Outside the Beltway

Saddam Cousins Aiding Insurgency

James Joyner · Monday, July 5, 2004 · 1 comment

NYT – U.S. Aides Say Kin of Hussein Aid Insurgency [RSS]

IHT – 3 cousins of Saddam said to aid insurgents

A network of Saddam Hussein’s cousins, operating in part from Syria and Jordan, is actively involved in the smuggling of guns, people and money into Iraq to support the anti-American insurgency, say American government officials and a prominent Iraqi.

The operations involve at least three cousins from the Majid family who now live in Syria and in Europe, the American officials said. A leading figure among them is Fatiq Suleiman al-Majid, a cousin of Mr. Hussein’s and a former officer in Iraq’s Special Security Organization who fled from Iraq to Syria last spring and may still be living there.

The view that the cousins are helping finance the insurgency developed fairly recently and is described in intelligence reports, the American officials say. They said the conclusion was based in part on suspicious recent movements of money and goods, including the transfer of cash into Syria, that were detected by American intelligence.

It’s not surprising that Saddam’s relatives would be using the money he stole from his people to finance the rebellion. What is interesting, however, is that Syria and Jordan are allowing the “smuggling of guns, people and money into Iraq” and we’re apparently not doing anything to clamp down on it. Syria is a major state sponsor of terrorism and has to be high on the list of contenders for preemptive action. Jordan sided with Saddam during the first Gulf War but was supposedly moderating under the new leadership.