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Threat Assessment: War Could Forge Iraqi Links With al-Qaeda By Bryan Bender The experts — Daniel Benjamin, head of counterterrorism for the National Security Council in the Clinton administration, and Stan Bedlington, a senior analyst at the CIA’s Center for Counterterrorism until 1994 — disputed repeated claims by Bush administration officials who say that al-Qaeda is supported by Iraq. Some of the allegations include reports that a senior Iraqi intelligence official met with a key al-Qaeda operative and that the some al-Qaeda members have found refuge in Iraq. In a press briefing last week, Benjamin and Bedlington said that Hussein and Osama bin Laden, while sharing some of the same enemies, have little in common and even disdain each other’s approach — Hussein’s Baath political and anti-religious roots and bin Laden’s militant form of Islam. Prior to or in the immediate aftermath of a military assault, however, the risk would be high that stocks of Iraqi chemical or biological agents now stored in unknown locations would disappear, smuggled out of the country and into the hands of terrorists, the experts said. Weak Links To build support for deposing Hussein, the Bush administration has argued that Iraq, with its historic sponsorship of anti-Israeli terrorist groups, will provide al-Qaeda with weapons of mass destruction, Benjamin and Bedlington said. Experts generally believe, however, that there is still little proof. “There has been, to my mind, no persuasive evidence that these two entities, Saddam’s Iraqi regime and al-Qaeda, have a record, a substantive record of cooperation or any long term, noteworthy relationship,” said Benjamin, who completed a study on possible links between al-Qaeda, Iraq and Iran for the White House in 1998. According to Bedlington, U.S. allegations about the linkages between Iraq and al-Qaeda may be an attempt to build political support for a war with Iraq, but rely on a selective use of intelligence information. Earlier this month, Undersecretary of State John Bolton said, “In terms of support for terrorism, we have established that Iraq has permitted al-Qaeda to operate within its territory.” Bolton, however, “didn’t provide any details,” Bedlington said. “This is where I think the administration’s case falls down. The best evidence that there is some contact between al-Qaeda and Iraq,” he added, “comes from one or two detainees at Guantanamo Bay [in Cuba], and to the extent that they say that some al-Qaeda members, including those who were of Iraqi descent, fled Afghanistan to Iraq to escape U.S. pressure.” Repeated statements that a senior al-Qaeda leader has been living in Baghdad, Benjamin said, may be referring to an al-Qaeda member seeking medical care without the Iraqi regime’s knowledge. That individual “has since been forced from the country,” he added. Perhaps the biggest allegation of ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda has been disputed reports that Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official in the summer of 2001 in Prague (see GSN, Aug. 2). The Czech president recently reconfirmed the meeting, but even if it did occur, a single meeting does necessarily reflect state sponsorship, the experts said. “Historically, we’ve never seen any major channeling of funds, material, or men,” Benjamin said. “Saddam Hussein would give weapons to al-Qaeda, as he knows it, at his own great peril, because it would make them quite happy if he were removed from the scene, because they view him as one of the sort of pharaonic rulers who have brought Islam into a historic catastrophe,” he said. War Could Force Cooperation If push comes to shove, however, and the U.S. military is poised to topple Hussein, the Iraqi regime might indeed lock arms with al-Qaeda or other terrorists groups and provide them with weapons of mass destruction to unleash against the United States and its allies, the experts warned. “What I’m much more worried about is that … faced with an existential threat that he would indeed transfer weapons of mass destruction to al-Qaeda, which does have an international presence and might be able to use them,” Benjamin said. In a recent analysis leaked to the media, the CIA outlined that possibility. The intelligence agency concluded that Hussein, under the status quo, would be unlikely to provide weapons of mass destruction to al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups for fear of the potential consequences. If the regime were faced with extinction, however, it would have few reasons to hold back (see GSN, Oct. 9). “Under those circumstances, as I believe the CIA has also said, the possibility that he would hand over powerful weapons, including weapons of mass destruction such as chemical and biological weapons, to a transnational group such as al-Qaeda, grows considerably,” Benjamin said. Uncontrolled Weapons Another growing worry is that even if Saddam did not provide al-Qaeda with the weapons directly, the ensuing chaos in the country after a U.S.-led invasion could allow hidden WMD stocks to be smuggled out and sold on the black market. “There are mobile BW labs traversing Iraq,” said Benjamin. “I’ve taken to thinking of these as the Winnebagos of death. And there’s absolutely nothing to prevent any one of them from pulling off by the side of the road and having the most lethal pathogens loaded into, you know, a cooler, a rucksack, or something like that, and disappearing,” he said. The challenge facing U.S. and allied military forces in securing the weapons is enormous, according to other experts. “I think that would have to be one of the issues you would be trying to address in the weeks after the dust settled,” said John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org. “It’s sort of a junior version of the post-Soviet loose nukes concern. There is no reason to assume Saddam’s entire residual chemical and biological inventory will immediately head for the border, but reassuring yourself that everything is accounted for may take some time,” Pike said. Added Benjamin, “The U.S. military has never faced a task such as this, where it would have to literally take control of hundreds of different sites all over a country the size of California.” Some Iraqi forces remaining after an invasion “would have a big incentive to sell these weapons and the technology, and perhaps their own know-how, to people who they know would value it and would pay well for it. And that would be, at the top of the list, al-Qaeda,” Benjamin said.
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