Arabs Fear Instability in Plan to Shield Iraqi Shiites : Mideast: U.S. allies see threat of Iranian-backed fundamentalism if Hussein regime is broken up.

Arab governments are expressing growing concern about an allied plan to protect Shiite Muslim rebels in southern Iraq, fearing that the plan could lead to dangerous new instability in the Middle East and threaten the integrity of Iraq.

No Arab government except Kuwait has expressed enthusiastic support for the plan to bar Iraqi government flights over the southern marshlands. And even some of Washington’s strongest allies in the region say the plan could open the Arab world’s eastern flank to the threat of Iranian-backed Shiite fundamentalism.

Other Arabs have expressed fears that the disintegration of Iraq into separate enclaves for Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites could lead to the Balkanization of the Middle East, with Maronite Christians in Lebanon, Christian Copts in Egypt and Berbers in North Africa demanding autonomy as well.

And Turkey, which has indicated that it will not allow its Incirlik Air Base to be used as a launching pad for the proposed “no-fly” zone, fears that enforcement of autonomous regions in Iraq could promote a partitioning of the country. That in turn would spur the drive for an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq, which could spill over into Turkey’s own restive Kurdish population.

“Everybody would like to get rid of Saddam Hussein, but the way to get rid of him should not reach a point where there would be a threat of dismemberment of Iraq,” a senior Egyptian official said Tuesday.

Iraq, meanwhile, remained defiantly opposed to the proposed protection zone in its southern third. The government newspaper Al Jumhuriyah vowed that Iraq “will fight the plot with determination and turn the southern marshlands into a graveyard for evil people.”

At issue for many Arabs in the debate over the proposal is the bitter, eight-year war that Iraq and its Arab allies fought against Iran--a war for which many of the Arab nations and the United States spent billions of dollars building Iraq’s military machine to fend off Iran and its revolutionary brand of Shiite fundamentalism.

Egypt, Syria and other Arab allies fear that the creation of a protection zone for Iraqi Shiites in the south could allow a new foothold for Iran to begin building forces and establishing support groups in the region, undoing the stalemate earned in nearly a decade of war and opening all the fragile Persian Gulf emirates to unrest within their own substantial Shiite populations.

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain have all fought back uprisings among their Shiite communities, most notably attempted overthrows of the Kuwaiti monarchy in 1988 and 1989 and the Shiite takeover of the Grand Mosque at Mecca in 1979.

Only last year, Saudi Arabia’s Shiite population, variously estimated at 200,000 to 500,000, mostly within the oil-rich Eastern Province, sent a petition to King Fahd demanding a series of reforms to protect the Shiite community, including permission to build new mosques, freedom to publish Shiite literature and the establishment of an independent Shiite judiciary system.

“I would say that creating an independent Shiite republic in the south would create more of a threat than anything I can think of,” said Abdullah Kabaa, political science professor at Riyadh’s King Saud University. “It would encourage radicals and fundamentalists in the entire region, and that would creep gradually and slowly into the entire region, namely Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the (United Arab) Emirates and possibly Saudi Arabia.”

Saudi Arabia has indicated that it will allow U.S. forces to use the military airfield in Dhahran as a base for operations in southern Iraq, but there is reportedly division within the Saudi royal family over the wisdom of the approach.

“Our main concern is we don’t want to see a divided Iraq,” a Saudi official in Jidda said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “The success depends on the way they conduct the protection zone. . . . (The danger) is that it might promote the breaking up of Iraq, and yet at the same time, there should be some kind of action toward the regime in Baghdad, too. So it’s a very sensitive balance of actions that needs to be taken.”

The prevailing view among Gulf Arabs who have supported the plan is that it is part of a coordinated strategy in which to continue the “humiliation” of Iraq’s President Hussein. There is hope that the threat of a disintegration of the country will spark Hussein’s military officers to overthrow him in order to prevent that eventuality, said one Gulf official.

“About nine months ago we came to the conclusion that Saddam Hussein is not going to leave, and that keeping him in place and ignoring him is not the strategy to pursue,” the official said. “If you really want to get at him, you have to humiliate him, change the rules on him, tell him, ‘You can’t fly your planes today.’ Then keep pressing him on human rights, on paying reparations to Kuwait, on the border dispute with Kuwait.”

The other strategy, a Gulf analyst said, is to put into place by way of the no-fly zone a mechanism for initiating a swift military strike against Baghdad if necessary.

“Until now he’s been figuring, ‘I can do anything I want, and I can string them along . . . and then say I give up.’ He’s not likely to do this as long as he knows you can act three days after you make the threat,” the analyst said.

But even Gulf officials who support the plan for the no-fly zone admit that shielding the Shiites could encourage the breakup of Iraq.

“It’s true, it’s a possible byproduct,” said one official. “If it continues, and you continue having a separate autonomous Kurdish area and a separate Shiite area, they begin to set in place management policies and their own administrative structures, and it becomes much more likely they’ll say, ‘Forget it; we’re going our own way.’ ”

Many Kuwaitis, according to Arab diplomats, have reached the view that the breakup of Iraq into a Kurdish state in the north, a Sunni state in the center and a Shiite state in the south may be the only way to prevent a future Iraqi military strike against Kuwait.

Most Iraqis, and not just Hussein alone, believe that Kuwait is rightfully a province of Iraq, noted one Arab diplomat. “Kuwait for sure would like to see complete dismemberment. A large unit such as Iraq that has conquered Kuwait once might repeat it again after 15 years. The Iraqi opposition, any of those people, whether in the government or the opposition, all would like to act against Kuwait,” the diplomat said.

Countries such as Egypt and Syria have expressed strong reservations--but not opposition--to the no-fly zone plan because of strategic concerns.

“The whole eastern wing of the Arab world would be threatened by designs of the larger powers in the region (if Iraq were weakened),” said an Egyptian official. “You will have Iran projecting itself into the whole region, something which can only be regarded as dangerous.”

Explained Egyptian military analyst Farouk Hitani: “All that has been worrying everybody is maintaining the balance of power between Iraq and Iran, mainly. But there is another balance that has to be maintained between Iraq and Syria and a third one that has to be maintained between Iraq and Israel. All these together would go against any weakening of Iraqi military power.”

For Syria’s part, military analysts say Damascus needs the “strategic depth” of a united Iraq, its longtime foe, as an instrument with which to counter threats from Turkey to cut off Syria’s water supply and from Israel, with which it remains in a state of war despite the Washington peace talks.

Iraq’s Shiite opposition, seeking allied support to end the Iraqi government’s vicious military campaign against the Shiites in the south, has tried to quell concerns among Iraq’s neighbors by insisting that Iraq’s Shiites have no visions of an independent Shiite state.

“I don’t think it has ever been discussed, desired, attempted or wanted that there should be a Shia republic in the south of Iraq,” said Laith Kubba, head of the London-based Iraqi National Congress, which includes the Shiite opposition.

A final concern raised by officials in Egypt, Jordan, Syria and North Africa has to do with the probable negative reaction on the Arab street to new Western military intervention in Iraq when, despite strong anti-Serb rhetoric, the West has taken no firm action to stop the killing of Muslims and Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

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