There was no doubt that real danger was involved. However, my wife and I didn’t hesitate to accept the assignment, figuring that newspapers always inflated the risk in any situation. We thought that if the people of Baghdad could adjust to the dangers and go about their business, as long as our embassy was still open, even if there were occasional missiles exploding in Baghdad neighborhoods, we could manage too.
We arrived in Iraq on Labor Day, 1988. Iran and Iraq had agreed to a truce under the auspices of United Nations Security Council Resolution 598 on August 20, bringing active hostilities, including the missile war, to an end. Despite this fact, one’s peace of mind was hardly assured; when I landed in Baghdad, Iraq had just used chemical weapons against its Kurdish population in Halabja, a village in the eastern part of the country. The photos of thousands of dead women and children, killed indiscriminately in a most vile fashion—including the use of chemical weapons dropped in bombs and launched in artillery shelling of the villages—were just beginning to be circulated by the international media.
The resultant international outrage against the actions of Saddam Hussein and his murderous regime was swift and merited. By 1988, he had been in power for a decade and had been a Baath Party thug ever since his attempt to assassinate Iraqi Prime Minister Abdel-Karim Kassim in 1958. His rule had become a veritable case study in torture, murder, and intimidation, and, beginning in 1979, also came to be characterized by disastrous wars with its neighbors and, ultimately, with the United States. But though the Reagan administration was vocal in its diplomatic condemnation, neither our efforts nor the broader international condemnation included penalties. There was no cost to Saddam Hussein for his actions.
Some of the harshest criticism came from the American Congress. Claiborne Pell, the Democratic senator from Rhode Island, was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time. One of his staff members, Peter Galbraith, advocated vigilant monitoring of Saddam’s brutality and human rights violations. Peter’s concerns reflected Senator Pell’s own conscience-driven policy agenda. He traveled frequently to Iraq and to Iraqi Kurdistan, often accompanied by one of our embassy officers, to catalog the human rights abuses of the Saddam regime. Peter was a steadfast proponent of a harder line toward Iraq and a fearless critic of the sitting Republican administration.
From our vantage point at the embassy, we shared the Foreign Relations Committee’s concerns, harboring no illusions that we were dealing with anything other than a shockingly brutal regime. The human rights reports we sent to the U.S. Congress over the three years I was in Baghdad pulled no punches, as we cited example after example of Saddam’s willful excesses and his penchant for making opponents vanish or for summarily executing them.
In pursuing the bilateral relationship, the administration was always faced with the question of how to calibrate our approach. We recognized that Saddam was a sociopath and that his regime was an ugly totalitarian dictatorship, and we wanted to encourage better behavior. Could that best be achieved by isolating Saddam’s regime, as the United States had done with Fidel Castro’s Cuba and Muhammar Qhadafi’s Libya? Or did a better approach mean cultivating relations in the hopes that contacts and incentives might eventually yield more moderate behavior by the Iraqi regime?
There are always limits to diplomatic influence, all the more so when there are few common interests at stake. Governments, not surprisingly, put their own agendas first and typically resist foreign intrusions into their internal affairs. Isolating a regime often results in our simply isolating ourselves, and we then lose any leverage we might have to influence outcomes. On the other hand, when dictators are treated like any other leaders, it’s often interpreted by them as a free pass to continue in their autocratic ways, while critics label it as appeasement. “Soft on thugs” is an accusation democratic leaders try to avoid. The merits of ideologically driven diplomacy versus a more pragmatic approach have been a recurring theme of foreign policy debates throughout the history both of international relations and America’s own domestic politics.
Iraq’s Arab neighbors unanimously urged us to tread lightly. They argued that after almost a decade of a grinding war with Iran, Saddam had learned his lesson and that his natural radicalism would now be tempered by the harsh experience. He might still be unpredictable, so the logic of his neighbors went, but it was better to tie him to relationships that would be hard for him to jettison than to leave him free to make trouble with no encumbrances. Engaging with him at least kept him in our sights.
Virtually everything Iraq had done during the war and against its own citizens was an affront to our own value system. At the same time, Iraq had emerged from its conflict with Iran as an important player in Gulf and Arab politics, albeit one deeply indebted to its neighbors, with enormous wealth and military power that would make it a formidable force with which to reckon in the future. In the first months of 1989, the incoming Bush administration joined the debate pitting those who thought we could moderate Saddam’s behavior through incentives against those who believed the regime was incorrigible and irredeemable. The problem with the latter position was that acting upon it would leave us with virtually no tools at our disposal to isolate or contain Iraq. Meanwhile, our relations with Iran were still colored by the virulently anti-American sentiment there, as well as by the equally strong anti-Iranian views that Washington policymakers held after the humiliating takeover of our embassy in 1979 and the holding of over a hundred American government officials hostage.
As far as the rest of the Gulf went, there was no interest there, and especially not in Saudi Arabia, in a presence of American military forces on Arabian soil to discourage adventurism by Saddam. All of Iraq’s neighbors continued to argue for a softer approach; and since they clearly had at least as much at stake as we did, the Bush administration was willing to follow their lead.
Even as the embassy produced human rights reports, which were accurate in their depiction of Iraq as a totalitarian regime, the Bush administration adopted a policy enshrined in National Security Decision 26, formally promulgated in October 1989 but in effect, practically, from the middle of that year. It laid out our goals and objectives, proclaiming that “Access to Persian Gulf oil and the security of key friendly states in the area are vital to U.S. national security.” The order specifically directed federal agencies to seek economic and political incentives for Iraq to moderate its behavior and to increase American influence.
Armed with this policy statement, we sought to implement it. One of the tools in our diplomatic kit at the time was the Department of Agriculture’s Commodity Credit Program that had been put in place during the Iran-Iraq war. At the height of this program, the United States had about a billion dollars of commodity credits extended to Iraq—second only to Mexico in the program worldwide. Yet it had become subject to considerable—legitimate—criticism from Congress, even as the American government and American farmers were profiting on the investment every year. One view was that this program, which facilitated American agricultural exports, was in fact an unjustified reward to Iraq. There were also concerns that Iraq was overextended and might default, and that it might even be diverting funds into arms programs. With these thoughts in mind, we began downsizing the program and limiting our exposure, even as Iraq’s demand for American farm products was increasing.
We continued to actively support other U.S. business efforts to expand commercial relations with Iraq and to bid on major Iraqi infrastructure projects. For their part, the Iraqis made very clear their preference for American products. The most visible example of this during the more than two years I worked in Baghdad was the transition of the Iraqi automobile fleet from Volkswagen to Chevrolet as the national automobile of choice. The Chevrolets sold in Iraq were seen as a symbol of the United States (though shipped from a General Motors plant in Canada), representing our improving relations with Iraq. Our products were welcomed, just as Americans were. Nearly all Iraqis were eager for peace, yearned for a reduct
ion in domestic oppression, and wanted improved relations with the United States.
Unfortunately, even with the increase in goodwill between our two countries, America’s relationship with Iraq remained very difficult, owing to Saddam’s leadership style and the resulting paranoia that pervaded the country. Travel by a foreigner required advance permission, which took three weeks to obtain from authorities, and most trips more than twenty-five miles outside Baghdad included some sort of active surveillance—either a tail or intensive scrutiny at government checkpoints around the country.
Baghdad was a bustling city in 1988, with about four million inhabitants stretching along both sides of the Tigris River. Date palm trees lined the streets of the affluent neighborhoods, and much of the city had been rebuilt from the days when Agatha Christie made her home there in the 1930s. Few parts of town still had the old-style structures, built up topsy-turvy, with floors stacked above another in precarious fashion, casting their shadows over narrow alleys. One such neighborhood bordered the river directly across from the city’s souk, or market, where rugs, clothes, copper pots and decorations, and many other goods were sold. It was also one of the few places in the river where boats were allowed to cross. My wife and I used to explore this quarter frequently on Saturdays, taking a flat-bottomed canoe across the river, eating dates and almonds sold from pushcarts, and shopping for Kurdish prayer kilims, the lightweight tapestry-style floor coverings that were traditionally carried by Muslim travelers stopping to pray on their journeys. Crossing the river and looking back at the old neighborhood, I couldn’t help thinking back to the history of the caliphate that had dominated Baghdad for so many centuries.
Even before my arrival in Baghdad, the Iraqi government had embarked on an aggressive campaign to convince the United Nations of the validity of its positions on issues related to the cease-fire and peace negotiations with Iran. During the early months of my tour, we were regularly invited to meetings that amounted, essentially, to seminars on the hegemonic ambitions of Persia, Iran’s precursor empire, and its designs on Iraqi territory over the previous 150 years. Senior Iraqis from Tariq Aziz, the foreign minister, on down, would take out their maps to show us how the Iranians had been encroaching on the Shatt al Arab, the river that merged the Tigris and the Euphrates, and which had served as the historic border between the two countries since the middle of the nineteenth century. The Iraqis claimed that with every successive crisis or war between the two countries, the Iranians were attempting to move the border farther west, from the high-water mark to the center of the river. And, inevitably, the Iraqis feared their enemy would keep moving it until they reached the Iraqi side. In a region where water and water rights are precious, a border like this one had resource implications as well as significance as a demarcation. Tariq Aziz would often say, “We defended the Arab nation against the Persian onslaught with the blood of our sons.”
Aziz was an interesting and complicated character, very bright and very articulate. I used to say that although he learned his English at school in Iraq, he could express himself far better than I could in my native tongue. He was a committed Baathist, but as a Christian he had no tribal or clan political base independent of the party. All his power and authority was derivative, based on his relationship with Saddam. With great bravado, he projected the public face of the Iraqi government and Saddam. But the continual question for me about Tariq was always: could I trust him? I found over time that I could not.
The relationship between Iran and Iraq often played out through the Kurds, who served as surrogates or proxies in the ongoing struggles between the two countries. Iranian Kurdish dissident groups operated in Iraq, and Iraqi Kurdish dissident groups were based in Iranian territory, each being tolerated by the host country for the mischief they could make against the other. They engaged in low-intensity operations against the central government’s troops and outposts in the traditional Kurdish area, and then would slip back across the border to safety.
The Iranian Kurdish Democratic Party (IKDP) leader, Dr. Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, became a close friend of mine. His headquarters were in the hills outside Sulaymaniyah, in the northeastern corner of Iraq. He would often visit me at my home in Baghdad, bringing burlap sacks full of pistachios and tins of Iranian beluga caviar to share. Ghassemlou was a highly educated man, having attended schools in Paris and Prague, where he had received his doctorate, and where he had also taught over the years. Because of the travel restrictions, I was never able to visit him in his headquarters near Sulaymaniyah, even though he would often joke that if I wanted, he’d arrange to have me kidnapped and thus out from under Iraqi surveillance long enough to spend a couple of days in his camps. As an Iranian Kurd, he was freer to pay visits to foreigners than other Iraqis, and as an ally of Saddam in the fight against Iran, he might well have been reporting our conversations to the government. It did not matter to me, since I assumed that everything we said was heard and recorded by the intrusive Iraqi intelligence services.
We did meet one time in Paris for dinner at the Brasserie Lipp, a well-known restaurant on Boulevard St. Germain on the Left Bank. I was there on vacation in early July 1989, and Ghassemlou was passing through on his way to Vienna. When we met, he was accompanied by his European representative, who was carrying a heavy bag that made a resounding thunk when he set it down. I could only guess that it contained weapons, as protection against ambush on the streets of Paris. Ghassemlou held me spellbound for hours with tales of Kurdish fights for autonomy and democracy against the former Shah of Iran and, after that, against the theocracy of Ayatollah Khomeini. Though he was then in his late fifties, he had the twinkle in his eye and the bounce in his step of a much younger man. He was an enchanting individual and a true leader.
Four days after that dinner, I opened the International Herald Tribune to see that he and his colleague had been assassinated in Vienna, shot several times at point-blank range while attending what he thought was a negotiating session with the Iranian authorities. Politics in the region were never simple, and always dangerous.
At the end of the Iran-Iraq war, the Iraqis had brought back to Baghdad immense quantities of war booty captured on the front. In a new neighborhood on the outskirts of Baghdad, they eventually displayed the treasure, inviting all to come and see. Laid out in neat arrangements were helmets—many with bullet holes in them—armaments ranging from rifles to artillery, and heavy equipment, such as tanks, armored personnel carriers, trucks, and bulldozers. Citizens by the thousands would come out to stroll for miles up and down past rows of equipment. I found it dramatic testimony to the enormity of the war’s toll—watching pensive Iraqis examine the detritus of the conflict, seeing firsthand these not-quite mementoes of friends and relatives lost in battle. Over the decade of the war, the world became inured to the death and destruction caused by it, but living there, it was impossible not to feel the lingering pain deeply. Prior to the war, Iraq had had a population of 17,000,000, of whom roughly 1,000,000 had not come back from the front. Virtually every Iraqi family was in mourning.
It was also a war that, by necessity, went unquestioned by the population, simply because no one dared challenge the wisdom of the regime. Saddam, after all, had come to the presidency in full control of the Iraqi security forces. By the time of the war, there were, under his devious management, as many as seven concentric and overlapping circles of Iraqi intelligence services, some of which existed just to spy on the others and all of which spied on the population at large. We used to say that if you wanted to do your Iraqi friends a favor, never be seen with them. Very senior Iraqi officials would routinely report on social conversations with other senior Iraqis. Open, candid dialogue about the war or about any aspect of Iraqi politics did not exist. The war was simply what the official government line said it was: Iraq defending the Arab nation, in the broadest sense of that term, against Persian encroachment.
For all of the oppression, the heavy hand of totalitarianism, and the daily stresses of livi
ng in such an environment, if you had only one time to work as a diplomat in the Middle East and one country in which to serve, this was the time and Iraq was the place. Working there as the deputy chief of mission involved me in just about every issue in the entire region. Now that the Iran-Iraq war was ended, the Iraqis were increasingly asserting themselves as a Middle East power. Saddam was sending signals on the Arab-Israeli peace process that encouraged some U.S. senators to think that post-war Iraq might moderate its hard-line position on the Palestinian question. Republican senators Arlen Specter from Pennsylvania and Larry Pressler from South Dakota, and Democrats Wyche Fowler from Georgia, and Richard Shelby from Alabama (who later switched parties), came and looked closely at all aspects of the relationship with Iraq. Senator Specter was sincerely interested in, and very knowledgeable about, the Middle East peace process, to the extent that he visited twice to try to ascertain whether there was a positive role that Saddam might play in moving the process forward. It was not an unreasonable hope, given Saddam’s influence on Yasser Arafat, a frequent visitor to Baghdad and a recipient of considerable financial and political support from Iraq.
It was only in the context of these meetings between the visiting American senators and Saddam that Ambassador Glaspie and I had the opportunity to meet him. Saddam did not as a matter of practice meet with resident ambassadors. In fact, even the presentation of credentials—that protocol-laden initial encounter between a newly arrived ambassador and a country’s chief of state—was delegated by Saddam to his deputy, Izzat Ibrahim. This was highly unusual, since ambassadors are traditionally the personal envoys of one chief of state to another. Though the bulk of embassy work is government-to-government, the personal nature of the ambassadorial assignment is still respected in ceremony, if not in fact. Even in Washington, where the president’s time is his most precious commodity, he still receives new ambassadors in staged ceremonial welcomes. But the only two times we saw Saddam for substantive meetings were when April Glaspie met with him on July 25, 1990 and with me, less than two weeks later, on August 6. Both meetings concerned the tension with Kuwait and, in the case of my meeting, the Iraqi invasion of that country four days earlier.
The Politics of Truth_Inside the Lies That Put the White House on Trial and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity Page 9