Saddam : His Rise and Fall

by Con Coughlin

  Given the long history of tension between Washington and Baghdad, Saddam Hussein did not exactly help his cause during the crucial weeks of late 2001 when the Bush administration was formulating its policy on how best to prosecute the war on terrorism. In late October Saddam published a rambling “open letter” to the American people in which he condemned the military action the United States had taken in Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban. He also claimed that U.S. foreign policy was being driven by “Zionism” and hinted that the U.S. mainland could be subjected to further terrorist attacks. In November, when the UN suggested that the sanctions against Iraq could be eased if Saddam agreed to allow UN weapons inspection teams to return to Baghdad, Saddam rejected the offer without a moment’s hesitation. And to add insult to injury, an Iraqi government survey commissioned at the end of the year proclaimed Osama bin Laden as Iraq’s “Man of the Year 2001,” an accolade awarded for his dedication in defying the United States and championing Islam. The government-owned Iraqi television station showed an Iraqi tribal chieftain reciting a poem he had written for Saddam in celebration of the events of September 11.

  From inside America, how four planes flew.

  Such a mishap never happened in the past!

  And nothing similar will happen.

  Six thousand infidels died.

  Bin Laden did not do it; the luck of President Saddam did it.5

  Saddam continued to irritate Washington in the spring of 2002 when he ordered his security officials to provide aid to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

  The Bush administration quickly formed to the view that the “war on terror” should be extended to include Saddam Hussein, even if many of Washington’s Western allies continued to express strong reservations about attacking Iraq, particularly as no conclusive proof had emerged linking Saddam to the September 11 attacks. Tony Blair, the British prime minister, had delivered an emotional speech to the House of Commons on September 14 in which he pledged his full support to the United States in fighting terrorism. Other European leaders followed suit, but by the late autumn many, including Blair, were publicly expressing their disquiet about renewed hostilities against Saddam. Although British intelligence had worked closely with the United States in the hunt for clues linking Saddam to the September 11 attacks, all that the service chiefs were able to give Blair were some “bits and pieces” showing that Iraq and al-Qaeda had worked together, but nothing that related directly to September 11.6

  By the end of 2001, however, President Bush was determined to extend the war on terror to include Saddam, despite the reservations expressed by his European allies. With the success of U.S. forces in defeating the Taliban assured, Bush indicated that Saddam would be America’s next target. “Saddam is evil,” Bush bluntly declared. “I think he’s got weapons of mass destruction, and I think he needs to open up his country to let us inspect.”7

  Bush’s intentions toward Saddam were confirmed two months later when he delivered his State of the Union Address at the end January 2002. In his speech Bush outlined the two key objectives that would dominate America’s “war on terror.” The first goal was to shut down the terrorist camps that trained Islamic fighters, to disrupt the plans of terrorist organizations and bring them to justice. The second objective outlined by Bush broadened significantly the terms of reference of the “war on terror” as they had been defined by his address to Congress on September 20. From now on, Bush declared, U.S. policy would be dedicated to preventing “terrorists and regimes who seek chemical, biological or nuclear weapons” from threatening America and the world. And the American president left his audience in no doubt as to the identity of the “regimes” he had in mind. Referring to North Korea, Iran, and Iraq as an “axis of evil,” Bush reserved his severest criticism for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

  “Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror,” said Mr. Bush. “The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade. This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens—leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children. This is a regime that agreed to inspections, then kicked out the inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the outside world. States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.”

  This, then, was President Bush’s justification for extending the terms of reference of the war on terrorism from one fought against those directly responsible for September 11 to a wider conflict against any regime that either harbored terrorists, or might provide them with the means to carry out their missions. Saddam qualified for inclusion in Bush’s definition on two counts: first there was evidence that he had funded Islamic terrorists and provided them with training facilities; and second, Saddam had acquired a substantial quantity of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. Even though no evidence had been uncovered to suggest that Saddam had afforded terror groups access to his nonconventional weapons arsenal, there was always the possibility that he might do so at some point in the future. He had already demonstrated his willingness to use such weapons in the past, and had only been dissuaded from deploying them during the Gulf War after the United States threatened him with retaliatory nuclear strikes. According to the Bush administration, the United States had every legal right to resume hostilities against Saddam as he had reneged on his commitment, made at the end of the Gulf War as part of the cease-fire agreement, to destroy his weapons of mass destruction. The threat that Saddam posed to the civilized world was one, in Bush’s view, that could be tolerated no longer.

  Bush’s strategy toward Saddam did not attract universal support. Many of America’s allies in Europe, which had been so quick to condemn the September 11 attacks, had grave misgivings over Bush’s decision to extend the war on terror. Hubert Vedrine, the French foreign minister, described Bush’s “axis of evil” remark as “simplistic.” The German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, complained that the United States was treating its European allies as “satellites.” And Chris Patten, the EU commissioner for foreign Affairs, denounced Bush’s approach as “absolutist” and “unilateralist overdrive.” The response from America’s traditional Arab allies had been equally dismissive. Saudi Arabia, which was struggling to come to terms with the fact that most of the September 11 hijackers were Saudi citizens, indicated it was unwilling to allow Saudi bases to be used for renewed attacks against Baghdad, as did most of the other Gulf states.

  By adopting a negative approach to George W. Bush’s State of the Union Address, these allies had misunderstood one of the other key principles upon which Washington’s post–September 11 foreign policy was based. During his address to Congress back on September 20, Bush had made it quite clear how the United States intended to prosecute its war on terror. “Every nation, in every region, has a decision to make,” Bush declared. “Either you are with us or you are against us.” The Bush administration had no desire to pursue a unilateralist agenda, but if its allies were not prepared to help, then Washington was quite prepared to go it alone.

  The only ally of any note who fully backed Bush’s decision to target Saddam Hussein was Britain’s Tony Blair. Although the Labour leader in the autumn of 2001 had expressed reservations about tackling Saddam, by the spring of 2002 he appeared to have become a ready convert to the anti-Saddam cause. Addressing a press conference at a Commonwealth summit in Australia in March, Blair’s arguments for confronting Saddam bore an uncanny resemblance to those articulated by Bush in his State of the Union Address the previous January. Referring to Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, Blair declared: “If these weapons
fall into their [the terrorists’] hands, and we know they have both the capability and the intention to use them, then I think we have got to act on it because, if we don’t act, we may find out too late the potential for destruction.”8 Even if Blair’s arguments had been borrowed from Washington, it nevertheless made sense for Britain to back the United States. British warplanes were still regularly flying joint missions with their U.S. counterparts to enforce the no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq. Blair’s decision also received a ringing endorsement from Lady Thatcher, the former British prime minister who had played a central role in creating the coalition that confronted Saddam in 1990 following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. “Saddam must go,” she declared in her indomitable fashion. “His continued survival after comprehensively losing the Gulf War has done untold damage to the West’s standing in a region where the only unforgiveable sin is weakness. His flouting of the terms on which hostilities ceased has made a laughing stock of the international community.”9

  So far as Washington and London were concerned, the die was cast. Saddam Hussein was an international outlaw. Either he agreed to dismantle Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and renounce his support for international terrorism or the United States, with British support, would undertake to effect a “regime change” in Baghdad, if necessary removing Saddam by force.

  ONE

  The Orphan

  The young Saddam Hussein had a harsh and deprived childhood. The man who was to become one of the most powerful Arab leaders of modern times came from an impoverished village situated on the banks of the Tigris River on the outskirts of the provincial town of Tikrit. He was born into a poor family in one of the country’s most inhospitable regions. At an early age Saddam was orphaned and sent to live with relatives, who oversaw his upbringing and education. No profound knowledge of psychology is required to estimate the effect these circumstances had upon the child’s development. As with Hitler and Stalin, those two great tyrants of the twentieth century, both of whom overcame their less than auspicious starts in life to take absolute control of their respective nations, Saddam was to rise above the disadvantages of his childhood to become the undisputed master of Iraq. The shame of his humble origins was to become the driving force of his ambition, while the deep sense of insecurity that he developed as a consequence of his peripatetic childhood left him pathologically incapable in later life of trusting anyone—including his immediate family. Given the disadvantages of his birth, Saddam deserves credit for overcoming these seemingly insurmountable social obstacles to reach the pinnacle of Iraq’s political pyramid.

  Saddam was born in the village of Al-Ouja, which means “the turning,” and is so named because of its location on a sharp bend in the Tigris River eight kilometers south of Tikrit, in north-central Iraq. The village was then a collection of mudhuts and houses and the inhabitants lived in conditions of abject poverty. Amenities such as running water, electricity, and paved roads were unheard of, and although there were a number of wealthy landowners in the region, the village itself was barren. Infant mortality was high, and survival for many was a full-time occupation. The big estates, situated in the Fertile Crescent, produced a variety of crops such as rice, grain, vegetables, dates, and grapes, and their owners, who resided either in nearby Tikrit or the ancient metropolis of Baghdad, were held in high esteem within Iraqi society. In what was essentially a feudal society, the function of the impoverished inhabitants of Al-Ouja was to provide a fund of cheap labor to work as farmhands on the estates or as domestic servants in Tikrit. There were no schools at Al-Ouja. The wealthier parents sent their children to school in Tikrit, but the majority could not afford it, and their barefoot children were left to their own devices.

  While most of the inhabitants were gainfully employed in these mundane pursuits there were some who preferred to sustain themselves through illicit activities such as theft, piracy, and smuggling. Historically Al-Ouja was known as a haven for bandits who would earn their keep by looting the doba, the small, flat-bottomed barges that transported goods between Mosul and Baghdad along the Tigris, one of Iraq’s most important trade arteries. The looters were particularly active in the summertime when they could more easily go about their business from their vantage point on the bend in the river where the passage of the boats was of necessity slow, and where the doba would sometimes become stuck on the shallow banks. Poaching was another popular activity, and some of the villagers felt no compunction about helping themselves to chickens and fresh produce from the neighboring estates.

  Officially, Saddam was born on April 28, 1937, and, to lend the date authenticity, in 1980 Saddam made it a national holiday. Given the primitive nature of Iraqi society at the time of his birth, it is, perhaps, hardly surprising that this date has been challenged on several occasions, with some of his contemporaries arguing that he was born a good couple of years earlier, in 1935, while other commentators have claimed that he was born as late as 1939. This might be explained by the fact that the whole process for registering births, marriages, and deaths was exceedingly primitive. At this time it was the custom for the authorities to give all peasant children the nominal birth date of July 1; it was only the year that they attempted to get right. This would certainly explain why a certificate presented in one of Saddam’s official biographies1 gives July 1, 1939, as the date of his birth. In fact, Saddam acquired his official birth date from his friend and future co-conspirator, Abdul Karim al-Shaikhly, who came from a well-established Baghdad family and so had the advantage of possessing an authentic birth date. “Saddam was always jealous of Karim for knowing his own birthday. So Saddam simply copied it for himself.”2 Not content with stealing someone else’s birthday, it is now generally accepted that Saddam also changed his year of birth to portray himself as being older than he actually was during his meteoric ascent through the ranks of the Baath Party. This is explained by his marriage to his first wife, Sajida, who was born in 1937. It is frowned upon in Arab society for a man to marry a woman older than himself, and Saddam appears to have amended his year of birth to that of his wife. The fact that Saddam cannot even be clear about his precise date of birth says a great about his inner psychology.

  Although the date of birth may be disputed, the location is not. Saddam was born in a mudhut owned by his maternal uncle Khairallah Tulfah, a Nazi sympathizer who was later jailed for five years for supporting an Iraqi anti-British revolt during World War II. He was born into the Sunni Muslim al-Bejat clan, part of the al-Bu Nasir tribe, which was dominant in the Tikrit region. Tribal loyalties were to play a significant role in Saddam’s rise to power. By the 1980s there were at least a half-dozen members of the al-Bu Nasir tribe—including the president and Saddam—who held key government positions. In the 1930s, however, the clan was known primarily for its poverty and for its violent disposition. Its leaders took great pride in eliminating their enemies for the most innocuous offense. As a Sunni Muslim, the child was born into the majority orthodox doctrine of Islam, although the Sunnis are a minority sect in Iraq: only one in five Iraqis is Sunni. The child was named Saddam, which literally translates as “the one who confronts” and which, given his exploits in later life, could not have been more appropriate.

  The enduring controversy, however, concerns not so much the date of Saddam’s birth as the whereabouts of his father, Hussein al-Majid, a poor landless peasant, so typical of the inhabitants of Al-Ouja. Irrespective of the details contained in the official accounts of Saddam’s life, most of the biographies and profiles previously published on his life have intimated that he was an illegitimate child. The Iraqi records state that Saddam was born out of the union between Subha Tulfah, a fiesty peasant woman and sister of the Nazi-supporting Khairallah, and Hussein al-Majid. The lack of known information about Hussein, however, has made even this simple fact the subject of considerable dispute. The gossipmongers have thrived on the fact that, whereas Saddam constructed a huge mausoleum in his mother’s memory after her death in 1982, no such monu
ment was ever constructed for his father, nor is there any record either of his death or of where he is buried.

  As a consequence, most accounts of Saddam’s life have suggested that his father had either departed the family home before the child was born, or that he departed soon after. Various notions have been advanced to explain this absence, such as the suggestion that he died of natural causes, not itself an uncommon event among such an indigent community. The most widely believed Iraqi account of Hussein al-Majid’s fate is that he was killed by bandits, also not an unlikely eventuality. There were numerous variations on this theme, including the theory that he was killed while in the act of committing some form of banditry himself—few questions were asked of landowners or tradesmen who committed capital crimes while in the act of defending their property. Another version suggested that he abandoned the family home to escape the demanding and domineering Subha. One Arab expert on Saddam claimed that Hussein had worked as a servant for a former Iraqi prime minister during the monarchy,3 while others refuted this, saying that he was either an unemployed laborer or else that he participated in the illicit piracy and poaching for which the inhabitants of Al-Ouja were then notorious. Yet another account suggested that he was murdered by vengeful relatives of Subha for impregnating her out of wedlock, a plausible theory given the proclivity of his clan for blood feuds and honor killings. The most irreverent of all these propositions is the suggestion that Hussein never even existed, and that Saddam was the product of his mother’s activities as the village whore. The latter assertion was understandably popular in Western media circles at the time of the Gulf War and one that, if repeated in the wrong circles in Iraq, was punishable by death. After Saddam had become president of Iraq, a senior Iraqi army officer confided to his mistress that he had slept with Saddam’s mother. Unfortunately for the officer, the conversation was taped by the Iraqi secret police, and a transcript was duly handed to Saddam. The officer, his son, and the mistress were all executed.4 Despite these dire threats of retribution, Subha herself has been the subject of many colorful stories. One account suggests that she was so distraught at the prospect of being a single mother that at one point during her pregnancy she tried to throw herself under a bus, exclaiming: “I am giving birth to the devil.”