Saddam Hussein Give Financial Support for Palestinian Terrorism
(Updated November 2007)
In September 2003 the Commander, United
States Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM), asked
the Joint Advanced Warfighting Program (JAWP)
at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA)
to help develop the operational and strategic
lessons from OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM (OIF)
from the perspectives of former senior Iraqi
decision-makers. By creating a historical
narrative of the events surrounding OIF,
interviewing captured prisoners, and reviewing
translations of enemy documents and media
archives, IDA researchers were able to report
on the inner workings-and sometimes delusional
behavior en masse-of the Saddam
Hussein regime.
For this paper, the JAWP Iraqi Perspectives
Project (IPP) research team screened more
than 600,000 original captured documents
and several thousand hours of audio and video
footage archived in a US Department of Defense
(DOD) database called Harmony. As of August
2006, only 15 percent of the captured documents
have English translations.
Executive Summary
The Iraqi Perspectives Project (IPP) review
of captured Iraqi documents uncovered strong
evidence that links the regime of Saddam
Hussein to regional and global terrorism.
Despite their incompatible long-term goals,
many terrorist movements and Saddam found
a common enemy in the United States. At times
these organizations worked together, trading
access for capability. In the period after
the 1991
Gulf War, the regime of Saddam Hussein
supported a complex and increasingly disparate
mix of pan-Arab revolutionary causes and
emerging pan-Islamic radical movements. The
relationship between Iraq and forces of pan-Arab
socialism was well known and was in fact
one of the defining qualities of the Ba'ath
movement.
But the relationships between Iraq and the
groups advocating radical pan-Islamic doctrines
are much more complex. This study found no "smoking
gun" (i.e., direct connection) between
Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda. Saddam's interest
in, and support for, non-state actors was
spread across a variety of revolutionary,
liberation, nationalist, and Islamic terrorist
organizations. Some in the regime recognized
the potential high internal and external
costs of maintaining relationships with radical
Islamic groups, yet they concluded that in
some cases, the benefits of association outweighed
the risks. A review of available Iraqi documents
indicated the following:
• The Iraqi regime was involved in
regional and international terrorist operations
prior to OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM. The predominant
targets of Iraqi state terror operations
were Iraqi citizens, both inside and outside
of Iraq.
• On occasion, the Iraqi intelligence
servIces directly targeted the regime's perceived
enemies, including non-Iraqis. Non-Iraqi
casualties often resulted from Iraqi sponsorship
of non-governmental terrorist groups.
• Saddam's regime often cooperated
directly, albeit cautiously, with terrorist
groups when they believed such groups could
help advance Iraq's long-term goals. The
regime carefully recorded its connections
to Palestinian
terror organizations in numerous
government memos. One such example documents
Iraqi financial support to families of suicide
bombers in Gaza and the West
Bank.
• State sponsorship of terrorism became
such a routine tool of state power that Iraq
developed elaborate bureaucratic processes
to monitor progress and accountability in
the recruiting, training, and resourcing
of terrorists. Examples include the regime's
development, construction, certification,
and training for car bombs and suicide vests
in 1999 and 2000.
From the beginning of his rise to power,
one of Saddam's major objectives was to shift
the regional balance of power favorably towards
Iraq. After the 1991 Gulf War, pursuing this
objective motivated Saddam and his regime
to increase their cooperation with-and attempts
to manipulate-Islamic fundamentalists and
related terrorist organizations. Documents
indicate that the regime's use of terrorism
was standard practice, although not always
successful. From 1991 through 2003, the Saddam
regime regarded inspiring, sponsoring, directing,
and executing acts of terrorism as an element
of state power.
Volume 1 (PDF)
Volume 2 (PDF)
Volume 3 (PDF)
Volume 4 (PDF)
Volume 5 (PDF)
Volume 1 details Hussein’s
relationship with terrorism. Volumes 2-4
contain translations and summaries of Iraqi
documents. Volume 5 contains additional background
and supporting documents.
Sources: U.S. Department of Defense |