The gathering storm: although not part of what geographers call Central Asia, Iraq and the events unfolding in the country have an enormous impact on the region.

The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush has targeted Iraq's dictator Saddam Hussein for removal. The spin doctors call it "regime change," which makes it sound almost like an election. But, the process has caused fights among friends, might end some political careers in addition to Saddam Hussein's, and, if it comes to war, will leave death and destruction behind it.

Let's back up a bit and try to find out how we got into this tangle.

At the centre of the storm is one of the world's chief villains.

Exaggeration is not necessary to make Saddam Hussein look bad. His style is that of a ruthless man whose hold on power is maintained by killing anyone who challenges him and terrifying the rest into supporting him. He understands the use of violence to control people. He sets negotiation and compromise as signs of weakness.

Iraqi citizens are fed a constant diet of boastful proclamations about how wonderful Saddam is. Recalling the glory of Arab history, Saddam claims to be a valiant knight leading his people to new triumphs. He dreams of re-uniting the Arab world and restoring it to the greatness it had in the 12th century.

He is largely isolated from his people, seeing only a tight circle of trusted advisers--largely drawn from his close family or from the extended clan based around the town of Tikrit, north of Baghdad, where he was born in 1937.

Today's Iraq was cobbled together by the British. The area had been part of the great Ottoman Empire, which was finally dissolved by World War I (1914-18). The League of Nations gave Britain the job of running the region and nursing it along to independence. In 1932, Iraq became a sovereign state under the rule of King Faisal I. The king had been installed by the British because they could manipulate him and make sure he didn't do anything to jeopardize their oil interests.

This was humiliating for a region that had such a magnificent past. It was known for a long time in the West as Mesopotamia, and it was where the Sumerian civilization, and others, emerged from 4000 BC onwards. It gave the world writing, the wheel, the 60-minute hour, the 360-degree circle, and the first codes of law.

In 1958, the monarchy was overthrown in a coup. One of the people involved in the takeover was Saddam Hussein, who then took part in a plot to kill the prime minister. But, the conspiracy was discovered, and Saddam fled the country. By 1963 his friends were in power and it was safe for Saddam to return home. So, he began jostling for a position of influence. After a few setbacks that included a spell in jail he made his way to the top. In 1979, he achieved his ambition of becoming head of state. He found friendly support in the Soviet Union, which wanted Iraq's oil, and this meant he now had enemies in the West.

The new president started as he intended to go on--putting to death dozens of his rivals.

Over the years, the pile of bodies has grown much higher: 150,000 Iraqis were killed in his eight-year war with Iran (1980-88): 100,000 more in his 1990 attack on Kuwait. At home, he has completely demolished entire towns in the south in which Shiite Muslim opponents lived and has continued to have those suspected of not liking him executed.

Prior to the disastrous attack on Kuwait, Saddam embarked on a determined effort to acquire weapons of mass destruction. He already had chemical weapons, which he used on Iranians. Also, he had such nasty stuff as anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs, and botulism; Western governments, including the United States, supplied most of these to him. What he wanted more than anything else were nuclear weapons and France was happy to sell him the technology he needed.

After his soldiers were thrown out of Kuwait, the Iraqi dictator was forced to accept United Nations weapons inspectors into his country. The inspectors found and destroyed what they estimated to be 90% of Iraq's arsenal. But, Saddam Hussein was then, and is now, far from cooperative. He has tried to hide materials from inspectors. He has moved stock piles around to keep them out of sight. He has lied and deceived at every opportunity.

In an attempt to force Saddam to comply with the UN orders, all countries were forbidden to trade with Iraq. This blockade, called an economic sanction, has had mixed results. The sanctions didn't stop Saddam Hussein from cheating and they brought hardships on the already long-suffering Iraqi people. Food is in short supply and there are almost no medicines of any sort left in the country.

The United Nations agency UNESCO estimates that as many as half a million children may have died as a result of the economic sanctions. An attempt to ease the effects of the sanctions through an Oil-for-Food program brought a bit of relief.

In October 1998, Saddam Hussein said he had cooperated long enough with the inspectors and "kicked them out of Iraq.

The Catholic aid organization Caritas says that, "Weapon inspectors returned with conflicting reports. Many have said that Iraq's arsenal was dismantled between 1991-1998 and that Iraq does not have the capacity to rebuild. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has reported that Iraq's nuclear weapons program had been eliminated ... The Nuclear Control Institute in Washington DC is critical of the IAEA performance and believes it is prudent to assume that Iraq has a small, well-concealed nuclear weapons program."

If there is doubt about whether Saddam Hussein still has nuclear arms there is a fair degree of certainty that he still has other weapons of mass destruction.

Thomas Homer-Dixon is Director of the Centre for the Study of Peace and Conflict at the University of Toronto. In February 2003, Mr. Homer-Dixon wrote that, "No one should doubt that Saddam Hussein has large quantities of biological and chemical agents squirrelled away in secret caches around the country. And, he is actively working on delivery systems, including unmanned drones for spreading biological agents in the air."

Mr. Homer-Dixon is not alone. Just about everybody who has looked closely at Iraq believes it still has stockpiles of some horrible weapons and it is led by a man who is quite prepared to use them. That is a situation that presents the rest of the world with a big dilemma.

There are a lot of options; none of them is perfect:

DO NOTHING. If he had a choice in the matter this would clearly be Saddam Hussein's favourite option. That alone is a strong recommendation for rejecting it. Given the track record, Saddam would carry on as before--brutalizing his people and building up his stockpile of weapons.

COAX SADDAM HUSSEIN INTO GOING INTO EXILE. Patrick Cockburn is a specialist on Iraq at the U.S. Center for Strategic and International Studies. He says that, "Exile ... is extremely unlikely. It's extremely humiliating, particularly for someone who's portrayed himself as a man who will fight to the end." However, other experts believe Saddam Hussein might leave Iraq if he gets a cast iron guarantee of his safety from the UN's Security Council, a fat bank account, and a comfortable place to live in retirement.

SEND IN SPECIAL FORCES TO ASSASSINATE SADDAM HUSSEIN. This works in Hollywood movies, but it's a risky business in real life. First, which Saddam Hussein do you kill? The German television network ZDF has done a forensic examination of 450 photos of the Iraqi dictator. Its experts say they have identified at least three doubles. The real Saddam Hussein, if there even is one, rarely appears in public, never sleeps in the same place two nights in a row and never in his palaces, is constantly on the move, and is surrounded by bodyguards at all times.

STEP UP AND EXTEND WEAPONS INSPECTIONS. United Nations inspectors have been disarming Iraq since they returned in November 2002. In this process, no one gets hurt and the objective of a disarmed Iraq is achieved. The downside is that this plays into Saddam Hussein's delaying tactic. If he can string out the inspection process for months or even years, eventually the rest of the world will get bored and go away. When attention moves on to some more pressing issue else where he will go back to his old tricks.

ESTABLISH \ SECURITY PERIMETER AROUND THE COUNTRY. Otherwise known as containment, this strategy relies on those setting up the perimeter having friends in every bordering country. This isn't the case with Iraq. To the east, Iran would never allow Western troops to patrol its border with Iraq. That's because, while Iranians dislike Saddam Hussein, they dislike the United States even more. To the west, there is a long border with Syria, another country hostile to America.

WAR. This will get the job done. It will almost certainly topple Saddam Hussein from power and remove the threat of him using weapons of mass destruction. As this is written towards the end of February 2003, it looks increasingly like the option that will be chosen.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has almost torn itself apart over the issue. The United States and Britain strongly urge the war option; Belgium, France and Germany strongly oppose it. The other members are lukewarmly in favour. There is a similar divide at the United Nations.

The prospect of a military attack has brought millions of people into the streets to protest in communities all over the world. A million each in Barcelona and Madrid, Spain; two million in London, England; 100,000 in Sydney, Australia; 150,000 in Montreal: 250,000 in New York City.

There have never been anti-war turnouts on this scale in history. Why? Well, it's certainly not because Saddam Hussein has millions of admirers in other parts of the world. Almost every single anti-war demonstrator says the same thing: a variation on the Saddam-Hussein-is-a-mad-dog-and-should-be-put-down argument.

There are many reasons ordinary people took to the streets to say no to war, but mostly they revolve around mistrust of the powerful.

Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and President George W. Bush of the United States are the most vocal in calling for a war. They both say that a military attack is their least favourite option but millions of people seem to believe it has been their preferred choice from the get-go. In good part that's because the arguments put forward in support of military action don't hold up well on close examination:

* Human rights. There's no question Saddam Hussein has a dreadful record on human rights. However, so do the governments of Algeria, Zimbabwe, Yemen, Burma, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, and a score of other countries, but none of them is threatened with imminent invasion;

* Weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Iraq probably has these, but so do North Korea, Israel, Russia, India, and many others. Just look at the Pentagon's own list: 12 countries have nuclear programs; 13 have biological weapons; 16 have chemical weapons; and, 28 have ballistic missiles. North Korea and Pakistan pose a far more serious WMD threat than Iraq. The United States worries that Saddam Hussein will transfer WMDs to terrorists. There is no credible evidence that this is likely; again, Pakistan is a much more probable candidate to get involved in this type of thing;

* Support of terrorism. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell gave testimony to the UN Security Council in which he linked Saddam Hussein to the al-Qaeda terrorist network of Osama bin Laden. Almost immediately, people in the spy business said making that link was a bit of a stretch. In fact, British intelligence officials leaked a report that said there was no link between the 9/11 terrorists and Iraq. Osama bin Laden has repeatedly called Saddam Hussein an unbeliever and has called for his overthrow;

* Iraq is in breach of United Nations Security Council resolutions. The think tank Foreign Policy in Focus says at least 91 UN Resolutions are currently being breached by such nations as Turkey and Israel. Sir Joseph Rotblat, a founder of the disarmament group Pugwash Conferences, says the United States and Britain are in breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Both countries have signed this United Nations pact by which they are legally obliged to disarm their nuclear weapons, yet both still have them;

* Bring freedom to the Iraqi people. A nice idea, but critics point out that the United States counts nearby Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan among its allies. None of these countries has anything even remotely close to democracy. Most of them are led by people only slightly less obnoxious than Saddam Hussein. As Michael T. Clare, author of Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict puts it: "... It is hard to believe that the Bush administration is motivated by a love of democracy, when it has been so quick to embrace patently undemocratic regimes that have agreed to do its bidding."

So, if none of the publicly stated reasons for going to war in Iraq stands up to close scrutiny, why is the United States pushing for armed conflict?

Here's Michael Clare again in a piece he wrote for Foreign Policy in Focus: "I believe that the answer is a combination of three factors, all related to the pursuit of oil and the preservation of America's status as the paramount world power. Ever since the end of the Cold War, American policymakers (whether Democratic or Republican) have sought to preserve America's 'sole superpower' status and to prevent the rise of a 'peer competitor' that could challenge U.S. paramountcy on anything approaching equal terms. At the same time, American leaders have become increasingly concerned over the country's growing dependence on imported oil especially oil from the Persian Gulf. The United States now relies on imported oil for 55% of its requirements, and this percentage is expected to rise to 65% in 2020 and keep growing thereafter. This dependency is the 'Achilles heel' for American power: unless Persian Gulf oil can be kept under American control, our ability to remain the dominant world power would be put into question."

In August 2002 U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney spelled it all out. In a speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars he said: "Armed with these weapons of terror and a seat at the top of 10% of the world's oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world's energy supplies, directly threaten America's friends throughout the region, and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail."

OUR ENEMY--NO, FRIEND--NO, ENEMY

While he was beating up on the Iranians, Saddam Hussein was the West's friend. The story of how the bad guy became a good guy is a tangled web of deceits and betrayals. It is relevant today because it speaks to the lack of trust among nations in the region and of the suspicion of outside interference.

The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) was owned by the British. For the first half of the 20th century AIOC pumped oil out of Iran's huge reserves. The company paid a small royalty to Iran but it was only a fraction of the AIOC's profits.

In the mid-1940s, Mohammad Mosadeq came on the scene. He argued that Iran should take over the AIOC, whose profits should be used to pay for social reforms. Against the wishes of the country's monarch, Shah Reza Pahlavi, Mr. Mosadeq became prime minister in 1951.

The oil company was taken over by the government, the British had a hissy fit and turned to their ally, the United States, for help. In August 1953, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency organized a coup that got rid of Prime Minister Mosadeq. The Shah (king) was installed as ruler of Iran and a new oil agreement was drawn up with a consortium of British, Dutch, French, and U.S. oil companies.

The Shah settled in to rule as an absolute monarch. His secret police quickly gained a reputation for extreme brutality and kept any opposition from surfacing. Western governments supported the Shah because he kept the oil flowing and that's what really mattered to them.

Despite the beatings, torture, and murders an opposition did form. It grew in the only place the secret police couldn't shut it down, the Islamic mosques.

In the late 1970s, the Shah became seriously ill with cancer and his hold on power weakened. In a dramatic coup, religious leaders took control of Iran in 1979. In an apparent act of revenge against the United States for its support of the Shah, the American Embassy in Tehran was seized. Sixty-six Americans were taken hostage and most of them were held for 15 months before their release.

So, when Saddam Hussein launched his attack against Iran in September 1980, America cheered him on. The war had nothing to do with the U.S. but Washington followed the principle that "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

The U.S. fed the Iraqi dictator intelligence information and helped him finance the war. But, as the war dragged on, some quite remarkable things happened. In a game of international double- and triple-cross, the United States government opened a secret channel for selling arms to Iran in 1985. And, while it did this, Washington was calling on other nations to stop selling weapons to Iran.

So, the U.S. was now backing both sides in a war between two regimes that were, at least on the surface, its enemies. Eventually, both sides in the war exhausted themselves and they were able to agree on a ceasefire. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 he went back to being a bad guy.

WHAT KIND OF PERSON?

Despite his more than 20 palaces Saddam Hussein is said to be not interested in riches. Mark Bowden in The Atlantic Monthly of May 2002 wrote that, "He seems far more interested in fame than in money, desiring above all to be admired, remembered, and revered ..."

"If Saddam has a religion, it is a belief in the superiority of Arab history and culture, a tradition that he is convinced will rise up again and rattle the world." He seems to believe that it is his destiny to be the person who leads this resurgence.

Psychiatrists would find him an interesting study. He can be charming and has a sense of humour. He is well read and, just because he is violent, it is a mistake to assume he is stupid. He is extremely vain, and we also know he is capable of monstrous cruelty.

Toronto psychiatrist Irvin Wolkoff has written about dictators in general and says they all "are remarkably similar across time and around the world." They all go in for excessive amounts of self-glorification and have a determination to ruthlessly control others. Dr. Wolkoff adds: "The job description for dictators also demands the liberal mixture of antisocial traits such as the habitual disregard of the rights of others, deceitfulness, lack of remorse, irritability, and aggressiveness."

Meanwhile, the British Broadcasting Corporation reported that "A former Iraqi diplomat living in exile summed up Saddam's rule in one sentence: 'Saddam is a dictator who is ready to sacrifice his country, just so long as he can remain on his throne in Baghdad.'"

FACT FILE

The Carter Doctrine of January 1980, named for its author U.S. President Jimmy Carter, states that unrestricted access to Persian Gulf oil is a vital interest of the United States and that, in protection of that interest, the United States will employ "any means necessary, including military force."

FACT FILE

Iraq covers an area about half the size of British Columbia.

FACT FILE

Saudi Arabia has an estimated 250 billion barrels of oil reserves. Iraq is the only country in the world with sufficient reserves of oil to balance Saudi Arabia: at least 112 billion barrels in proven reserves, and as much as 200-300 billion barrels of potential reserves.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES:

1. Some authorities say there is such a thing as a "Just War." For example, Catholic Church teaching acknowledges the concept of a just war provided: that there be a just cause; that the action be initiated by a legitimate authority; that it be guided by the tight intention; that the result of any action not produce more evil than the good sought; that it is the last resort; that there is a reasonable chance of success; that the eventual outcome be the establishment of peace. Use this as the basis for a discussion about whether a military attack on Iraq is justifiable.

2. Which of the following reasons for a U.S. war with Iraq, all of which have been suggested in the media, is the most plausible? (a) To divert attention away from business scandals and a faltering economy in the U.S. (b) To bring freedom and democracy to the people of Iraq. (c) To secure a supply of oil. (d) To make the world safer by removing a tyrant who possesses weapons of mass destruction. (e) To make Saddam Hussein believe that if he doesn't cooperate and disarm he will certainly be attacked. (f) To make up for George Bush Senior's failure to remove Saddam Hussein after the Gulf War of 1991. (g) To redraw the political map of the Middle East to satisfy the objectives of the United States and Israel.

3. Environmentalists and others ague that U.S. dependence on Persian Gulf oil makes the country vulnerable. One campaign to get Americans to reduce energy use suggests that owning a gas-guzzler is unpatriotic. Check out The Detroit Project--http://www. thedetroitproject.com/--and write a 100-word report on the campaign.

Websites

Foreign Policy in Focus http://www.foreignpolicyinfocus.org/

OpenDemocracy (Iraq) http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/issue.jsp?debateId=88&id=2

Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs http://www.pugwash.org/

Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research http://www.transnational.org/

The White House (Iraq)--http://www.whitehouse.gov/in focus/iraq/index.html