The Arsenal: Who Armed Baghdad

By Jill Smolowe

For the allied soldiers locked in combat with Iraq's huge and well-equipped military, the question of who armed Saddam Hussein is hardly academic. They know that France sold Iraq the Mirage F-1 jet fighter as well as its armament, the Exocet missile, which could be launched with deadly effect against allied ships. Egypt provided many of the artillery pieces and secondhand, Soviet- built tanks that imperil allied soldiers on the ground. And the U.S. encouraged other nations to supply the sophisticated aircraft, advanced armored vehicles and other weaponry that threaten coalition soldiers. "It angers me," says 1st Lieut. Alan Leclerc, a U.S. Marine pilot who flies daily sorties into Iraq and Kuwait. "Countries of the world need to be a little more discreet about whom they sell weapons to, and that includes us."

It is no small irony that many of the countries that condemned Iraq's invasion of Kuwait are the very ones that filled Saddam's arsenal. Moreover, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait provided billions of the dollars that financed his weapons-buying binges. Through the '80s, communist dictators, Arab autocrats, South American generals and Western democrats alike opened their countries' weapons coffers to Saddam. The bills for his spending spree, which built Iraq into the world's fourth-ranking military power, totaled more than $50 billion -- and that figure refers only to sales of conventional weapons. Some $15 billion more went toward the covert purchase of materials to develop chemical and biological weapons. Who armed Saddam? Says Anthony Cordesman, the leading U.S. expert on the Iraqi military: "The answer is everybody who has arms."

Saddam set his sights on developing Iraq into a regional military superpower as far back as 1971. As Vice President, he established in many countries clandestine procurement units that drew upon a secret Swiss bank account stoked by skimming 5% off Iraq's burgeoning oil revenues. Through the '70s Iraq purchased weapons from the Soviets, who were eager to extend their influence in the Middle East. Saddam's interest was to counter a U.S.-engineered arms buildup in Iran. Western sympathies shifted against Tehran after the 1979 Islamic revolution, which ousted the Shah and brought the Ayatullah Khomeini to power. After Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, France proved to be a willing supplier. China and 25 other countries also fueled the eight-year conflict by selling weapons to both sides. The war ended in 1988, but Saddam was not sated. With an eye toward both Iran and Israel, he continued to hoard weapons, spending $2 billion in the 18 months following the cease-fire.

Throughout, he played the international arms market deftly, aware that he could keep his foes guessing about the contents of his arsenal by avoiding one-stop shopping. The Scud missiles fired against Israel and Saudi Arabia, for instance, were bought from the Soviet Union but were upgraded with equipment and expertise purchased from other nations. France provided guidance systems, Germany and Italy improved propulsion, and Brazil assembled the parts. Iraq's underground aircraft shelters were also hybrid creations. According to European press reports, Belgians designed the shelters, Swiss provided air-filtration units, Italians blastproof doors, and Britons and Germans the electrical power generators.

Overall, Saddam pursued a two-track buying strategy to build up his stocks:

CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS. "Our responsibility is very small," Vitali Naumkin, the deputy director of Moscow's Institute of Oriental Studies, says today, adding that no one bears "entire responsibility." Fair enough. But Moscow led the charge to equip Saddam. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 80% of the major weapons systems procured by Iraq between 1980 and '89 came from three of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council: the Soviet Union, France and China. Moscow alone supplied 53%.

The Soviets neglected no service branch. They supplied the air force with several models of MiG fighters and with Su-25 fighter-bombers; the navy with missile boats; the army with missiles, T-72 tanks and heavy artillery. Moscow also provided 193 military advisers who, the Soviets insist, were in Iraq only to assist with equipment maintenance. The last group reportedly returned home Jan. 24.

France furnished about a fifth of Iraq's imported weapons systems, including Mirage F-1s, Puma attack helicopters, and Exocet as well as antitank and antiaircraft missiles. The camouflage nets and plastic decoys being used by Iraq to fool allied flyers were also sold by French companies. "You send them a check, and they'll sell you anything," an American pilot fumed last week. More worrisome, France sold Iraq the Osirak nuclear reactor that was bombed by Israel in 1981. After that attack, which heightened concerns that Iraq might be pursuing a nuclear-weapons capability, Paris shied away from nuclear- related sales to Baghdad. Though Iraq fell $5 billion behind in its payments, French firms continued selling equipment to Saddam until early 1990. They did not want to lose a customer whose $12 billion in orders accounted for up to 40% of their sales.

UNCONVENTIONAL WEAPONS. Germany is implicated in more disturbing ways. A U.S. arms expert says Germany's MAN Technologie continued to send technicians to Iraq to work on Saddam's nuclear program as late as last November. According to German reports, German companies also provided Iraq with 90% of its chemical-weapons capability. Most of the exports were dual-use items. Manufacturers told German customs officials that the shipments involved factory parts for the construction of pesticide plants. Actually they were destined for complexes like Samarra and Salman Pak, where Iraq developed its chemical and biological weapons. Now, warns Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, "U.S. troops may have to fight their way through Germany's chemical exports to destroy Germany's nuclear exports."

The hunt for Saddam's suppliers is gaining momentum. In Germany at least 59 companies are under investigation, 25 for involvement in chemical-weapons development. Saudi and Kuwaiti officials are wringing their hands over the billions of dollars they lent or granted Iraq during the war with Iran. And Egypt worries about the thousands of Egyptians who served in Saddam's army during that conflict. Many are still in the Iraqi army, raising the specter of Egyptians fighting Egyptians.

In the U.S. customs officials report that 40 investigations are under way in connection with illegal shipments to Iraq. Most of the alleged violations are relatively small, involving medical supplies and computers. But some concern illegal weapons shipments. Moreover, congressional investigators are probing an Italian bank's handling of $750 million in U.S. Department of Agriculture credits extended to Iraq in the 1980s for food purchases. In an internal memo dated Feb. 23, 1990, administrator F. Paul Dickerson warned Under Secretary Richard Crowder: "In a worst case scenario, investigators would find a direct link to financing Iraqi military expenditures, particularly the Condor missile." Despite Dickerson's warning, the department was still considering $500 million in additional credits when Saddam invaded Kuwait.

There may be other bombshells. Details of Iraq's purchases of restricted military electronic equipment from the West are only beginning to filter out. The inventory is believed to include sensors and advanced radar modifications, night-vision apparatus and devices designed to counter the West's own electronic measures. Saddam's warning of a "surprise" for the coalition may refer to this sensitive area of technology.

Arms purchases on such a scale could not have occurred without the implicit ! approval of governments. "A deliberate effort to fail to be informed," says Cordesman, "is just another form of collaboration." In a belated acknowledgment that arming one perceived monster to fight another can boomerang, Secretary of State James Baker and his Soviet counterpart, Alexander Bessmertnykh, issued a joint statement last week calling for restraint in the "spiraling arms race" in the Middle East. A gesture, most likely, both too little and too late.

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CREDIT: TIME Chart

CAPTION: WHERE SADDAM'S BEST WEAPONS COME FROM

With reporting by Jonathan Beaty/Los Angeles, Jay Peterzell/Washington and Ann M. Simmons/Moscow