Saddam : His Rise and Fall

by Con Coughlin

  While the fate of Saddam’s father remains something of a mystery, the sensitive question of Saddam’s legitimacy can be answered by the simple fact that he had a younger sister, Siham, whose name loosely translates as “spear.” Siham, who shunned the limelight in Iraq despite her brother’s success, was born a year or two after Saddam to the same parents in the same village. In later life she married a district judge and had two children. The only time that her family came to prominence in Iraq was during the harshest period of the Iran-Iraq War in the mid-1980s when her husband refused Saddam’s call to all Iraqi males to volunteer for military service. The family was briefly placed under house arrest, and Siham’s husband was sacked. A few months later, however, Saddam made it up with his sister and her husband was reinstated to his position. The fact, however, that Saddam’s sister, unlike all his other close relatives, never received any public recognition in Iraq, inevitably raised questions marks about whether or not Siham was directly related to Saddam.

  As for the fate of Saddam’s natural father, the most that can be said is either that he died sometime after Siham’s birth, or simply abandoned the family home. Tikriti contemporaries of Saddam’s have stated that Hussein al-Majid left Subha for another woman and lived for many years after Saddam’s birth, although relations between the two sides of the family were, not surprisingly, poisonous.5 Whatever the truth of the matter, the fact that Saddam had to endure the absence of his natural father throughout most of his childhood was a cause of great distress, even if the presence of a younger sister meant that he could defend himself against claims of illegitimacy.

  Although it is difficult to establish a precise chronology of Saddam’s early childhood, it is possible to piece together a rough outline of his whereabouts. After Hussein al-Majid had departed the family home, Saddam’s mother, Subha (whose name translates as “dawn”), was too poor to bring up the infant on her own. Subha’s only known employment was as a clairvoyant. Former residents of Tikrit have said they remember her always wearing black dresses, her pockets filled with seashells which she used to help her with her prophecies. Some accounts say she received financial support from Khairallah, who lived in nearby Tikrit, while others suggest the young child was soon handed over, as an interim measure, to Khairallah’s care. Once an important textile town, Tikrit had become something of a provincial backwater by the 1930s. Historically its claim to fame was that it had been, in 1138, the birthplace of Saladin, the legendary Muslim commander who defeated the Crusaders in Palestine. In 1394 the Tartar hordes of Tamurlane, a descendant of Genghis Khan, had also paid it a visit during their Mesopotamian campaign, stopping to construct a pyramid made entirely from the skulls of their defeated victims.

  Khairallah Tulfah, who at the time was serving as army officer in Tikrit, was a fervent Arab nationalist who was to become one of the most formative influences on the young Saddam. An indication of the deep bond that developed between uncle and nephew is that, after he had become president, Saddam rewarded Khairallah by appointing him mayor of Baghdad. By all accounts an argumentative and bad-tempered individual, Khairallah nevertheless managed to inspire in the young Saddam a depth of respect that bordered on hero worship. It is not difficult to imagine the impression made upon the boy during his formative years by this father figure who was an unapologetic supporter of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi ethos. Certainly when Khairallah’s enthusiasm for the Nazis led, in 1941, to him being expelled from the army and jailed for five years, Saddam is said to have badly missed him. Years later, in a wide-ranging interview with Fuad Matar, one of his official biographers, Saddam made a telling reference to his uncle’s imprisonment: “My maternal uncle was a nationalist, an officer in the Iraqi army. He spent five years in prison…. ‘He’s in prison,’ was my mother’s constant reply whenever I asked about my uncle. He always inspired us with a great nationalistic feeling.”6 Khairallah instilled in the boy a deep dislike of the Iraqi royal family, which then ruled the country, and their foreign backers, i.e., the British. Indeed, this sense of xenophobia was so deeply imbued that Saddam himself was to write, shortly after becoming president: “Our children should be taught to beware of everything foreign and not to disclose any state or party secrets to foreigners…for foreigners are the eyes of their countries.”7

  Khairallah’s imprisonment meant that Saddam had to return to live with his mother. By the time Saddam returned to his mother’s home in Al-Ouja, she had found herself a new husband. Having taken a second cousin for her first husband, Subha took as her second husband a first cousin. Intermarriage of this sort was commonplace in Iraq. The lack of social and physical mobility, together with the obligations of tribal loyalty, meant that such unions were actively encouraged, and intermarriage was regarded as necessary for strengthening and maintaining the bonds of kinship. Subha, who appears from the various portraits of her written by Saddam’s official biographers to have been a strong-willed woman, was not someone who wanted to be on her own. There was even a suggestion that she had another husband between the official first and second, although there no convincing evidence has been produced. Her second husband was Hassan al-Ibrahim. Subha, so it was rumored, had persuaded Hassan to leave his wife for the delights of her own marriage bed. According to one of Saddam’s Tikriti contemporaries, Subha’s second marriage represented a significant downgrade in the family’s social standing, even by the impoverished standards of Al-Ouja. “The Majids had a bad reputation, but the Ibrahims were even worse. The Majids were bad enough; they were thieves and criminals. But the Ibrahims were the lowest of the low. Everyone in the area hated them.”8 The Ibrahim clan were known as local brigands. Hassan himself was a poor, work-shy peasant, whose only known job was working as a caretaker at the local school in Tikrit. Unlike Khairallah, who, through his army rank, could lay claim to a degree of social status, Hassan was rooted firmly at the foot of the social ladder. The union with Subha, however, appears to have been a success, and the couple produced three half brothers for Saddam—Barzan, Watban, and Sabawi—and a number of girls.

  Subha’s new family was well established by the time Saddam returned to their mudhut at Al-Ouja after Khairallah’s incarceration. Saddam was still a child—aged anything between two and seven—but even so he did not receive much of a reception. At home he seems to have been badly neglected, save for the occasional, brutal attention of his stepfather who, when he could rouse himself from his natural indolence, would delight in beating the young boy with an asphalt-covered stick, forcing him to dance in the dirt to avoid being hit.9 Conditions in the village remained exceedingly harsh. The family home had no running water or electricity, and the dwelling housed the livestock as well as the children. At night the family would sleep on the mud floor, huddled together for warmth. According to another of Saddam’s official biographers, Amir Iskander, he was under no illusions about the deprivations of his upbringing. Saddam confided to Iskander that he was never young, but a melancholy child who shunned the company of others. There is also a certain pathos in the comment that his birth “was not a joyful occasion and that no roses or aromatic plants bedecked his cradle.”10

  Apart from having to endure these harsh conditions, the young Saddam had to contend with the distinctly corrupting influence of his stepfather. Subha’s new husband was known in the village as “Hassan the Liar” because he claimed that he had made a pilgrimmage to Mecca, one of the seven pillars of Islam prescribed in the Koran, when in fact he had never been anywhere near Saudi Arabia, let alone Mecca. What Hassan lacked in honesty, however, he made up for with a feckless attitude to life. He had no other job after his brief employment as a school caretaker, but he compensated for his own idleness by getting the most out of his stepson. While Hassan passed his days gossiping with his friends at the local coffeehouse, Saddam was denied the opportunity to attend the local school and was put to work on menial tasks around the house. Saddam was sent to steal chickens and eggs from neighboring farms, and Saddam may have spent a spell at a juvenile deten
tion center as a consequence. One former Iraqi minister claimed that Subha was just as deeply involved in encouraging Saddam’s acts of theft. “They’d steal and divide the spoils the same night. Saddam’s mother used to preside over the division of the loot—wheat or rye, sheep, maybe a few pieces of gold and silver.”11 The young Saddam may even have been subjected to sexual abuse by Hassan, which certainly would not have been an uncommon experience for someone in Saddam’s position. To say that there was no love lost between Saddam and his stepfather is something of an understatement. Villagers remembered Hassan screaming at Saddam on many occasions: “I don’t want him, the son of a dog.”

  If life was difficult at home, it did not get any better once young Saddam was able to escape the unwanted attentions of his stepfather. It was generally believed throughout the village that the boy was fatherless, a reputation that Hassan would have done little to refute. As a consequence Saddam was teased mercilessly by the other children, and frequently attacked. Indeed, he was so badly bullied that he took to carrying an iron bar with which to defend himself whenever he ventured outside the family home.12 One legend has it that Saddam often amused himself by putting the bar on a fire and, once the heat had turned it red, would stab a passing animal in the stomach, splitting it in half.13 In view of Saddam’s later fascination with the gruesome pursuits undertaken in his torture chambers, the story has a degree of credibility. Saddam was so lonely that the only creature he really cared for was his horse. Saddam was so attached to this horse that when it died, he claims, his hand was paralyzed for more than a week.

  It is possible to gauge Saddam’s own view of his childhood through his official biographers. Hardly any mention is made of Hassan, who like Subha’s first husband, has quietly been erased from the script. The only references he is known to have made about Hassan are uncomplimentary, such as claiming that his stepfather would wake him at dawn shouting, “Get up, you son of a whore. Go tend the sheep.” Saddam has also been fairly frank about the appalling poverty of his youth. To one of his biographers he baldly stated, “We lived in a simple house.” In the 1970s, when Saddam was attempting to build his power base in Iraq, it suited him to stress his humble origins, which he hoped would broaden his appeal to ordinary Iraqis. In June 1990, on the eve of the Gulf War, he was more expansive when interviewed by Diane Sawyer of ABC TV. “Life was very difficult everywhere in Iraq. Very few people wore shoes and in many cases they only wore them on special occasions. Some peasants would not put their shoes on until they had reached their destination so that they would look smart.”

  If Saddam’s recollections of his stepfather and home life are authentic, the same cannot be said of his recollections of Subha. Like most sons, Saddam idolized his mother, as is demonstrated by the massive tribute he built for her in Tikrit—with, it must be said, state funds—after her death. The tomb proclaims her as “the Mother of the Militants” while, on a personal note, Saddam stressed the closeness of his relationship with her when he confided to a biographer that he would visit his mother as often as possible. In view of the hardships he suffered during the time he lived with Subha, Saddam’s devotion to his mother is intriguing. Pictures of her show a rather dumpy, scowling woman wearing the long black dress typical of Arab peasant women. Her face is tattooed with small black circles, and in none of the surviving photographs is she smiling. Contemporaries of Saddam who met her in the 1960s recall a bad-tempered woman who littered her conversation with expletives, even when talking to complete strangers. But Saddam was blind to her faults and remained devoted to her memory.

  Saddam has similarly kept on good terms with his half brothers, even though he clearly had a difficult relationship with them during childhood. Barzan, Sabawi, and Watban were all rewarded with important official posts once Saddam had achieved his ambition of becoming president of Iraq, and for several years Barzan even came to regard himself as Saddam’s heir apparent. Saddam’s childhood was to have a considerable bearing on how he conducted himself in public life, particularly after he achieved positions of real power. His upbringing taught him to trust no one, the importance of self-reliance, and the value of using brutal force to intimidate anyone who got in his way, iron bar or no iron bar. He learned that no matter how dysfunctional his own family might be, these were the only people he could trust to help keep him in power.

  However much Saddam may have romanticized the memory of his mother, there is little doubt that the most exciting moment of his childhood came when his uncle Khairallah was finally released from jail, in either 1946 or 1947, and Saddam was able to escape the misery, poverty, and repression of life with Subha, Hassan, and his half brothers for the altogether more exciting possibilities of life with his Nazi-loving relative.

  If Saddam’s experience with his stepfather helped to form his character, the period spent living with his uncle in Tikrit and Baghdad undoubtedly contributed to his political outlook. While Khairallah himself was no more than a bit player in the wider struggle among the Iraqi people for the right to self-determination, his active participation in the great nationalistic currents of the day made an indelible mark on the young Saddam, not least because Khairallah’s activities were to deprive him of his uncle’s company for five crucial years during his childhood.

  The cause to which Khairallah was so vehemently committed has its roots in the creation of modern Iraq in the chaotic aftermath of the First World War. For almost four hundred years of Ottoman rule, the area that is known as modern Iraq was one of the most backward and underdeveloped regions of the empire. Under the Ottoman Turks what is now Iraq was three separate provinces based around the main trading centers of Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra. Ottoman control of the region was finally broken by the British-backed Arab revolt that culminated in 1917 with the capture of Baghdad. The campaign to destroy Ottoman control over the Middle East, remembered primarily for the exploits of T. E. Lawrence of Arabia fame, was not without mishap. A British expeditionary force was sent to Basra, at the head of the Gulf, at the start of war in 1914 as a precautionary measure against the Turks, who had sided with the Germans. Having captured Basra easily in 1915, the overconfident British commanders decided to advance on Baghdad. Ill equipped for a campaign in the grueling conditions of southern Iraq, however, the British force got within twenty-five miles of Baghdad before it was completely overwhelmed by the reinforced Turks. The remnants of the British force retreated to Kut, an evil-smelling town on a bend in the Tigris, where they were besieged by the Turks for 146 days. Eventually a surrender was negotiated, but not before most of the troops had died of starvation or disease. Altogether 10,000 British troops lost their lives and another 23,000 were injured.

  The British conquest of Mesopotamia, Palestine, and Syria during the First World War was, therefore, achieved at considerable cost and after the war, as one of the victorious powers, Britain was determined to fashion a settlement in the Middle East that either placed the key, strategic areas, such as Palestine, under direct British control, or else under British protection, as was to be the case in the newly created kingdoms of Transjordan (later modern Jordan), Iraq, and the Gulf states, including Kuwait. The process of deciding the postwar settlement of the Middle East, which began during the Versailles negotiations and was later concluded by Winston Churchill in Cairo in 1922, was further complicated by an underhand deal that Britain had struck with France in 1916. The Sykes-Picot agreement, as it came to be known, gave Lebanon and Syria to the French, who were becoming concerned at Britain’s postwar imperial ambitions, while Britain obtained control over Iraq and Palestine. The fundamental flaw in this cosy carve-up of the former Ottoman territories was that it overlooked the well-documented promises the British had made to the indigenous Arab leaders to grant them independence if they agreed to back the British in the war against the Turks.

  The main loser in the Sykes-Picot deal was Sharif Hussein of Mecca, the leader of the Arab province of the Hejaz (in what would become modern Saudi Arabia), whose tribesmen had fought with
T. E. Lawrence. In the protracted negotiations that followed, the British tried to placate him by making his sons the respective heads of the newly created kingdoms of Transjordan, Syria, and Iraq. While the old king refused to sign Churchill’s agreement setting out the structure of the new Middle East, his sons had no such qualms in assuming their new positions. In Baghdad this meant that Faisal, Hussein’s third son, became the first king of Iraq.