Just Keep On Trucking

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The transaction is perfectly blatant. A Jordanian customs official is bribed, illegal cargo is substituted for food and medicine, a false manifest is prepared, and the truck heads for the Iraqi border. At the Jordanian customs post, the truck, sealed with a lock and a bit of wire, is not examined, the customs inspector stamps the false manifest, and the driver heads for Baghdad. Boasts police major Ahmed Omari as he waves through a van of vegetable oil: "Not a single truck has carried smuggled goods into Iraq." But thanks to Iraqi payoffs lavished on Jordanian government officials, thousands of tons of U.N.-embargoed communications gear, construction parts, military equipment and computers enter Iraq from Jordan to help prop up Saddam Hussein's regime.

Coming the other way, legally, a half-mile-long column of oil tankers stream beneath a giant portrait of Saddam that marks an archway over the desert border. Each day they bring 50,000 bbl. of cut-rate fuel to Amman to sustain the stumbling economy of Jordan.

Jordan's involvement in the smuggling is illicit, but greed inspired a willingness to brave the consequences of violating the U.N. strictures imposed after the gulf war. Until a few weeks ago, truck convoys from Jordan transported 6,000 tons of goods a day into Iraq, but only about 70% were the food and medicine permitted by the U.N. The remainder, say U.S. intelligence officials, consisted of materials Saddam has used to rebuild the infrastructure damaged by allied bombs.

Washington decided to crack down last month. CIA Director Robert Gates visited King Hussein at his Aqaba retreat on the Red Sea to remind him of his responsibilities. It was an appropriate venue for the mission; the bulk of the illegal cargoes that are eventually trucked into Iraq enter Jordan via ships docking at Aqaba. Confronted with the CIA'S evidence of cross-border smuggling, however, Hussein has finally ordered officials to stop the trade. Truck traffic from Jordan to Iraq has since declined by a third. In Amman last week, Secretary of State James Baker acknowledged a "reduced leakage of goods across the Jordanian-Iraqi border."

But the overall ineffectiveness of the embargo has enabled Saddam to restore communications and electrical services and repair damage to bridges and government buildings. U.S. diplomats believe the ease with which Iraq has circumvented the sanctions has encouraged Saddam to increase his defiance of U.N. demands.