CAIRO - Whatever the spin, whatever the rhetoric about "liberation", whatever the wishful thinking of a Japan rising in the Middle East, whatever the battle plan one subscribes to, this will be a war essentially against the Iraqi people. It won't be a war in the first place. It will be a one-sided massacre. Iraq has no air force. Iraq has no navy. Iraq has no satellite network to coordinate military action. But Iraqi Trade Minister Mohammed Mahdi Saleh is the latest in a flurry of regime officials to swear that the country is preparing as if war could happen tomorrow. Let's try to find out how.

In Iraq, the Ba'ath Party controls the army and the clans control the Ba'ath. Iraqi historian and sociologist Faleh Jaber, a researcher at the University of London, notes that in the 1960s the Iraqi armed forces consisted of a regular army plus the Republican Guard. When the Ba'ath Party regained power in 1968, it upgraded the Republican Guard: the army still had the responsibility to defend the country, but the guard's responsibility became to defend the regime. When Saddam Hussein took power in 1979, there was not a single army official in the Revolutionary Command Council. Another Iraqi historian, Majid Khuduri, says that Ba'ath was the first regime to subordinate the army to civil authority.

The young Saddam Hussein, heavily influenced by his maternal uncle, was a big fan of Adolf Hitler's system. Then he became a huge fan of Josef Stalin. Jaber says that Saddam's system follows these influences, but with original features: "Like the German model, the Ba'ath system in Iraq has four supporting bases: a totalitarian ideology, a single party, control of the economy [so-called socialist], and control of the media and the army." Ilios Yannakakis, a Greek historian based in Paris and a Middle East specialist, arguably has the best definition of the Ba'ath Party: "The social and socialist branch of fascism."

Unlike the Nazi model, the Ba'ath model is all about tribes and clans supporting the state. Since the early years it has been a sort of state tribalism, limited to the ruling elite's tribe, the Albu Nasir. The core of this tribe is the very important al-Beijat clan. The fact that Iraq literally floats over a sea of oil enabled the Ba'ath Party initially to invest heavily in public services and many forms of social protection. Jamal Salman, professor of economics at the University of Baghdad, confirmed to this correspondent last year that the Iraqi middle class became prosperous in the 1970s not because of Western-style capitalism, but thanks to state contracts and jobs. In the 1970s, tribal groups ruled: what Jaber calls "class-clan" controls of the party, the army, the bureaucracy and business. Ba'ath operates a complex balancing act as it applies its recipe of merging army control with tribal solidarity. It describes itself as an Arab socialist party - and that is something certainly at odds with tribal solidarity.

Many surviving victims of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war also confirmed to this correspondent how the social fabric of the country was destroyed because of that disastrous conflict. The state lost control over many important tribes. Iraq was left with a US$50 billion debt. At the end of the 1980s, Iraq had a million-strong army. For the war generation, it was impossible to go back to the good life of the 1970s. Jaber is clear: the invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, happened as an attempt to re-establish internal stability. But Iraq has been mired in a logic of war for too long.

The defeat in the Gulf War - which is still known inside Iraq as the "Mother of all Battles" - caused a profound structural adjustment. The state was terribly weakened - as well as the security services. The army was reduced to a third of its original size. There were rebellions in Kurdistan and in the Shi'ite south. The United States - illegally, without United Nations approval - imposed no-fly zones. Professor Salman in Baghdad stresses some of the terrible consequences of two totally useless wars: the Iraqi economy, based on oil wealth, collapsed; market forces began to emerge; and the middle class - a very important base for the Ba'ath Party - was smashed by hyperinflation.

Jaber says that Saddam's regime managed to survive the 1990s by meticulously applying a five-point strategy: imposition of order in the main tribe; reorganization of the army; co-option of tribes around the country so that they could replace party organizations; more ammunition to the ideological arsenal; and new forms of economic control.

State tribalism at the top used to be based on an alliance of Sunni clans around the very important al-Beijat clan. The al-Beijat clan has 10 branches. The center of power was changing among all 10, so seven of them were thoroughly smashed. The predominant clan became the Albu-Ghafur, Saddam's sub-clan. The al-Majid clan was also in the ascendancy in the 1990s. Key members such as Hussein Kamel and Saddam Kamel - both married to daughters of Saddam - and Ali Hasan Al-Majid controlled the arms industry, the Jihaz al-Khas (Special Services) and the Defense Ministry. At the same time, Saddam's sons, Udai and Qusai, were also in the ascendancy. A conflict was inevitable. Hussein and Saddam Kamel went into exile in Jordan. But then, foolishly, they returned to Baghdad and Saddam ordered them to be shot along with their families.

In the late 1990s, Saddam finally cemented his power based on his sub-clan, the Albu-Ghafur, and he chose Qusai to be his successor. A Republican Guard talking to Asia Times Online last year confirmed that this caused a tremendous rift between Saddam and his wife. They were said not to have been sleeping in the same bed, or room for that matter, for years. Udai, Mama's favorite, was a playboy. But Qusai was the brainy one. Saddam ordered Qusai to reorganize the intelligence services and internal security. He was named supervisor of the "Army of the Mother of All Battles" - which later became the Republican Army. Since 2000 he has been interim president and in 2001 he was given regional control of the Ba'ath Party.

The two strongmen of the regime are now Qusai and Kamal Mustapha, a paternal cousin of Saddam who controls the Republican Guard, the de facto praetorian guards of the regime. It's all in the family: Kamal's brother, Jamal, is married to Saddam's youngest daughter. In fact, Iraq is now run by a triumvirate: Father (Saddam), Son (Qusai) and Holy Ghost (Kamal Mustapha).

And it's still all about state tribalism, plus social tribalism, but now combined with Iraqi patriotism - thus the frequent references to the glorious history of Mesopotamia - and of course Arab patriotism. As can easily be attested in Basra in the south of the country, Saudi Wahhabism has infiltrated the country, but it has been tolerated by the security services because it functions as a counterpower to militant Shi'ites.

But the ultimate tool of social control in the regime is in fact a contribution of the international community: sanctions and the "oil for food" program, or UN Resolution 986, adopted by Iraq in May 1996. People receive their meager state rations through certificates. Suspected dissidents, of course, never see such certificates. This is what Jaber calls the "politics of famine". As to the upper middle class, it continues to support the regime because of market deregulation. These are the smugglers who can be seen in Baghdad driving posh German cars with tinted windows, eating gourmet pizza in flash cafes and throwing parties in million-dollar houses next to Saddam's main presidential palace, near Saddam Tower.

So the regime survives thanks to a mix of tribalism, nationalism, patriotism and Sunnism. As many as 80 percent of senior army officers are related to Saddam's Albu-Ghafour sub-clan. So it is a cohesive army, at least as far as the Republican Guards are concerned.

The Iraqi army today has seen no improvement since 1990, except for air defense systems - which have been the targets of relentless strikes by US and British planes for months now. But the reduced military budget served a purpose: the regime was able to concentrate on reinforcing clan alliances. Today the Iraqi armed forces have four divisions: as many as eight regular regiments of the Republican Guard; another division from the Republican Guard; the regular army (four armored, three mechanized and five infantry regiments); and an array of tribal militias specialized in smashing civil rebellion. These militias will be key in the event of urban warfare once the US bombing starts.

This will be an extremely political war. Washington's obsession is regime change. So the main prize is Baghdad. Republican Guards will not chicken out, and there will be no coup d'etat: as we have seen, a big, extended family's survival is at stake. An entire division of the army - as many as four regiments - would be necessary for a coup, and with essential input from the president's own sub-clan. Out of the question. This means full-scale invasion and occupation of Iraq is inevitable.

The regime fights two huge imponderables. Its own structure by definition is extremely vulnerable. And absolutely nobody, inside or outside Iraq, can estimate how substantial is the gap between the official, nationalist, patriotic rhetoric and the feelings of the Iraqi population. There are wild rumors in Baghdad that Saddam is secretly negotiating oil for his survival. For many Iraqis, and for quite some time now, Saddam is not a Saladin fighting against American imperialism: he remains an American agent. And Americans are widely perceived not as "liberators" but as an occupation force. There's intense speculation that the regime will eventually fall, but what will be the price to pay?

The regime is taking no chances, and it has adopted a variety of tactics. The Ba'ath propaganda machine is reinforcing the notion that all members of the ruling elite face death, so there's only one way out: to fight for survival no matter what. The government is also playing the religious card by persuading Shi'ite spiritual leaders to issue fatwas against Shi'ite opponents of the regime.

The overall strategy of defense is concentrated in the cities, especially Baghdad, which could magnify the political nightmare in terms of Western and Arab public opinion as there will be high "collateral damage". And as the Central Command in Qatar will welcome those who want to follow the war by remote control, the regime will also play the media, although there are rumors in the Middle East that the Americans will bomb any satellite phone signal that is not registered with them.

Two key bridges over the Tigris in Baghdad were bombed by the Americans in 1991. According to the latest echoes from Baghdad, people suspect all six bridges will be bombed this time, so everybody will have to use boats or motorboats to get from one side to the other. The US forces will certainly divide the city to confine the defense to certain areas. This means that civilians will also be confined to their neighborhoods. Local Ba'ath Party members in each neighborhood are now mostly housed in schools. Their fundamental mission during the war will be to distribute stocks of water and alcohol - essential for heating and cooking. Order will be maintained by a party official in each and every street (that's how it already works anyway). People won't be allowed to leave their homes.

This could also mean that many wounded won't be able to go to hospital, and aid agencies will have a nightmare trying to distribute food. The regime says that rations that could last until June have already been distributed, and Iraqi TV every day alerts that they should not be resold because everyone will need them. And residents fear above all the hellish rain of fire already promised with glee by many a Pentagon official. Ordinary Iraqis, naturally fatalistic, expect to be the main targets, as they have been the targets of sanctions for the past 12 years.

US forces may not disable Iraq's command and control systems because the army-as-an-extended-family simply will not be relying on high tech. There will be suicide martyrs everywhere, according to the Ba'ath leadership, and civilians in some neighborhoods seem to be prepared to defend the city in house-to-house fighting. Indeed, Kalashnikovs have been distributed to certain sections of the population. It's unlikely that the Americans will know how to deal with the extremely complex tribal and clan structures already pre-positioned for a new redistribution of land, water, arms and prestige in case there's a new central power. Anyway, these clans are heavily armed already, and they will not help the United States during the war. They have nothing to gain by betraying Saddam: he can always survive and his revenge would be devastating. Iraqis, with a keen sense of history, remind anyone that Saddam has survived endless assassination attempts, coups, US presidents and a war against a 33-nation coalition.

Saddam is betting on a replay of the siege of Stalingrad. His key strategy is to maintain the control of the population for as long as possible. He might even be betting on a popular revolution against the invader.

And Saddam may escape alive. He has as many as nine doubles. Like Osama bin Laden, he could vanish into virtual reality - cynics with a wicked sense of humor even advance that this may be part of the whole deal.

CAIRO - George W Bush may have never read Dante Alighieri. But Bush's three ultimatums - to Iraq, to the United Nations and to the European Union - seem to come straight from one of old Europe's greatest creative artists. "Abandon all hope ye who enter," says Dante in The Divine Comedy at the gates of hell. "Abandon all hope ye who engage in irrelevant talk," says Bush at the gates of heaven as he prepares for the first installment in a long round of engagement in the Middle East.

As we approach the final countdown at the Security Council, it's the United States and the United Kingdom, backed by Spain, against France and Germany, backed by Russia and China: a one-page second resolution stating that Iraq is in material breach against a memorandum setting deadlines for Iraqi disarmament. The Syrian ambassador to the United Nations has dubbed the deceivingly bland semantics of the second resolution "a declaration of war".

The immediate reaction of the Arab League to total war has been total panic. Secretary general Amr Moussa said, "You can never belittle the consequences of war, especially in a Middle East already frustrated with the Israeli occupation and the bias towards Israel. So adding insult to injury is too much for us."

Insult has been added to injury long before the tabled second resolution. As Asia Times Online has reported (The great Arab face-saving theater, February 19), the Arab League has no cohesive, independent, forcefully argued position vis-a-vis the US: it has only managed to attach most - but not all - of its camels to the Franco-German-Russian "more time for the inspectors" position. Half of Kuwait, a league member, has been turned into a US boot camp. Qatar and Bahrain will also help in the invasion of Iraq. The Arab League is a sad exercise in schizophrenia - trying to appease Washington and engage it in dialogue while at the same time performing full-time contortionism to calm its angry and restless populations.

While the world grapples with extraordinary events, the Arab League couldn't do more than settle for an ordinary summit to be held in Cairo early next month. Syria has been lobbying hard for a meaningful summit. Syria knows very well that it is next on the list of the Washington hawks. In fact, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon - who is the top dog running US foreign policy in the Middle East - just last week offered American congressmen his own list of who's next: Syria, Iran and Libya.

Syria has been fighting hard at the UN to remind anyone who will listen that peace in the Middle East will only be achieved with a comprehensive solution of the Palestinian tragedy. At the UN, Syria - as a non-permanent member of the Security Council - is staunchly aligned with the Franco-German-Russian front. At the Arab League, Lebanon - according to diplomats instigated by Syria - made sure to remind of the 2002 Beirut declaration, which establishes that an attack on one individual Arab nation would be regarded as an attack on the whole Arab nation. Kuwait was furious - and that's the main reason there cannot possibly be a consensus in the Arab League.

Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah may be sincere in his current efforts to introduce democratic reforms in the kingdom, but Saudi Arabia is living in dreamland hoping that Saddam Hussein will accept free elections under the supervision of the UN. Egyptian political scientist Wahid Abdel-Meguid laments that "the Americans always impose discussions about post-Saddam [Iraq] while Arab countries try to maximize the chances of a peaceful solution".

Walid Kazziha, professor of political science at the American University in Cairo (AUC), tries to be more optimistic: "The Arab and European stances are mutually dependent. The Arabs will make a firmer stand with the encouragement of Europe." But he also warns that "the Arabs are not in a position to risk everything for someone like Saddam Hussein". Professor Bahgat Korany from AUC agrees, and adds that with the Saudis not exactly enjoying Washington's good graces, most other key Arab nations are resigned that "even the Europeans can't stop the American war machine".

But the whole world keeps trying anyway. That is the message coming from the Kuala Lumpur meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) - 116 countries representing more than 50 percent of the world population, two-thirds of the UN, and including six non-permanent members of the Security Council: Syria, Pakistan, Chile, Angola, Guinea and Cameroon. These last three African nations have already stated their anti-war position at the Franco-African summit in Paris last week. Even under serious carrot-and-stick approaches in New York for these next few days, they won't be easily swayed to vote for a second resolution that in fact will be a green light for war. For the absolute majority of the 186 UN member states that are not part of the Security Council P5 (as the five permanent members are known), this second resolution now tabled means nothing else than a UN authorization for preemptive war.

At the NAM meeting, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad repeated what Prince Saud al Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, has been saying these past few days in the Arab world: the war will inevitably be perceived as anti-Muslim.

Hassan Nafaa, professor of political science at Cairo University, agrees: "Washington's actions suggest it has targeted Islam and that it plans to reshape the region in a manner that will obviate the emergence of an Arab nationalist or Islamic ideology of unification or resistance. Towards this end, it most likely intends to redraw the map of the region on the basis of ethnic or sectarian rivalries." Nafaa paints an alarming picture: "If what appears to be American designs see the light of day, Arabs and Muslims realize that the only nation to benefit will be Israel, and Washington will have paved the way for it to become an unrivaled regional power virtually overnight." A stroll through the campus of the liberal American University in Cairo is always instructive, and one hears fiercely anti-US and anti-Israel comments.

There's absolutely no love lost for Israel in Egypt. Diplomats in Cairo comment that Israel, in partnership with the US, is actively involved in the partition of Sudan, which Egypt considers its back yard. It is all about water. Herodotus rightly pointed out that Egypt was a gift from the Nile, but the possibility of the gift being wrapped by Israeli control of the nascent waters of the Nile makes for endless sleepless nights. It's a situation parallel to the future of the River Jordan - a key in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. With Israel controlling the flow of the river, a Palestine state could be starved in a few days.

The Egyptian economy is bound to suffer badly with a war in Iraq. The figures are gloomy. There will be heavy losses in many crucial fronts: tourism (the main source of foreign-exchange revenue), exports, revenue from the Suez Canal and the stock market. According to official data, tourism employs 2.2 million people in Egypt, directly and indirectly. Independent sources say that there could be as many as 10 million.

According to a study by the Federation of Egyptian Industries, Suez revenues are expected to fall by almost half, to US$1 billion. Assuming a short war ending within three months, tourism revenues will also fall by half, to $1.7 billion. Egyptian expatriates' remittances will also be halved, to $2 billion. The import bill will rise 30 percent. Exports will decrease by 5 percent, to $5.9 billion. Foreign direct investment will be non-existent. According to economist Hamdi Abdel-Azzem, at least 200,000 Egyptian workers could be forced to return from Iraq: a social as well as an economic crisis. About 4 million to 6 million Egyptians work in the Persian Gulf region - and the absolute majority fear that they could lose their jobs. And to top it all, trade between Egyptian businesses and Iraq under the UN oil-for-food program ($1.5 billion last year) will also suffer: Egypt is one of the top five countries benefiting from the program. The US has given signals that it might be willing to "compensate" Egypt for some of these tremendous troubles, but the mood in Cairo couldn't be more pessimistic.

Thus, appalled by the prospect of imminent war, Egyptians keep searching for alternative solutions. Mahmoud Abaza, vice president of the opposition Wafd Party, advances that "the pressure could have been more efficient and useful for all if it was geared to force the Iraqi regime to organize free elections, after a period of transition, under the surveillance of the international community. This would have been more acceptable for the Iraqi people, the Arab nation, the immediate neighbors and the international community." Abaza's dream would be "a coalition to save the Iraqi people instead of exterminating them". He is devastated by the fact that the Bush administration, "the most reactionary in American history", is using the September 11 tragedy to "build an empire devoid of all moral values that America has incarnated since its independence".

Gamil Mattar, director of the Arab Center for Development and Futuristic Research, makes a point of referring to the secret 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, when the British and the French carved up the Middle East for themselves after the Ottoman defeat in World War I: "That map has continued largely unchanged, even in the face of attempts by some - in the name of Arab unity or the unity of greater Syria - to change it. The map lasted because the Arabs have refused to change it." But Mattar has a very clear warning that could only be directed to Washington: "Would-be reformers will face many difficulties. The Middle Eastern state is autocratic, leaving nothing out of its orbit of influence, and at the same time it is underdeveloped. While nation-states have been established in the Middle East and even institutionalized, they have not yet succeeded in the process of nation-building. This will be a heavy burden on anyone seeking to implement far-reaching changes in political and social institutions."

The Bush administration may be aware that Iraq is a supreme prize - the crucial frontier separating Arabs, Persians and Turks, the key bridge between the Mediterranean and Central Asia from a historic, religious, ethnic and geographic perspective. But the invading superpower may be less aware of the extreme complexity of most political, religious and ethnic problems lying ahead. For instance, Iraq - not Iran - is the country harboring the Shi'ite holy places: Kufa, Najaf and Kerbala. Even though they are a majority in Iraq, the Shi'ites have been consistently oppressed by successive Sunni empires. Ethnically they are Arabs, but religiously they are Shi'ites (see The Shi'ite factor, April 25, 2002). They are not only the most important community in the Arab world, but also a very important link with Shi'ite minorities living in the eastern Arabian Peninsula and in Lebanon. Sunni Arabs in central and eastern Iraq since the fall of the Ottoman empire have constituted the political and military elite - but they also have a common tribal origin with people from southeastern Syria, the Jordan region and northern Saudi Arabia.

The majority of soldiers in the Iraqi regular army are Shi'ite. As war breaks out, they will either flee, surrender or, most likely, engage in widespread rebellion. Washington's plans of a clean occupation of Iraq will turn to dust. A preview of what might happen was offered early this month. In a meeting in the Turkish capital Ankara, US officials totally dismissed the Iraqi opposition - the bulk of which is Shi'ite and Kurdish. They said that post-Saddam Iraq will be under a military government, and - insult to injury - run by the same Sunni establishment put in place by Saddam Hussein.

Shi'ites are silently furious. They will revolt. Insistent rumors coming from Iraq about a massive Shi'ite revolt immediately after war breaks out don't mention any kind of rallying organization - except for the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, backed by Iran. The council has a small army of a maximum of 10,000 men, based in Iran, although they say that many are based in Iraq as well. There are no Shi'ite leaders inside Iraq because Saddam has killed them all.