War is not the only way to oust Saddam. Try a coup d’etat—engineered by his neighbors

Artículo de Christopher Dickey en "Newsweek" del 27-1-03

El formateado es mío (L. B.-B.)

Jan. 27 issue — A few weeks ago, Hassan Yassin had a bright idea. The well-connected former Saudi official often sends up trial balloons in the Western press. They fly, or get blasted out of the sky, and the princes in Riyadh duly note the results.

In an artfully crafted memo sent to several publications just after the New Year, Yassin suggested President George W. Bush has already won the war in Iraq: Saddam Hussein is contained, inspected, constrained, unable to use and about to lose any weapons of mass destruction he ever had. "In the face of re-sistance from most Arab, Muslim and Western governments," Yassin conceded, "the U.S. president has been single-minded and successful in his determination to prevent Saddam from becoming a danger to his own people, his neighbors or his enemies worldwide."
In other words, "Congratulations, Dubya, it’s all over but the shooting." Yassin went further: Saddam and his ruthless little clique should step down now, accept a U.N. amnesty and end the crisis altogether. "Saddam," said Yassin, "this is your last chance." Last week those ideas were developing into a last-ditch initiative by Saudi Arabia and a clutch of other Arab countries—with the added threat that they’ll back an anti-Saddam coup. Wishful as this approach seems, with U.S. troops pouring into the region and Saddam defiantly telling the world that Americans will be slaughtered at the gates of Baghdad, Yassin has a point. He may even have the beginnings of a plan. Call it the Arab Alternative to all-out war.
That’s what Iraq’s neighbors and Europe have wanted all along. (And possibly Washington as well.) They all fear that a bloody fight, however brief, will undermine every regime in the region and threaten the world’s economy with wildly fluctuating oil prices. But they’ve also concluded it’s not enough just to say "Stop the war." Today, according to Arab government sources, they’re actively looking for less bloody ways to eliminate Saddam, and they’re letting him know—less publicly than Yassin, but even more forcefully—that they want him to go.
Nobody will mourn the Butcher of Baghdad’s passing. Twelve years ago, when the Iraqi dictator faced a huge coalition of American, European and Arab armies forcing him out of Kuwait, he nevertheless had plenty of fans rooting for him to attack Israel and stand tall against the U.S.A. Now Saddam’s a has-been. From Jordan to Morocco, no ruler supports him and the streets have abandoned him. "During the first gulf war, hundreds of thousands of people protested in Morocco," says one senior official in Rabat. "Now it’s barely thousands."
But all that will change if satellite television starts sending pictures of "collateral damage"—civilians slaughtered by errant American bombs; refugees huddled on Iraq’s frontiers, desperate to escape. Governments in the region are hoping at the least to earn themselves some political cover by acting now. "If a war breaks out, it will explode in all our faces," Turkish —Prime Minister Abdullah Gul said last week. "We are doing everything to find a solution without war so that in the end I can say to everyone, ‘It wasn’t our fault’."
At a summit called by Turkey this week (with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iran), plans like the one floated by Yassin are sure to be discussed: Saddam could be offered a chance to bow out, with guarantees for his personal security and immunity from prosecution in exchange for a long-term U.N. presence on the ground to continue inspections and supervise a rapid transition to democracy. "There is a change of policy," says one source close to Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal. "Once we start a process, we go very fast." Europeans are likely to concur. "This shouldn’t be only about ‘war’ or ‘peace’," says former French minister Bernard Kouchner, the former U.N. governor of Kosovo and a longtime critic of Saddam’s. "It should be about establishing a democratic government in Iraq."

No one expects Saddam to buy into such plans, of course. That would be naive in the case of a man who told the late King Hussein, among others, that he’d see Iraq lose a third of its people rather than surrender. But that’s not the point. The Prophet Muhammad himself said "war is trickery," and the Arab game is to checkmate Saddam with his own pawns. If there is ultimately a message of amnesty, perhaps through a new U.N. resolution, it will be directed at the small clique of relatives and cronies, generals and secret-police officials who might actually force Saddam from office with a cup of poison or a palace uprising. Many in the Bush administration say privately they’d be more than happy with that outcome. And the Arab, Turkish and European doves developing an alternative strategy know they need the American hawks to make it work. This is good cop/bad cop for massive stakes. "The Americans are on the military leading edge, we are on the political leading edge, and each of us is watching the way the other plays his role," says the source close to Saudi’s foreign minister.
Too good to be true? All this brinkmanship and, in the end, no war? Plus... no Saddam? Perhaps. But think of this: last summer the Bush administration said it wanted a regime change in Iraq while Europe and the Arabs, led by Saudi Arabia, wanted only to talk about disarmament. By the end of this week, as Washington keeps talking about disarmament and only disarmament, it’s the Saudis, Turks and others who are likely to declare it’s time for Saddam to say goodbye. Now that’s trickery. It could also lead to victory.