Iraq’s New PM, The CIA and Their Record Of Terrorist Bombings

By Peter Symonds
17 June 2004
WSWS

An article in the New York Times last week about Iraq’s new prime minister, Ayad Allawi, has once again highlighted the hypocrisy of the Bush administration’s “war on terrorism” and its claims to be bringing democracy to Iraq.

Allawi has a particularly sordid past...Allawi was an enthusiastic member of the Baath Party for a decade in Baghdad. He resigned from the party in 1975 while in Britain, became an opponent of the Saddam Hussein regime and began a lengthy collaboration with various intelligence agencies, including MI6 and the CIA.

In 1990, as Washington turned on its former ally Hussein and launched the first Gulf War, Allawi established the Iraqi National Accord (INA), composed largely of dissident Baathists, including military and intelligence officers, to take advantage of new opportunities opening up.

All this is openly acknowledged by the INA and Allawi, who recently declared that he was not ashamed of his connections to the CIA and other intelligence services.

What the New York Times article revealed, however, was that Allawi and the INA, at the behest of the CIA, carried out various activities inside Iraq in the early 1990s to destabilise the Hussein regime.

These included car bombings and attacks of the type that Allawi and the US now denounce as “terrorist”.

Most of the sources for the article are unnamed US intelligence officials. While their statements remain unconfirmed, neither the Bush administration nor Allawi has denied the report’s accuracy.

The INA bombings took place between 1992 and 1995 using explosives that were smuggled into the country via the US-imposed “no-fly” zone in northern Iraq, which was a hotbed for CIA intrigue in the 1990s.

US intelligence officials played down the number of civilian casualties.

Former CIA operative Robert Baer, who worked with Iraqi exile groups, recalled that one bomb “blew up a school bus; schoolchildren were killed”.

He was not sure if it was the INA’s work, but other intelligence officials told the New York Times that the INA was the only group involved in such activities at the time.

The New York Times report refers to a 1997 article in the British-based Independent newspaper, which was based on a videotape with Abu Amneh al-Khadami, who described himself as the INA’s chief bomb maker.

Details of the video, subsequently provided in a book by Patrick and Andrew Cockburn entitled “Saddam: An American Obsession,” add to the evidence of the INA’s involvement:

“No one had ever claimed responsibility for the bomb blasts that echoed around Baghdad in 1994 and 1995. One explosion had gone off in a cinema, another in a mosque. A car bomb outside the offices of al-Jourmoriah, the Baath Party newspaper, had wounded a large number of passers-by and killed a child. Altogether, the bombs had killed as many as a hundred civilians.”

The book explains how an INA leader, Adnan Nuri, a former Iraqi general, had Khadami released from a Kurdish jail and mapped out the bombing campaign.

According to Khadami, who had a team of at least a dozen men, the campaign’s purpose “was to impress Nuri’s sponsors in the CIA with the operational reach of the organisation they were funding.”

The account explains that Khadami made the video after he began to suspect Nuri. On camera, he complained that his sponsor had failed to provide sufficient money and explosives.

While there is no means for verifying the detail, there appears to be little doubt that the INA, with the blessing of the CIA, carried out these terrorist attacks.

One US official, who worked with Allawi in the early 1990s, commented to the New York Times:

“No one had any problem with sabotage in Baghdad back then... I don’t think anyone could have known how things would turn out today.”

Allawi and the INA went on to attempt a coup against Hussein in 1996, which failed miserably.
Iraqi intelligence had penetrated the INA network, learned of the plan and rounded up over 100 of the plotters.

The CIA, however, maintained close contacts with Allawi. He also retained ties with MI6 and Saudi Arabian intelligence, and in Jordan where the INA set up an office and a radio station.


See Also:
Long-time CIA "asset" installed as interim Iraqi prime minister
[31 May 2004]