western camp. Putin certainly finds Lukashenko an inconvenience in his efforts to improve relations with the West, but he cannot cut off the Belarusian president until he has solidified strong ties with Europe and the United States. Despite Lukashenko’s relative popularity at home -- the opposition is fractured, crime is low and the state largely protects the citizens with its Soviet-style support network, he is deeply vulnerable. Russia still supplies 80 percent of the country’s oil needs, nearly all of its natural gas and some electricity at rock-bottom prices. Russian newspaper Izvestiya estimates that Belarus already owes Russia $280 million for overdue energy debts. A word from Putin and Russia’s support would screech to a halt. Putin certainly is preparing options. STRATFOR sources in the Russian security apparatus indicate that the president has directed them to rebuild their information network in Belarus. This is consistent with a strategy of pushing quietly at the margins, keeping Lukashenko angry and off-balance in the hope that he will lash out publicly. Then should he not fall into line and instead clearly act against Russia’s long-term strategic interests, by perhaps seizing the Belarusian section of the Druzhba and Yamal lines, Russia and the entire European Union -- which is downstream of the Druzhba and Yamal routes -- would be galvanized against Lukashenko. Putin would then be justified in cutting off its support for Belarus. Without the oil, gas and electricity they had previously counted on, the country’s citizens could revolt against Lukashenko in a Milosevic-style ousting. In a creative dumping of Lukashenko, Putin could garner the gratitude and relief of Europe that is so essential to Putin’s new pro-Western direction. |
