Iraq’s PM Sudani Criticizes Pro-Iran Resistance While Giving Them Concession During Iran War

  

Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani is trying to play a double game with the pro-Iran Resistance. On the one hand he is criticizing it for attacks upon the government on the other hand he is giving them concessions because factions are in his political camp and he is still hoping that he can win a second term in office with their support.

Review Iraq Between the Two World Wars, The Militarist Origins of Tyranny

Simon, Reeva Spector, Iraq Between the Two World Wars, The Militarist Origins of Tyranny, New York, Chichester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press, 2004

 

Iraq Between The Two World Wars, The Militarist Origins of Tyranny by Reeva Spector Simon is a very well written and interesting book about how Germany influenced Iraq, shaped its concept of pan-Arabism and led to the 1941 Anglo-Iraq War. Simon argues the Iraqi military’s ideas on how to unify Iraq and create an Arab federation had their origins in the German model of nationalism and militarism, which they had initially learned about during the Ottoman period. This led the army to enter politics and overthrow governments in coups and eventually side with the Axis during World War II. Simon believes that these ideas continued afterward leading to the end of the monarchy and eventually Saddam Hussein. That last part is the only crack in the author’s argument.

World War II In Iraq and Syria Interview With Case Western’s Prof Broich

British troops at Habbaniya Air Base, Anbar which was surrounded by the Iraqis during the start of the 1941 Anglo-Iraq War (Imperial War Museim)

In 1941, the British overthrew the government of Prime Minister Rashid Al-Gailani in Iraq and invaded Syria. Baghdad had reached out to the Germans and Italians, Syria was run by Vichy France, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill believed that the Axis was making a play to take over the Middle East. These two conflicts are barely mentioned in World War II histories today, but at the time it was a major event for all those involved. John Broich, an Associated Professor of History at Case Western Reserve University recently published a book on this subject Blood, Oil and the Axis: The Allied Resistance Against A Fascist State In Iraq and the Levant, 1941. This is an interview with Prof. Broich about the war in Iraq and Syria.

Review Blood, Oil and the Axis: The Allied Resistance Against A Fascist State In Iraq and the Levant, 1941

Broich, John, Blood, Oil and the Axis: The Allied Resistance Against A Fascist State In Iraq and the Levant, 1941, New York: Abrams Press, 2019

In 1941 the British were facing one crisis after another. The Germans sent the Afrika Korps to North Africa, and then Yugoslavia and Greece fell to the Nazis. Into this mix came the March 1941 coup in Iraq where a group of Arab nationalist officers seized power, causing the pro-English monarchy to flee, and the new Iraqi government to reach out to the Axis. That led to the Anglo-Iraq War and then the invasion of Syria as Prime Minister Winston Churchill believed that Germany and Italy were making a play for the Middle East’s oil and to cut the Suez Canal. This is the topic of John Broich’s Blood, Oil and the Axis: The Allied Resistance Against A Fascist State In Iraq and the Levant, 1941. The author deals with not only the political background to this conflict and the military history, but also includes personal experiences from the Allied, Axis and Vichy French sides. This book gives a thorough account of Iraq in World War II, and one of the best coverages of the fighting in Syria.

Review Iraq And Syria 1941, The Politics and Strategy of the Second World War

Review Warner, Geoffrey, Iraq And Syria 1941, The Politics and Strategy of the Second World War, Cranbury: Associated University Presses, 1979

When people think of World War II in the Middle East they inevitably refer to the German General Irwin Rommel versus the British in North Africa. Few know that Iraq and Syria were involved in the conflict as well. That began with Hitler’s moves to seize Yugoslavia, Greece, Crete and the arrival of the Afrika Corps to Libya which led London to believe that Hitler was planning on seizing Egypt and the oil fields in Iraq and Iran. Baghdad then reached out to the Axis for support. England wouldn’t stand for that leading to the Anglo-Iraq War and then the invasion of Syria. Geoffrey Warner in Iraq And Syria 1941 documents three sides to this conflict, the British, the Axis and the Iraqis, while neglecting Syria a bit.

Review Persian Gulf Command, A History of the Second World War In Iran and Iraq

Jackson, Ashley, Persian Gulf Command, A History of theSecond World War In Iran and Iraq, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2018

When historians cover World War II in the Middle East they focus almost exclusively upon North Africa with the Italians and Germans attacking the British in Libya and Egypt. In 1941, there was a war between the English and Iraqis. Afterward London ordered the invasion of Syria and then Iran to protect what was the empire’s leading source of oil, along with supply lines. This little known slice of the war is what Ashley Jackson wrote about in Persian Gulf Command, A History of the Second World War In Iran and Iraq. The problem with the book is that after covering the war and invasions, Jackson gets lost in the details. It’s like he spent all this time researching these topics and couldn’t help but share every little thing he found. That makes the second half of the book tedious to read.

Review Rashid Ali al-Gailani, The Nationalist Movement in Iraq 1939-1941

Review Hamdi, Dr Walid, Rashid Ali al-Gailani, The Nationalist Movement in Iraq 1939-1941, London: Darf Publications Ltd., 1987

The government of Prime Minister Rashid Ali al-Gaylani and the Golden Square officers are an important, yet little known period of Iraqi and World War II History. At the very start of the war, a small group of pan-Arabist army officers backed Premier Gaylani who overthrew the monarchy, and aligned the country with the Axis powers of Germany and Italy. The draw wasn’t fascism, but rather the belief that the war offered their country a means to escape British hegemony, which remained after London created Iraq and ruled it as mandate from 1920-32. That led to a war with German and Italian intervention, which Iraq lost. While there are a few other books that cover this period, Rashid Ali al-Gailani, The Nationalist Movement in Iraq 1939-1941 is the most extensive and focuses upon the Iraqi rather than the British side of the conflict.

Review Iraq 1941, The Battles for Basra, Habbaniya, Fallujah and Baghdad

Review Lyman, Robert, Iraq 1941, The Battles for Basra, Habbaniya, Fallujah and Baghdad, Oxford, Long Island: Osprey Publishing, 2006

The 1941 Anglo-Iraq War is considered a small sideshow of World War II. At the time the British thought that the Germans and Italians were making a play on the Middle East via Iraq that would threaten its entire eastern empire. The Iraqi government and military thought that the war could force the British out after it had dominated the country since its creation after World War I. For Berlin, it saw a way to extend its hand in the Middle East against a greatly weakened London. Iraq and Germany didn’t believe their actions would lead to war, but it resulted in a short, but violent conflict that pitted British, Iraqi, Jordanian, German, and Indian troops against each other.

When The World Remembered It Armed The New Hitler Saddam

In the lead up to the 1991 Gulf War President George Bush began comparing Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler. According to the president both men invaded their neighbors and ran cruel dictatorships. The inconvenient truth was that the U.S. and its allies wanted closer ties with Iraq for decades seeing it as an important Middle East power. As part of that policy the West sold Iraq the agents, technology and know how to build its chemical, biological, and nuclear programs. In the wake of Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 these was a new round of reporting on just how eager the West was to arm the dictator it was now denouncing.

France was Iraq’s second largest arms supplier. While most of its tanks and small arms came from Russia, Baghdad liked to purchase its high-tech equipment from France. In 1975 Saddam who was then Iraq’s vice president made his first overseas trip to Paris to sign an arms contract. (1) From 1975-1987 France sold Baghdad 135 Mirage fighters jets, 140 helicopters, 200 AMX tanks, 900 Panhard armored cars, 1,800 Milan anti-tank missiles, 900 Exocent air to ground missiles and other equipment. Eventually, 1/3 of Paris’ arms exports were going to Iraq. France was also involved in Iraq’s nuclear program signing a deal in 1976 to provide a nuclear reactor, which was capable of producing plutonium from a bomb. Successive French governments thought selling weapons to Iraq was important to gain influence in the Middle East. It was so intent upon building this relationship that it had no problem advancing Iraq’s nuclear program.

The United States had an arms embargo on Iraq during the 1980s, but that didn’t stop it from exporting dual use equipment to Baghdad. During the Iran-Iraq War the U.S. decided to improve relations with Baghdad out of fear of Iran. In November 1984 the Reagan administration restored full diplomatic relations with Saddam’s government. (2) From 1985-1990 Iraq bought $730 million worth of high-tech goods that were used for Iraq’s nuclear, missiles, and chemical and biological warfare programs. One such example was American Type Culture Collection, which sent anthrax and four other viruses to Iraq. (3) The U.S. provided software that was used to develop Iraq’s Super Gun, technology and glass fiber for missiles, along with parts and equipment for its uranium enrichment program and centrifuges used to develop nuclear weapons. (4) During the Iran-Iraq War Washington had no problem with Iraq working on these programs as it wanted a counter weight to Iran. By the time of the Gulf War however, these programs were seen as a major threat to the region and America’s allies there.

Germany was another major contributor to Iraq’s WMD and nuclear programs. It was reported that German firms provided Iraq with 90% of its chemical weapons capabilities. (5) Plalto-Kuehn G.m.b.H. sold agents that were used in biological research. (6) Karl Kolb became the chief supplier of agents to produce nerve and mustard gas. It also helped build plants, which it claimed were for pesticide, but an investigation revealed that the company knew they were for WMD all along. Water Engineering Trading provided parts for the Muthanna facility that was Iraq’s largest WMD factory, and also helped build a nerve gas plant in Fallujah. (7) In 1987 it signed a deal to send 100 technicians to help with the facility. Gildemeister Projects, Messerschmitt-Boelkow-Blohm, and H&H Metalform all helped build the Saad 16 plant that worked on both chemical and nuclear weapons. Saarstahl sold special metals to Iraq for its centrifuges, H&H Metalform sold lathes cut from special steel from, and magnets came from Inwako all for its nuclear program. (8) Iraq began its chemical, biological, and nuclear programs in the 1970s. It was completely dependent upon foreign know how and technology to develop them. Germany was one of the largest providers for all of those needs.

Without the West Iraq’s nuclear and WMD programs would not have been possible. It provided almost all of the raw materials to build these programs. When the Iran-Iraq War concluded in 1988 many of these ties were exposed, but Europe and the U.S. were more interested in seeking better ties with Saddam. When Iraq invaded Kuwait that all changed, and Iraq’s chemical, biological, and nuclear programs were part of the reason why Saddam was considered so dangerous. The media once again brought up that they were only possible due to the help of the west, but like in the 80s that didn’t seem to matter.

FOOTNOTES

1. Kaplan, Bernard, “Arms deals return to haunt the French,” San Francisco Examiner, 9/7/90

2. Gugliotta, Guy, Babcock, Charles and Weiser, Benjamin, “The Ties That Blind,” Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 9/24-30/90

3. Bradsher, Keith, “Senator Says U.S. Allowed Export Of Lethal Viruses to Iraq in 80’s,” New York Times, 2/10/94

4. Sinai, Ruth, “Saddam arsenal got a lot from U.S.,” Associated Press, 11/1/92

5. Smolowe, Jill, “Who Armed Baghdad?” Time, 2/11/91

6. Kempe, Frederick, “Supplying Saddam Germans Had Big Role In Helping Iraq Arm, Internal Report Shows,” Wall Street Journal, 10/2/90

7. Pletka, Danielle, “Firms Sell Saddam, Qaddafi the Deadly Means to an End,” Insight, 11/26/90

8. Reichlin, Igor and Maremont, Mark with Kapstein, Jonathan, Levine, Jonathan, “Iraq’s Silent Allies In Its Quest For The Bomb,” Business Week, 1/14/91

SOURCES

American Experience, “The Persian Gulf War”

Borger, Gloria and Hedges, Stephen with Stanglin, Douglas, “When the enemy is us,” U.S. News & World Report, 2/18/91

Bradsher, Keith, “Senator Says U.S. Allowed Export Of Lethal Viruses to Iraq in 80’s,” New York Times, 2/10/94

Ehrmann, Eric and Barton, Christopher, “Who Helped Arm Saddam?” Christian Science Monitor, 1/29/91

Gugliotta, Guy, Babcock, Charles and Weiser, Benjamin, “The Ties That Blind,” Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 9/24-30/90

Kaplan, Bernard, “Arms deals return to haunt the French,” San Francisco Examiner, 9/7/90

Kempe, Frederick, “Supplying Saddam Germans Had Big Role In Helping Iraq Arm, Internal Report Shows,” Wall Street Journal, 10/2/90

New York Times, “How Iraq blazes a trail to nukes,” Sacramento Bee, 12/23/90

Pletka, Danielle, “Firms Sell Saddam, Qaddafi the Deadly Means to an End,” Insight, 11/26/90

Reichlin, Igor and Maremont, Mark with Kapstein, Jonathan, Levine, Jonathan, “Iraq’s Silent Allies In Its Quest For The Bomb,” Business Week, 1/14/91

Sinai, Ruth, “Saddam arsenal got a lot from U.S.,” Associated Press, 11/1/92

Smolowe, Jill, “Who Armed Baghdad?” Time, 2/11/91

Iraq’s Use Of Chemical Weapons In Iran-Iraq War And Their Western Origin

Several western countries and companies assisted Iraq when it set out to build its chemical weapons programs in the 1970s. A decade later when Baghdad would use those systems in the Iran-Iraq War, those same nations were largely quiet giving their implicit support to Iraq. The press however was quite active in uncovering where Iraq’s WMD came from.

Two years into the Iran-Iraq War the Iraqi government began turning to chemical weapons. After quick victories in the opening months of the conflict, Saddam Hussein made the strategic mistake of halting offensive operations and attempting to negotiate a ceasefire. When that failed the two sides settled into a grinding war of attrition with Tehran holding a huge population advantage. One of Iraq’s responses was to use chemical weapons.

Iraq’s use of chemical weapons increased in both its application and tactical planning as the war progressed. In 1982 Iraq used tear gas on Iranian troops, followed by the deployment of chemical agents the following year. Their first major use was in the Val Fajr II campaign in the summer of 1983 when mustard gas was deployed. In early 1984 the Iraqi military was using tabun in the Khaybar I campaign in Basra. By the end of the war Iraq was using its chemical stockpiles more and more to deadlier effect. There was no effort to stop Baghdad because it had the support of so many powerful countries.

From the start Iran complained about Iraq’s use of these deadly materials, but the major powers remained silent. Starting in 1983 Tehran tried to publicize Iraq’s chemical weapons programs going to the press and international organizations, but they were initially ignored. The Soviet Union was the largest provider of weapons to Iraq before the war, and almost all the munitions filled with WMD and used in the war originated in the USSR. Moscow had also trained Iraqi forces in the use of biological and chemical weapons starting in the 1960s. Iran singled out Russia in 1984 as a major military supporter of Baghdad including chemical agents, but the Communist government said nothing in response. Later in the year when the United Nations decided to send a team to Iran to investigate the use of WMD, the Soviets objected. France was Saddam’s second largest military supporter and said nothing about the use of chemical weapons. Its two largest newspapers even suggested that Iranians had been injured in factory accidents rather than by Iraqi chemicals. The United States was slightly different. Some members in Congress were opposed to Saddam’s regime and brought up the WMD issue. That led the State Department to condemn their use in 1984. The Reagan administration however was helping Iraq early on in the war, and towards the end of the conflict provided intelligence for Iraqi operations that they knew would include the use of mustard gas and other agents. As Javed Ali wrote in 2001 for The Nonproliferation Review by the end of the war everyone knew Saddam was using chemical agents, but no government was interested in holding Iraq responsible let alone punishing it. That was because so much of the international community was opposed to Iran and its new government, which had just held American diplomats at the U.S. embassy for over a year and was talking about exporting its Islamic revolution. There was another factor for why the world turned a blind eye, the Americans and Europe had assisted Iraq with its WMD.

The United States press was especially good at revealing how America and Europe had helped Iraq build its chemical program. The Washington Post (1) for example documented how in 1975 Baghdad contacted the Pfaudler Company in New York to build a pesticide plant in Samarra. It started the work, but never finished it when it became suspicious about why the Iraqi Agriculture Ministry wanted it to produce four toxic agents that were very close to nerve gas. Germany’s Karl Kolb eventually completed the factory in the 1980s. It became known as the Muthanna State Establishment, and was the country’s largest producer of WMD. The Wall Street Journal (2) uncovered that a U.S. subsidiary of Belgium’s Phillips Petroleum sold pesticide to Iraq in 1983 that was used to produce mustard gas. The paper also found that Germany’s W.E.T. G.m.b.H. sold the Iraqi government $10 million worth of equipment and agents that were also used for nerve gas. These were just a few of many other instances of companies supplying Saddam’s WMD programs. Washington and Berlin actually tried to stop many of these transactions and put in a series of export controls, but because much of the equipment and agents could be used in regular commercial activities there were too many loopholes for these regulations to work.

In the 1980s Iraq had the backing of Europe and America to use weapons of mass destruction against Iran. Both eastern and western European countries had long standing ties with Iraq and saw it as an important market for its weapons and influence in the Middle East. The United States tilted towards Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War because it wanted to contain the Iranian revolution. That was why there was never any serious effort to stop Baghdad when it began using chemical weapons against Tehran. Even when those countries began being exposed as the source for much of the equipment and agents that would lead to Iraq’s WMD programs there was no real change in policy. Ironically, just a few years later the West would change its stance after the Gulf War and want to disarm Iraq, and there would be another round of media on just where these unconventional weapons came from.

FOOTNOTES

1. Ignatius, David, “Iraq’s Protracted Hunt for Chemical Weapons,” Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 10/3-9/88

2. Fialka, John, “Fighting Dirty Western Industry Sells Third World the Means To Produce Poison Gas,” Wall Street Journal, 9/16/88

SOURCES

Ali, Javed, “Chemical Weapons and the Iran-Iraq War: A Case Study in Noncompliance,” The Nonprolfieration Review, Spring 2001

Central Intelligence Agency, “Impact and Implications of Chemical Weapons Use I the Iran-Iraq War,” Spring 1988

Fialka, John, “Fighting Dirty Western Industry Sells Third World the Means To Produce Poison Gas,” Wall Street Journal, 9/16/88

Guthrie, Richard, “A Chronology of Events Relating to Iraq and Chemical & Biological Weapons 1984,” April 2007

Harris, Shane and Aid, Matthew, “Exclusive. CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran,” Foreign Policy, 8/26/13

Hersh, Seymour, “U.S. Secretly Gave Aid to Iraq Early in its War Against Iran,” New York Times, 1/26/92

Ignatius, David, “Iraq’s Protracted Hunt for Chemical Weapons,” Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 10/3-9/88

Kessler, Glenn, “History lesson: When the United States looked the other way on chemical weapons,” Washington Post, 9/4/13

New York Times, “U.N. Panel Says Iraq Used Gas on Civilians,” 8/24/87

Oygarden, Randi Hunshamar, “Chemical Weapons and the Iran-Iraq War, A discussion of the UN Security Council’s response to the use of gas in the Iran-Iraq war 1980-1988,” MA Thesis in History, University of Bergensis, Autumn 2014

Rajaee, Farhang editor, The Iran-Iraq War: The Politics of Aggression, Gainseville: University Press of Florida, 1993

Iran’s Ties With Al Qaeda In Iraq’s Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

The history of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi the founder of Al Qaeda in Iraq has largely been written. He grew up as a petty criminal in Jordan, travelled to Afghanistan twice after the war with the Soviets was over and set up his own camp with the help of Al Qaeda, was imprisoned in Jordan, and eventually went to Iraq to fight the Americans. The one part of his life that has not been written about much was his two stints in Iran in 2001 and 2003 and his ties with the government there. Zarqawi originally began running his supply lines through Iran to his camp in Afghanistan, and later received direct support from Tehran when he was building up his terrorist network in Germany and Iraq.

When Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was organizing his jihadist organization in Afghanistan called Jund al-Sham it included cells and routes through Iran. In 1999, Zarqawi travelled to Afghanistan for the second time after he was amnestied from prison in Jordan. When he arrived in the country he stayed in an area under the control of the warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Zarqawi then met with Osama bin Laden in Kandahar. The two did not get along as they had different views on jihad, but prominent Al Qaeda leader Saif al-Adel thought that the group should maintain contacts with Zarqawi That led Al Qaeda to provide Zarqawi with $200,000 to help him set up his own camp in Herat along the Afghanistan-Iranian border in 2000. There he went about creating his own network that stretched to Europe and Iran. The Iranian city of Mashhad for example, became an important way station for men and material to enter Zarqawi’s camp. His top operative in Iran was a man named Abu Ali who ran and coordinated a cell in Germany. Afghanistan had become a failed state controlled by various factions and warlords after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. Zarqawi had missed out on the war against the communists in the country, but like many other jihadists felt it provided a perfect setting to start his own organization. This was probably where Tehran first became aware of his activities as it supported both Hekmatyar and Al Qaeda. It also did nothing about him establishing his supply lines through Iran.

Zarqawi would become more involved with Iran after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. In October 2001 the Americans began their campaign to overthrow the Taliban. Zarqawi and his men fought alongside Al Qaeda in Herat and Kandahar, during which time he was wounded by a U.S. airstrike. The war drove Zarqawi and 300 of his men to flee to Iran in December. He then went to Tehran for medical treatment on his injury. Zarqawi ended up staying in Iran until April 2002, and was initially hosted by a follower of Hekmatyar who he’d met from his time in Afghanistan. Zarqawi then set about rebuilding his organization, setting up camps and safe houses in Zahedan, Isfahan, and Tehran. He also established ties with Ansar al-Islam in Iraq’s Kurdistan, and travelled to Lebanon, Syria and the rest of Iraq to recruit. Germany’s Federal Office of Criminal Investigation (BKA) in an investigation that ended in the arrest of a Zarqawi cell found evidence that Iran was actively supporting him at this time. According to the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND), the Iranian Revolutionary Guard provided Zarqawi with phone numbers he could use. Jordanian intelligence seconded the Germans, and claimed that Iran provided weapons, uniforms, and equipment to the terrorist. When Zarqawi was based in Afghanistan, the Iranian authorities turned a blind eye to his activities in their country. When he relocated there in 2001, they became more actively involved in his operations. As long as he was focused upon striking the west and Arab governments Tehran didn’t appear to have any problems with him being in the country.

During this time Zarqawi met back up with Al Qaeda leader Saif al-Adel in Iran, and the two decided that Iraq should be their next focus due to the impending U.S. invasion. Adel would later write that Iraq would be the perfect opportunity to create an Islamic State. The American intervention could be used as a rallying cry for the Islamic masses to be radicalized and turned towards jihad. Zarqawi then decided upon a two-part plan. First, most of his men would move to Kurdistan and work with Ansar al-Islam in preparation for the American arrival. Other would go to Germany where they were to carry out terrorist attacks upon Jewish targets. Zarqawi and Adel were right, Iraq did provide a turning point for jihadists, and turned the former into an international terrorist that would rival even bin Laden. His activities in Germany would also hasten his move into Iraq.

In April 2002 Zarqawi’s cell in Germany was arrested leading to the West to put pressure on Iran to crackdown on his group. The detention of Zarqawi’s men in Germany alerted the western authorities to his presence in Iran and how his network was working. Both Germany and the United States complained to Tehran about it harboring the terrorist. The Iranians responded by arresting Zarqawi and almost all of his operatives in the country. They were released after a few weeks. That led Zarqawi to leave the country for Syria, and then Iraqi Kurdistan. By May 2002 Zarqawi was in Baghdad organizing for the U.S. invasion. Zarqawi was still a rather minor jihadist leader at the time. While Tehran had supported him to keep tabs on the radical Islamist community, he was not important enough to be protected. Zarqawi could see that and he was already planning on moving to Iraq, so these events simply moved forward his timetable.

The Iraq war actually made Zarqawi turn to Iran one more time. Zarqawi and his allies in Ansar al-Islam had their camps wiped out in Kurdistan during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Both ended up going to Iran as a result as both had ties with Tehran. There, Zarqawi met up with Saif al-Adel once again who asked for help getting Al Qaeda operatives into Iraq. Zarqawi agreed to funnel them via his networks in Syria, and many of them joined his organization Tawhid wal Jihad, which would later become known as Al Qaeda in Iraq.

The major question that comes to mind when reading these reports of ties between Iran and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was why would they work together when Zarqawi was so vehemently anti-Shiite? There are many possible answers. First, many governments in the Middle East maintained ties to jihadist organizations even ones they didn’t agree with to surveil them. Second, Tehran saw that Zarqawi could further its foreign policy goals. This started in Afghanistan as Zarqawi was setting up his first camp. The Iranian government might have thought they could use him later on if he made anything out of himself. That happened when Zarqawi decided to move to Iraq as both he and Iran were interested in fighting the Americans and undermining their plans for a post-Saddam nation. For Zarqawi he apparently found Tehran a marriage of convenience. He could use Iran as a way station for his men that did not rely upon routes through Pakistan, which were dominated by the established jihadist groups in Afghanistan. After Zarqawi returned to Iraq for good after the U.S. invasion there was little on his ties with Tehran. What is clear is that he established relations with the Iranian government that lasted from 2000 to at least 2003. They both benefited as Zarqawi found a base and safe haven to work out of, while Iran ended up backing the deadliest insurgent faction against the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Tawhid wal Jihad’s bombings in Baghdad in 2003 drove off many foreign countries, companies, and international organizations that might have helped the Americans, thus immediately undermining reconstruction. Today, Iran is fighting Zarqawi’s successor the Islamic State, but at one time the two worked together. Such is the Byzantine nature of Middle Eastern politics.

SOURCES

Brisard, Jean-Charles Martinez, Damien, Zarqawi: The New Face of Al-Qaeda, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005

Bunzel, Cole, “From Paper State to Caliphate: The Ideology of the Islamic State,” The Brookings Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World, March 2015

Darling, Dan, “The Cicero Articles,” Long War Journal, 10/30/05

Debat, Alexis, “Vivisecting the Jihad,” National Interest, 6/23/04

Gambill, Gary, “Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi: A Biographical Sketch,” Jamestown Foundation, 12/15/04

Isikoff, Michael, “Distorted Intelligence?” Newsweek, 6/25/03

Kirdar, M.J., “Al Qaeda In Iraq,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, June 2011

Leiken, Robert and Brooke, Steven, “Who Is Abu Zarqawi?” Weekly Standard, 5/18/04

Napoleoni, Loretta, Insurgent Iraq, Al Zarqawi and the New Generation, New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005

New York Times, “Militants linked to al Qaeda rallying in Iraq, Bremer says,” San Francisco Chronicle, 8/10/03

Roggio, Bill, “Saif al-Adel, Zarqawi, al Qaeda and Iran,” Long War Journal, 6/16/05

Schanzer, Jonathan, “Ansar al-Islam: Back in Iraq,” Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2004

Symon, Fiona, “The devil America knows,” Financial Times, 9/24/04

Weaver, Mary Anne, “The Short, Violent Life of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,” The Atlantic, July/August 2006

Weiss, Michael Hassan, Hassan, ISIS, Inside the Army of Terror, New York: Regan Arts, 2015

DEUTSCHE BANK GROUP VIDEO: The Building Of The Baghdad Railway

The Story Of CURVEBALL And Iraq’s Mobile Biological Weapons Labs

The English newspaper the Guardian interviewed the infamous Iraqi Defector CURVEBALL in mid-February 2011. The story was repeated across the globe as the source, whose real name is Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, said that he lied about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and the mobile biological weapons (BW) labs that became a major part of the Bush administration’s case for invading Iraq. In fact, officials in German and U.S. intelligence had major questions about the veracity of Janabi for years and the mobile labs story, but their doubts never made it to the White House.

CURVEBALL aka Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi (Guardian)

Janabi came from a Sunni family in Dora, Baghdad. He went to the Technical University of Baghdad where he finished with a D average, and received a degree. Afterward he worked at several jobs including as an engineer at a government run chemical plant, and at a farming warehouse in Djerf al Nadaf. Janabi’s work as a chemical engineer in Iraq was what originally attracted the interest of German intelligence, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), and he would later say that Djerf al Nadaf was the location of a secret WMD facility. In 1998 he fled Iraq after trying to steal money from a film company he was employed at. He arrived in Germany in 1999, and asked for asylum in January 2000. Janabi claimed that he received that status in March 2000. The next month a German official came to talk to him about his work in Iraq’s chemical industry. By his own admission, that was when he decided to lie about Saddam Hussein’s WMD program in order to convince the West to overthrow the Baathist dictator.

According to Janabi, the Germans interviewed him nearly twice a week for 1½ years. In 2000 he told the BND that he supervised construction work on the mobile labs at the Djerf al Nadaf warehouse. Janabi claimed that there were seven such labs that were built beginning in 1997, and that they began producing biological weapons (BW) that year. In 1998 he told his interrogators that he witnessed a biological accident where several people were killed. In fact, he had been fired from the warehouse in 1995 for trying to steal money. There were several other holes in his story that the Germans discovered at that time. Another was that he claimed that his former boss, Dr. Basil Latif, had a son who was running a WMD smuggling network out of England. British intelligence investigated the story and found that Latif’s son was only 16 years old. Latif was also tracked down by the BND at the end of 2000 in Dubai, and he said that Janabi was lying. That led the Germans to change their opinion about CURVEBALL. The BND went back and re-interviewed Janabi in light of their talk with Latif, and Janabi told them that if his former boss said there were no mobile labs, than they must not exist. German intelligence didn’t talk to Janabi again until May 2002 where they asked him about locations and personalities involved with Iraq’s WMD programs. Janabi would later say that he lied again to his interviewers about his knowledge of Baghdad’s operations. The Germans would have one more session with Janabi in January 2003 about the mobile labs. The BND passed along their reservations about CURVBEALL to the country’s political leadership, but at the same time kept him on their payroll, provided him with a house, car, monthly stipend, gave his wife and children political asylum, and continued to use him as a source on Iraq.

In February 2001, U.S. and German intelligence met about CURVEBALL. At the time, the BND believed that Janabi had worked for a company that installed piping and other materials on Iraq’s mobile labs. Former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer would later write in his autobiography published in 2011, that Berlin sent a letter to the CIA telling them that there were problems with Janabi’s story, but that it would share his information about Iraq’s WMD programs anyway. The Americans would end up writing 112 intelligence reports based upon CURVEBALL alone.

The U.S. had three other sources about Iraq’s mobile labs. The second was a civil engineer, Ahmed Shemri, who worked for the Iraqi Free Officers Movement, an opposition group. He came forward in 2001, claiming that he worked at the Muthanna State Enterprise factory, which was a former WMD plant, and said that Iraq had mobile labs. A third source was Mohammad Harith Assaf, who claimed that he was a major in the Mukhabarat, Iraqi intelligence, and who left Iraq in 2001. Assaf was originally found by Mohammad al-Zubeidi, an Iraqi exile that collected stories from Iraqi refugees and exiles. Zuebidi passed Assaf along to the Iraqi National Congress (INC). The INC got Assaf interviewed by several media sources, as well as introduced to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) by former CIA Chief James Woolsey. Zubeidi would later say that when he first talked with Assaf he never mentioned mobile labs, but only did so after he met with the INC. In February 2002, Assaf was interviewed on CBS’ 60 Minutes television show, the next month he was anonymously quoted in the Times of London, and then in May of that year he was also used in an article in Vanity Fair. In his interviews Assaf claimed that he was in charge of hiding WMD. He told reporters, that in 1996 Dr. Rehab Taha, also known as “Dr. Germ,” came up with the idea for the labs. He said that Iraq then went out and bought eight trucks from France to convert into labs, which was done in Hillah, Babil. They were then disguised as commercial vehicles. When he went to the DIA, he talked about secret labs, but not mobile ones. His debriefer said that he seemed to have some accurate information, but that he also appeared to have been coached. He did pass a polygraph test, and was ranked as reliable, until early 2002. The fourth source was Adnan Saeed al-Haideri, another defector connected to the INC. He didn’t talk about labs when he first started talking to the press, and only added that to his story in mid-2002. Like CURVEBALL, none of these defectors’ stories proved to be true, and U.S. intelligence questioned some of them even before the 2003 invasion.

The first U.S. intelligence reports about Iraq’s mobile labs appeared in 2000. In December of that year, a National Intelligence Estimate said that the U.S. had come across new information that Iraq was working on its BW program, and secret production facilities such as mobile labs. That same month, the National Security Council asked for a report on Saddam’s WMD. It said that it couldn’t confirm that Iraq was working on its BW, but there was a single source, which was CURVEBALL, that claimed Iraq had set up secret capabilities, meaning mobile labs, and started large scale production. In the second half of 2001, the CIA issued a paper saying Iraq was working on its WMD and likely had mobile labs based upon CURVEBALL and Ahmed Shemri.

2002 was when the mobile labs story went public. On September 12, the State Department released “A Decade of Decision and Defiance, Fact Sheet” to the press, claiming that Iraq had mobile labs. (1) A few days later, the British put out its “Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British Government,” that also included the labs claim, even though analyst David Kelly, the head of the Defense Science and Technology Lab argued that the language should’ve been changed from Iraq had mobile labs, to Iraq thought about them. (2) The English dossier said that labs were the idea of Dr. Rehab Taha, that U.N. inspectors had found evidence that Iraq was working on them, and defectors had come forward with accounts that they had been built.

The labs claim was also included in the major U.S. intelligence report on Iraq before the invasion, the October 2002 “Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs” National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). The NIE represented a dramatic shift in opinion amongst the American intelligence agencies. They went from suspicions that Iraq had an active WMD program to statements that one was up and running, and larger than before the 1991 Gulf War. One key piece of evidence to support that argument was CURVEBALL and the mobile labs. The NIE said that Janabi was a credible source, and almost the entire section on the facilities was based upon him. The paper said that Iraq had gotten the idea for the labs in 1996 based upon CURVEBALL and two notes on military stationary. It went on to include Assaf’s story that Iraq built labs to elude U.N. inspectors, but it noted that he said secret facilities, not mobile ones. The NIE also stated that Iraq had 7 mobile facilities that were built in 1997 and began producing BW that year. The U.S. had satellite images of the Djerf al Nadaf warehouse where Janabi worked, which it took as confirmation of CURVEBALL’s story, even though the photos revealed nothing about labs or WMD activity. The NIE finished with the rather incredible statement that the labs could produce the same amount of BW Iraq made before the Gulf War in a matter of months. That meant 7 trucks could make as much as several large industrial facilities could.

When U.N. weapons inspections restarted in Iraq at the end of 2002, Washington used the mobile labs to attack the process. On December 12, 2002 the State Department released “Fact Sheet, Office of the Spokesman” that said Baghdad’s declaration to the Security Council did not include the labs. That same day, Secretary of State Colin Powell made the same statement to the press. On January 23, 2003 Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz gave a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City, saying that Iraq was hiding its WMD program through its mobile labs. On January 28 in President Bush’s State of the Union and on February 5 in Secretary Powell’s speech to the Security Council the labs story was repeated. Powell for example, anonymously quoted CURVEBALL as a major source when he said, “We have first-hand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels. … The source was an eyewitness – an Iraqi chemical engineer who supervised one of these facilities. He was present during biological agent production runs. He was also at the site when an accident occurred in 1998. Twelve technicians died.” The Secretary also presented slides with mock-ups of mobile labs not only on trailers, but on railcars as well. Finally, in February CIA Chief George Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the labs would be impossible for the inspectors to find, and there was another State Department paper stating that there were multiple sources on the labs.

Slides of the mobile labs presented at Powell's Feb. 03 U.N. presentation (Global Security)

The same time that the mobile labs story was becoming public, U.S. intelligence was running into problems with its sources. In April 2002, the CIA wrote a report on Mohammad Harith Assaf. It said they had stopped dealing with him after four meetings because they thought he was a fabricator. In May, the DIA officially flagged him as one. In July there was another intelligence report that questioned Assaf’s veracity. The DIA and CIA however, did not pass on their doubts to others. Other intelligence agencies continued to use his information as a result, and he was included in the October 2002 NIE, Bush’s January 2003 State of the Union, and Powell’s February U.N. speech.

CURVEBALL was also being questioned. In December 2002, the CIA’s central group chief said Janabi shouldn’t be used because there was no support for his claims. That same month, CIA Director Tenet asked the Germans if CURVEBALL could be interviewed by the Agency via TV link or have a CIA analyst talk to him in person. The head of the BND said no, and warned Janabi’s story was unconfirmed, but that the U.S. could use him anyway. A CIA analyst also brought up the fact that the translations of CURVEBALL’s interrogations led to misunderstandings about what he was saying, that the only American to meet him in person, a Pentagon officer in May 2000, thought Janabi was an alcoholic. The analyst sent an e-mail questioning CURVEBALL’s reliability when he read a copy of Powell’s February 2003 U.N. speech warning that he may not be reliable, that the Germans were having problems with him, questioned whether he was who he claimed to be, and suggested that he be investigated more before the government used him publicly. An evaluation of him by the DIA said there were inconsistencies in his story. The CIA case officer in charge of CURVEBALL’s file, rejected all of those doubts, and retorted that there was plenty of corroborative evidence to support his story.

Beginning in February 2003, the U.N. inspectors also provided first hand accounts of the mobile labs. On February 4, inspectors looked at two alleged labs and found nothing. On February 8, the U.N. went to Djerf al-Nadaf and found that it did not match CURVEBALL’s description of it. Twenty days later, they returned and took samples for BW and found nothing. On March 7, the inspectors released a report to the Security Council saying that they had not discovered any evidence of the labs.

Trailer found near Mosul that was initially believed to be a mobile weapons labs (Global Security)

After the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the Americans thought they had found incontrovertible evidence of the labs when several trailers were discovered in the country. In May, the New York Times reported that U.S. intelligence believed they had found the mobile labs in the form of three trailers discovered by the Kurdish peshmerga outside of Mosul in Ninewa province. The Iraqis said that they were used for weather balloons, but the U.S. rejected that. The article claimed that pictures of the trailers had been shown to CURVEBALL who confirmed that they were the labs. Three teams of weapons experts went through the trailers with the first believing they were labs, while the third disagreeing. The differences in opinion didn’t stop the CIA and DIA from publishing a paper on May 28 saying that the trailers were labs. President Bush added his official approval on May 29 when he told Polish TV that the U.S. had found Iraq’s WMD programs when it found the trailers. In June, the White House went on to release a White Paper on the trailers, and Secretary Powell said that the labs confirmed the eyewitness accounts he had used in his U.N. address. All the way into September, Vice President Dick Cheney was repeating the story.

While the administration was making their claims, the story was unraveling at the same time. In the beginning of June 2003 U.S. and British intelligence analysts said that the trailers were probably not labs. They warned that people were so intent on finding evidence against Iraq that they were rushing to conclusions. The experts said that the trailers lacked the necessary equipment, and that even if they were part of a BW program, they could only produce a small amount of agents that would need to be further processed somewhere else. The British went on to say that the Iraqis were probably correct, that the trailers were for weather balloons. The State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research wanted the trailers to be investigated more. There were also skeptics within the DIA, while the CIA was the most adamant supporters of the labs claim. By October, the Iraq Survey Group was on the ground in Iraq looking for WMD, and its first chief, David Kay, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that month that the trailers were not suited for labs, to coincide with the release of the group’s interim report that said the same thing. In December, the Senate Intelligence Committee asked for a report on CURVEBALL, and was eventually told that he was not a BW expert, that he designed production facilities, and never claimed that he worked on WMD.

Going into 2004, the White House was sticking to its story, but was finding that harder and harder to do. On January 22 for instance, Vice President Cheney said that the trailers were proof that Iraq was working on WMD. A few days later, David Kay again testified to the senate, stating that the majority opinion was that the trailers were not labs, but that there were still divisions over the matter. An internal CIA investigation of its pre-war intelligence revealed that the DIA had put a fabricator notice out on Mohammad Harith Assaf. In March, CIA Director Tenet testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that he had spoken to Vice President Cheney and let him know that the trailers were not “conclusive evidence” of Iraq’s WMD program as he had claimed to the press earlier. Tenet went on to say that there were continuing disputes about what the labs were for. That month, the CIA was also finally able to interview CURVEBALL in Germany. They showed him pictures of the Djerf al Nadaf warehouse and compared them to his earlier account, and pointed out the differences between the two. Janabi said that the pictures had been doctored, and then refused to talk to them anymore. March was also the month that 60 Minutes revealed that Harith Assaf, who they interviewed back in February 2002, had been flagged as an unreliable source by U.S. intelligence. By April, there were more cracks within the administration when Secretary Powell told the media that he had been given questionable intelligence about the labs. 

By the middle of 2004 and into 2005, the labs story was officially put to rest. In July, the Senate Intelligence Committee released “Report On the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments On Iraq,” which said that the October 2002 NIE overstated intelligence on the labs, and didn’t cover the uncertainties over the sources. It went on to state that the CIA withheld important information about CURVEBALL’s reliability, and that he, and reports about him, were mishandled. It noted, that the intelligence community readily accepted the mobile labs, because that was what they wanted to believe about Iraq’s WMD program. The lead CIA analyst on the matter for example, was convinced that the labs existed. In September, the Iraq Survey Group’s final report came out that said it didn’t believe the trailers were labs. Finally, in March 2005 the Robb-Silberman commission findings were publicized. It said that U.S. intelligence was too reliant upon a single source, CURVEBALL, for its reports on mobile labs, that the DIA didn’t vet Janabi, that the intelligence agencies didn’t tell civilians about the problems with CURVEBALL, and repeated the Senate’s findings that the CIA accepted the labs claim because it fit their pre-existing assumptions about Iraq’s weapons program. With no weapons discovered in Iraq, these reports were left to explain what went wrong. They overwhelmingly found that the intelligence agencies were at fault for accepting questionable sources, because they thought the worse of Iraq after U.N. inspectors left in 1998.

CURVEBALL would return to the headlines off and on in the following years. In November 2007, he was interviewed on 60 Minutes. They revealed his name for the first time publicly as Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, and went through the problems with his story before the U.S. invasion. In June 2008, the Los Angeles Times also talked with Janabi. They found him working low paying services jobs, and complaining that the U.S. was blaming him for not finding WMD in Iraq. He told the paper that he should be “treated like a king” for what he did, that everything he said was true, while claiming that he never said Iraq had WMD.

In September 2009, Janabi returned to Iraq for the March 2010 parliamentary elections. He called a member of the Reconciliation Commission saying that he wanted to form a political party to support Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. He got $20,000 from the government to do so, and created the Development and Reform Party, which ran candidates in Baghdad and Najaf. It received 1,311 votes in the election. Janabi then scammed $10,000 from the Reconciliation Commission official he had talked to, claiming that he could get his daughter into a German college without the red tape if he received some money, and then left Iraq.

In February 2011, Janabi would make a splash again in his interview with the Guardian. He claimed everything he said about the mobile labs and Iraq’s WMD program was a lie. He claimed that he was a patriot who wanted to get rid of Saddam. He blamed the BND for making him out as fall guy, and stated that his story had nothing to do with his asylum request to Berlin. Janabi got his whole family German citizenship in 2008 with the help of German intelligence, but had since then been cut off from their support, and a local official claimed he was forbidden from leaving the country. The day after the article was published CIA Director Tenet issued a statement saying that he found out that CURVEBALL was a liar too late to have an affect upon the invasion. He quoted a passage from his autobiography that said he didn’t know that the BND had problems with Janabi until 2005. His account was contradicted by the release of former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer’s autobiography. He claimed that Germany wrote a letter to the CIA about its doubts about CURVEBALL before 2003. The two stories may not have been contradictory as a letter from Germany may not have been passed up the chain of command to Tenet, jus as earlier questions about Janabi did not get past the various departments within the CIA.

In the aftermath of the Iraq invasion, and the discovery that Saddam had no large and active WMD program, Washington’s agencies and personalities have participated in a blame game that lasts until this very day about who was responsible for the intelligence failure. The White House quickly singled out the intelligence agencies, and mainly CIA Director Tenet. The Agency’s current and former officials fought back, claiming that the administration cherry picked intelligence to support their drive to war. The latter version of events has largely won over popular opinion, and has even been included in several movies. While the White House did want everything it could find about Iraq’s weapons program, and presented worse case scenarios in its statements, when it came to WMD, the CIA, and other agencies were all too willing to provide evidence such as the mobile labs story. After the U.N. inspectors left in 1998, the American agencies came to believe that Saddam had restarted all of his programs. By the time the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate came out, the majority opinion was that Baghdad’s programs were up and running, and larger than its previous one. Most analysts would believe almost anything they heard about Iraq as a result, and would discount contradictory evidence. They would present these findings to Washington officials without the caveats and problems because the administration was not interested in all the details. That was shown with CURVEBALL and the three other Iraqi defectors, as there were holes in their stories, but that was never transmitted to higher ups. When it came to the mobile labs and most other accounts of WMD then, the Bush administration didn’t have to lie because the intelligence was so bad about Iraq in the first place, that it had descended into assumptions rather than verifiable facts.

FOOTNOTES

1. Mukhopandhyay, Dipali, “The Bush Administration on Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Capabilities,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, January 2004

2. Kemper, Bob, “Experts review, poke holes in case for war,” Chicago Tribune, 8/10/03

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