IRAQ - The Political Regime.

Practically Iraq has been a UN trusteeship, under US control, since the regime of Saddam Hussein accepted the US-imposed allied terms for a ceasefire at the end of a high-tech war for the liberation of Kuwait in late February 1991. This situation will remain as long as the UN sanctions on Iraq

Of Iraq, the regime of Saddam Hussein fully controls three degrees latitude, between the 33rd Parallel in the south and the 36th Parallel in the north. These are excluded from the no-fly zones.

Iraq as a whole lies between the 29th Parallel in the south to 37.5th Parallel in the north. In the north, the no-fly zone is imposed by a coalition of US and British forces, with other powers providing some logistical support. In the south, the no-fly zone is imposed by the US and Britain, with France having stopped participating in flights over the two zones.

Allied flights over the northern no-fly zone take off from Turkish base facilities. Allied flights over the southern no-fly zone take off from base facilities in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar - with up to the 32nd parallel. The allied force based mainly in Saudi Arabia.

With Saddam's forces defying the no-fly system since the allied air wars of Dec. 16-20, 1998 and Feb. 16, 2001, US and British warplanes have been bombing Iraqi positions frequently. Yet Saddam has killed the UN weapons monitoring system, having expelled the UN inspectors in December 1998, saying this will not be revived.

Occasionally, US reports charge that Saddam's regime has re-developed weapons of mass destruction, and there is no way the UN can verify them. Baghdad always denies such allegations.

On Feb. 24, 2001, Germany's Federal Intelligence Service (BND) was quoted by the German press as claiming that Iraq could be able to have nuclear weapons in three years and fire a missile to as far as Europe by 2005.

Because the Saddam regime joined the military offensive of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) to control the Kurdish north of Iraq in late August 1996, it lost control of one important degree latitude, the 33rd Parallel. To punish the regime, at noon on Sept. 4, 1996 the Clinton administration extended the southern no-fly zone to cover the whole area south of the 33rd Parallel, i.e., up to 45 km south of Baghdad city. Britain went along with the US, while France refrained from flying over the extended area.

The US, then under Clinton's democratic administration, also fired 17 cruise missiles at various Iraqi military sites in the south. Allied hostilities against Iraq became almost automatic after each act of defiance by Saddam in the following years.

On the other hand, Saddam's Baathist regime keeps saying it has the means to survive for many more years of embargo, now that the US wants to review this and get the UN to impose "smart sanctions". For his part, Saddam is working out "smart resistance" against the US presence in the Middle East (see OMT).

Saddam Hussein's family remains split by complex power struggles. But his Baathist regime is in full control over the central provinces. It controls the southern provinces but not their airspace which is a no-fly zone. It has indirect control over a part of northern Iraq through the KDP.