Round Up the Relatives
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The post-election euphoria in Iraq would be a fine moment for President Bush – or for the Iraqi government itself – to turn to the challenge of Saddam Hussein’s relatives. Saddam’s daughter Raghad has been operating from Amman, reportedly as a guest of the Jordanian royal family. Press reports suggest she is living in high style, with expensive haircuts and cosmetic surgery. A spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress, Entifadh Qanbar, told us that she has access to Saddam’s billions and that she is suspected of funding terrorist attacks in Iraq.
Saddam’s half-brother, Sabawi Ibrahim, is in the Syrian city of Bloodan, Mr. Qanbar said. From there, he has been funding Mohammad Younis Alahmad in the Syrian border city of Qamishli. Mr. Alahmad was just elected general secretary of the new Iraqi Baath Party and is said by Mr. Qanbar to have played a role in the recent suicide bombing attack on an American mess tent in Mosul, Iraq, that killed more than a dozen American soldiers.
The State Department’s “Rewards for Justice” Web site offers a $1 million bounty for information leading to Mr. Ibrahim’s capture. If he did in fact play a role in the Mosul bombing, however, it would be pathetic if American efforts stopped at offering a reward. After all, President Bush has vowed to take on not only those committing terrorism against Americans, but those who are harboring the terrorists. If Mr. Qanbar’s account is accurate – and the INC has a credible record – it certainly looks like the Syrians are doing the harboring.
The point here is not to punish Saddam’s relatives for the sin of sharing blood with him. American legal tradition abjures guilt by association. The point is to make sure that the ex-dictator’s relatives are not using Saddam’s resources to pursue his anti-American agenda, at great cost in American lives and in Iraqi hopes. America’s enemies and those of free Iraq need to feel as though they have as little safe harbor in Syria and Jordan as they did after the Marines finally decided to take them on in Fallujah. For if those enemies are allowed to operate freely in Syria and Jordan, the post-election euphoria in Iraq will be fleeting indeed.
