During last week's US-British air campaign against Iraq, the country's fractured opposition-in-exile split between those who backed the bombing and those who did not.
The minute Movement for Constitutional Monarchy, under Sharif Hussein, a Hashemite claimant to the Iraqi throne, abolished in 1958 when the last king was overthrown by republican officers, and another monarchist faction, adopted the most hawkish stance in favour of the use of force.
Firm support for the bombing was expressed by spokesmen for the only two factions with an organised military presence in Iraq: the Kurdish Democratic Party of Mr Massoud Barazani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan led by Mr Jalal Talabani. Those rival groups maintain an uneasy truce in the "safe haven" created in 1991 for the Kurds in northern Iraq. Since the Gulf war they have fought one another rather than the regime in Baghdad.
While the leadership of the London-based Iraqi National Congress (INC), headed by Mr Ahmad Chelabi, cheered the US and British strikes, many individual Iraqi exiles affiliated with this umbrella group denounced the attacks. Some even staged protest demonstrations in the US and Britain. The Iraqi National Accord, a small cohesive group established by figures formerly prominent in the Iraqi military and ruling Ba'ath Socialist Party, remained noncommittal. The Accord tried and failed to mount a coup against President Saddam Hussein in 1996 when most of its members inside Iraq were exposed and executed. As the Accord is based in Jordan, which depends on Iraqi oil exports and trade, this group adopted a low profile during the Desert Fox campaign.
The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, based in Tehran, followed Iran's example and denounced the air and missile raids as soon as they began. The factions affiliated with this Shia grouping train and arm resistance units which operate in southern Iraq where the populace is largely Shia. While the council had no alternative but to go along with Tehran, it also could not afford to alienate the southern Shias, who stand to lose from the targeting of the Basra oil refinery and the telecommunications network.
Like the five main groups, the bulk of the 70 to 150 Iraqi opposition factions cannot agree about how to topple Saddam. Various plans have been drawn up for the establishment of US-protected "liberated areas" within Iraq from which the resistance could operate, but Washington, which has allocated $97 million for the liberation of Iraq, has not made up its mind how to achieve this objective.
Ranged against the fractured opposition-in-exile, the northern Kurds and southern Shias, are: four well-informed and brutally efficient intelligence agencies, headed by Saddam's younger son, Qusay; the Ba'ath Party which has members in every corner of the country; the Presidential Guard, the Special Revolutionary Guard and the Revolutionary Guard. These powerful and privileged agencies are motivated by survival. If Saddam falls, they would almost certainly be slaughtered.
This being the case, Washington has often expressed a preference for a coup by pro-US military officers who would be in position to inherit Saddam's assets and impose an equally undemocratic successor regime on the country. Indeed, Revolutionary Guard units were targeted during Desert Fox as a means of putting pressure on their officers to get on with the task of toppling Saddam. But so far, there is no sign of dissent in the elite forces or that the president has been weakened by the four-day onslaught on some of the people who keep him in power.
