"SITUATION CATASTROPHIQUE MAIS NON SANS ESPOIR":

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 JEDDAH 000385

NOFORN
SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR NEA/ARP, NEA/I

E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/11/2029
TAGS: IR IZ KIRF KISL KU OFDP PGOV PHUM SA
SUBJECT: "SITUATION CATASTROPHIQUE MAIS NON SANS ESPOIR":
DEPARTING IRAQI CONSUL GENERAL DISCOURAGED BUT NOT HOPELESS
AS HE MOVES TO KUWAIT

REF: JEDDAH 0368

JEDDAH 00000385 001.2 OF 002


Classified By: Consul General Martin R. Quinn for reasons 1.4 (b) and (
d)


1. (C/NF) SUMMARY. During October 10 farewell dinner at CG's
residence, Iraqi Consul General Dr. Ajwad Sheikh Taha Hamad
(strictly protect) had more to say about his posting as
Charge d'Affaires in Kuwait. Departing Jeddah and arriving in
Kuwait on October 11, Hamad expressed displeasure at the
level of his appointment in Kuwait and referred to the
possibility of his running as a Parliamentary candidate in
the upcoming Iraqi elections. Recalling his family's
hardships during the Saddam Hussein era, he expressed
sympathy with Kurdish aspirations and longing for a secular
Iraqi leader, such as Ayad Allawi, with the ability to keep
damaging Iranian influence in Iraq firmly in check. END
SUMMARY.


AN APPOINTMENT FOR WHICH HE IS QUALIFIED
--------------
BUT WHICH FRUSTRATES HIS AMBITION
--------------


2. (C/NF) He expounded at somewhat greater length than in our
previous meeting (reftel) on his displeasure at being
appointed Charge instead of Ambassador in Kuwait, but did
note that in recent years all Iraqi COMs in Kuwait were at
the Charge level. Nevertheless, he remains convinced that MFA
Shia bureaucrats moved against him to downgrade his
appointment because he is a Sunni. Hamad said that he had
personally informed Iraqi FM Zebari that he could only
guarantee that he would remain in Kuwait for a month "to see
how things went," lamenting that he could be far "more
effective" and do more for Iraq, with better access as
ambassador. Since Kuwaitis in common with other Gulf Arabs
are highly conscious of rank and status, he felt handicapped
from the get-go.


3. (C/NF) Aside from the sectarian issue, Dr. Hamad
speculated that one reason Zebari himself might not want to
see him as an ambassador in Kuwait is that in 2005 he (Hamad)
had been a Tawafuq candidate for Deputy Prime Minister and
thus might be perceived by Zebari as a politically ambitious
underling who should be kept out of mainstream politics.
Hamad admitted he had no specific evidence that Zebari wished
to keep him down; it was "just a feeling." Hamad said he is
toying with the idea of running again for Parliament in the
upcoming Iraqi elections and had told Zebari he would be
happy to serve back at the Ministry in Baghdad, but the FM
insisted, "in his very pleasant manner," that Hamad was
"needed in Kuwait." Hamad's second wife is Kuwaiti, and three
of his children were born there.


SADDAM THE PSYCHOPATH
--------------


4. (C/NF) During the Saddam era Hamad spent several years as
the Iraqi technical expert for OAPEC (Organization of Arab
Petroleum Exporting Countries),headquartered in Kuwait.
Claiming to be well plugged-in with the Kuwaiti power
structure at his next post, he anticipated that Iraq's
relations with Kuwait, especially the border dispute and oil
field issues, would be especially tough. He recounted at
length his version of the background for Iraq's invasion of
Kuwait in 1990, especially Saddam's pique at the Kuwaitis'
crassly "mercantile attitude" about their support for Iraq
during the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s -- emphasizing that
none of this justified the invasion. Saddam, he said, was "a
psychopathic sadist" who hardly needed any excuse to react
with brutal force. Hamad recalled that at one time Saddam
wanted to appoint him Minister of Petroleum, but he confessed
he was afraid to accept the position because of the
dictator's penchant for elevating officials only to have the
greater pleasure of bringing them down with violence:
"Saddam took less delight in eliminating nobodies." Later

JEDDAH 00000385 002.2 OF 002


Hamad's family, including his mother, were arrested in an
effort to pressure him to return to Iraq from his Jordanian
exile; they were released after he was eventually granted
residency in Canada. Hamad recalled that at one stage he had
to admit the fact that he could do nothing for his family and
to accept the possibility they might already be dead -- and
thus act to save himself.


DISPLACED IRAQIS
--------------


5. (C/NF) A French-educated economist, Hamad spoke briefly
of the dismal state of the Iraqi economy, citing figures of
"50% unemployment" and the lack of foreign investment,
especially from Gulf countries. Most manufacturing, he
claimed, remain shut down with factory owners living in
exile. In common with many Iraqis with the financial means,
Hamad sends money on a monthly basis to displaced members of
his family in Jordan and in Syria. The better-educated, more
affluent Iraqis, engineers, doctors, industrialists and
businessmen, sought refuge in Jordan, where King Abdullah
recently allowed Iraqis to send their children to Jordanian
public schools. Formerly, he said, the Iraqi expatriates
were restricted to fee-paying private schools in Amman, which
for many, deprived of regular income, had created enormous
hardship. In Syria, on the other hand, life is much cheaper,
and Iraqi families from the less privileged echelons of
society manage to eke out an existence on as little as $400 a
month. Hamad estimated the total numbers of displaced Iraqis
in Jordan at half a million and in Syria 700,000.


KURDISH AUTONOMY
--------------


6. (C/NF) Hamad spent time in the Kurdistan area before
leaving Iraq and indicated that, as a civilized person with a
sense of history, he fully sympathized with the Kurds'
aspiration for nationhood, and had no problem with a Kurdish
President of Iraq (Talabani) as long as the Kurd was himself
consciously an Iraqi nationalist. He commented that Kurds in
Iraq had never been discriminated against to the extent that
he discovered on visiting Turkey, where "in the 1980s Turkish
Kurds were afraid even to speak their language." Nothing like
that, he said, ever existed in Iraq. Nonetheless, when he
visited Kurdistan from Jordan, Hamad said that he had been
issued an iqama (residence permit for a non-national). The
only problem now is that the Kurds could become greedy
concerning the oil and unwilling to relinquish the autonomy
enjoyed since the no-fly zone was imposed. Hamad believes
the Kurds are better off remaining part of Iraq since
otherwise they would be "surrounded on every side by enemies:
Turkey, Iran, Syria, and southern Iraq."


ALLAWI AS ANSWER TO IRAN
--------------


7. COMMENT. (C/NF) Vehement concerning the negative Iranian
influence in Iraq, the need to curb sectarian bias, and the
urgency of installing Iraqi leaders (including Shia) who are
strong enough to keep Iran in its place, Hamad spoke
approvingly of former interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's
leadership prospects as a secular Shiite and candidate in the
coming elections. As for the fate of Iraq itself, he summed
it up in French: "situation catastrophique mais non sans
espoir" (situation catastrophic but not without hope.) END
COMMENT.








QUINN