Read the full text in French (pdf).

Abstract

The debate on Iraqi war capabilities, initiated month’s ago by the U.S. threats against Iraq, totally ignores the non-military, non-tangible assets of Saddam Hussein in a war that might not have much to do with conventional warfare and classic theory. This article will hopefully contribute to the debate in three ways. First of all, it develops a historical outline of the Iraqi military and security apparatus, so as to define precisely its various organs and illustrate the experiences and concepts that determined its current doctrine. Secondly, it will concentrate on the adaptability displayed by the Iraqi regime in the face of the specific U.S. threats during the nineties. This adaptability is seen as a prolongation of the impressive plasticity demonstrated by the regime throughout the aforementioned historical process. Last of all, this article implies an atypical but non-the-less plausible war scenario, based precisely on a better attention paid, paradoxically, to Saddam Hussein’s non-military resources.

David Baran is the pseudonym of an independant journalist, who was a consultant in international relations on Middle East, today based in Canada.
(This article is published in French only. Original title: 'L'adversaire irakien'.)