[lordroel]

Four – At it again

No wreckage of the aircraft nor remains of those aboard were found following the Gulf of Sirte air crash in August 1994. There had been two notable passengers aboard but also thirteen others who vanished with them along with the East German Air Force’s Tu-154. Like magic, every trace of the passengers and mode of transport had disappeared.

Mielke’s apparent death had a big impact on the future of East Germany with a lot of attention paid to that. However, Uday Hussein was the second notable passenger aboard the VIP transport jet that had been flying from Iraq to the DDR via Libya. He was Saddam’s eldest son. He was also quite the incarnation of the devil. Thoroughly evil in every way, few tears would ever be shed over his demise. Saddam had had many disputes with Uday, violent ones at that, but he was still his son and heir-apparent. Libya’s leader, Colonel Gaddafi, a fellow Arab strongman dynamically opposed to the West, had no answers for what had occurred. All he could say was that the aircraft never reached Tripoli where it was supposed to refuel for an onwards flight to East Berlin. That response didn’t satisfy Saddam. He became insanely suspicious that Libya had something to do with the aircraft disappearing and his son vanishing like that. Elsewhere, there were allegations that maybe the Americans, the Israelis even the East Germans themselves had had something to do with it all. Saddam’s mind imagined Libyan complicity though. Qusay Hussein, younger sibling of Uday, expressed doubt to that effect: it made more sense to him to have been either the work of the devious West or Margot Honecker where she secured her position as the new leader without Mielke to stop that. Nonetheless, Saddam wouldn’t be swayed especially when Gaddafi refused to allow Iraqi investigators to fly to Libya. He did let the East Germans send some people but claimed that Libya wouldn’t violate its sovereignty by allowing Iraqis to come an investigate. In the minds of uninformed outsiders, Iraq and Libya were thought to be close in many ways with regard to their shared hostility towards Israel, the United States and the Western-accommodating Gulf Arabs. That wasn’t the case at all though. There was a long-standing clash of personalities between Gaddafi and Saddam meaning that their countries were at odds because each man considered their countries to be no more than an extension of themselves. Both were involved with the East German’s illegal overseas activities through the early Nineties yet had worked to cheat and undercut each other. Mielke had been involved in trying to bring them together to help the DDR yet the only effect had actually been to strain tensions. A married niece of Gaddafi’s had been in East Berlin at a cultural event where Uday had been a guest like she & her husband. Uday had subjected her to a violent sexual assault just like he had done hundreds, maybe thousands of women. Saddam remembered Gaddafi’s fury at that just as he recalled Libya’s history with attacks against aircraft (Lockerbie) and mysterious disappearances (Musa al-Sadr).

The following month, an armed kidnapping occurred in Geneva. That Swiss city was somewhere that foreigners in Europe often visited and among them Arab princelings: royal or those of dictatorial families. The nineteen year-old Mutassim Gaddafi was snatched from outside his hotel with his bodyguards roughed up but left alive to later face the ire of Libya’s ruler. The mercenary team who took the fourth-born son of Gaddafi flew him via a light aircraft to Slovenia after they left Swiss territory for France. From that small, new European country which had not long beforehand been part of Yugoslavia, Mutassim was then put on a larger aircraft by Iraqi agents who took him to Baghdad. Gaddafi had other sons but Saddam was certain that Mutassim would be missed by his father. After a week, contact was made with the Libyans. Saddam used a Lebanese intermediary to send a message to Gaddafi. A trade was demanded: Mutassim for Uday. Gaddafi was unable to make that trade. Furthermore, he was just as enraged as Saddam had been when it came to the fate of one of his sons. That middleman, a notorious arms dealer who had been working with Iraq, Libya & East Germany for some time, was punished for his agency for Saddam with Gaddafi having him shot dead. An Iraqi diplomat working down in the Sudan, in contact with a rich Saudi exile who set himself up a base of operations in that African country, was likewise murdered at Gaddafi’s express orders to show the long reach of Libya. Directly, Saddam was told to return Mutassim or the killings would continue.

Mielke’s successor Schwanitz was aghast at all that happened. The violent spat between those two Arab dictators was unwelcome in countless ways. Both nations were working with the DDR in efforts to ensure the security of his country where weapons and technology were shared illegally all in violation of international law. Those killings took place in other countries where there was no way of controlling the news. Western intelligence agencies were aware of what was going on and, while examining the Iraqi-Libya spat, were able to see all of the connections between it all. Schwanitz met with Tariq Aziz. No longer Iraq’s foreign minister, Aziz was still an important figure in Saddam’s regime. Schwanitz urged Aziz for Iraq to release Mutassim. There were no evidence at all that Libya was complicit in the death of Uday. It looked like an accident as far as East Germany was concerned. His country had lost its minister of security, Iraq had lost a ‘beloved son of the revolution’ and Schwanitz didn’t want to see Libya’s leader lose a child over what was all one big misunderstanding. What was happening with the foreign spooks all over everything was too brought up with Schwanitz focusing Aziz’s attention on that. Iraq needed to keep open those channels of embargoed goods flowing just as East Germany and Libya did too. Mutassim was released before the end of September following three weeks in Iraqi custody. Saddam let him go right at a time when he was engaged in another foreign crisis, one of far more significance that the violent dispute with Libya’s leader.


In 1991, the US-led Operation Desert Storm had smashed Iraq apart and thrown Saddam out of Kuwait. Bush had ordered air strikes against Iraq in the final days of his presidency and then Cuomo had struck extensively with his own wave of air & missile attacks following the post-presidential assassination of Bush. The twin ‘93 American attacks against Iraq hadn’t been as devastating as those two years earlier yet they had still hurt the regime. Cuomo had kept Operation Southern Watch in-place during his presidency where US aircraft flew operations through Iraqi airspace denying Iraq the ability to fly above their own country. Incidents occurred on and off over Iraq. Days before he released Mutassim, in something that would afterwards be pointed to as a factor in that decision so that Saddam would by some goodwill aboard among friends, a SAM battery lofted a pair of missiles to bring down an American jet. One of those SAMs struck a US Air Force F-16 with the pilot ejecting. Iraqi troops tried to locate him and so too did American special forces too. Instead of locating the pilot, they engaged each other in a deadly firefight which left several dead: the pilot himself wandered the desert and would be overcome by the elements leading to his demise. Four Americans – plus the pilot whose fate wasn’t revealed for some time – died in that deadly September 26th incident. Cuomo wouldn’t, couldn’t do nothing in response to it all. There was just no way that he would be able to not make a reply Southern Watch was a UN-backed operation to maintain no-fly zones across Iraq to stop Saddam from committing genocide against his own people. While taking part in that internationally authorised operation, American forces had been deliberately attacked. He addressed the American people and made that justification for taking action against Iraq in response.

Cuomo wasn’t a supporter of foreign intervention. He had inherited the Iraqi mess from Bush. Those attacks he had made to avenge his predecessor’s death had been something that had to be done after Saddam had murdered Bush – a killing that Saddam had never taken responsibility for, claiming repeatedly that Iraq had been framed – and the air missions flown over Iraq since were an issue that he regarded himself as being forced into continuing. During much of ‘94, the 42nd President had in fact been overseeing a wind-down of American commitment to Southern Watch. His personal fears, expressed to his vice president, were that the United States would be eventually drawn into a proper conflict with Iraq in the end should the overflights carry on for good. It wasn’t just with Iraq where Cuomo was weary of getting involved in. Members of his administration, plus an influential bloc in Congress, oh and throughout much of the US Intelligence Community as well, there was a push for US military intervention in Bosnia and to also act against East Germany as well. Yet, the role of ‘world policeman’ wasn’t one which he wanted to play. When it came to responding to the September ‘94 incident, once more Cuomo didn’t see that he had a choice though. American lives had been lost and that came alongside ongoing Iraqi efforts to acquire long-range missiles along with maybe weapons of mass destruction to arm them. He authorised a deployment of forces to the Gulf to build-up strength ahead of an attack being made against Saddam’s regime.

Iraqi tanks started moving first though. To placate the East Germans and cease Libyan aggressive actions, Mutassim was released right before a good portion of the Republican Guard started rolling southwards towards the Kuwaiti border. It would be many years later when defectors from the Iraqi regime claimed that there had actually been a plan afoot before that F-16 was shot down for Kuwait to be re-invaded come late ‘94 with Saddam determined to do it as he watched Cuomo wind-down Southern Watch. The unwillingness of Cuomo to fight a continuation of what some in the West called ‘Bush’s war’ was taken note of in Baghdad with Saddam eyeing taking another shot at Kuwait. How true any of that actually really was was debatable. Most US forces were in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain or out in the Gulf but there were still some boots on the ground in Kuwait. The tank columns which Saddam had moved southwards ready to make that final drive down towards the Kuwaiti border had gone into jumping off points during July. SAM cover had escorted them and it was one of the supporting batteries which started the shooting. Those facts gave credence to the belief that Saddam was going to invade, though detractors of such a theory stated that it was all about posturing. Whatever the truth, the Republican Guard closed up upon the Kuwaiti frontier with a trio of tank-heavy divisions faster than the Americans could get their forces into place. Everyone held their breath waiting for them to go over the line in the sand which was the frontier and once more storm Kuwait. Should they had, there would have been quite the fight indeed with the Americans. Soldiers and marines had been flown to the Middle East to meet up with pre-positioned equipment while airmen were also deploying with their aircraft too. Operation Desert Knight was a major US deployment that involved carrier groups likewise racing full steam ahead towards the region. The Saudis and the other Gulf Arabs hit the panic button and made an urgent mobilisation. American allies outside of the Middle East signalled their intent to support the mission too. Saddam looked like he was at it again with designs on conquering his neighbour. Differences of opinion with Washington over Southern Watch were put aside with the possibility that Iraq would once more seek to overrun Kuwait.

The Republican Guard moved into defensive positions though. They didn’t cross into Kuwait but rather deployed to guard against an attack coming out of Kuwait to violate Iraqi soil. Saddam got them in-place fast and their arrangement was supported by later arriving lighter infantry units who deployed to protect against an amphibious landing. He also spread out armed units across the desert far back from the border to have soldiers on-hand to fight against further American heli-borne employments of attackers as well. The whole thing was ultimately defensive. Those who said in later years that he had been planning to invade Kuwait at that time would claim that at the last minute he changed the battle plan to a defensive one: again, the detractors of such theory would point to there being no evidence of any invasion really planned. It all might have been defensive, yet Desert Knight continued. The Americans moved significant forces into the region and then Cuomo ordered the start of an aerial bombardment come October 4th. Bombs and cruise missiles slammed into Iraq with a focus against air defences throughout the south of the country. Baghdad wasn’t hit and neither were the Republican Guard. Just as Saddam didn’t seem intent to take the final step and send his tanks over the border, Cuomo would eventually settle for not making a full-on assault against Iraq as it had been first believed he might do. Domestic political opponents back home weren’t happy. Cuomo was accused of cowardice, of not wanting to truly punish Iraq for what it had done.

When the three days of American attacks came to an end, that wasn’t the end of Desert Knight nor, ultimately, Southern Watch too. Saddam kept his army in the field deployed where it was right next to Kuwait. If it had gone back home, Cuomo would have wanted to see US forces slowly withdrawn back to pre-crisis levels even if he couldn’t manage a complete disengagement from the whole matter as he had started the year on course to possibly pull off. American troops stayed in Kuwait throughout the rest of the year with there being no indication of when a later withdraw could be made. Saddam had his army seemingly ready to strike the moment that they might leave, which would result in a long-term expensive and resource-committing deployment there.