by Con Coughlin
Although many of Saddam’s contemporaries viewed him as little more than a thug, Afleq is said to have taken a personal interest in the young Saddam and promoted him to the highest rank of party membership by making him a full member.9 This act of generosity may have been sparked by Afleq’s genuine admiration for Saddam; more likely it was a gesture of thanks for his role in trying to eradicate the procommunist Qassem. Certainly, the Iraqi Baathists’ inexpert efforts to overthrow the government in Baghdad made them heroes among Iraqi nationalists. The military trials of those, like Dr. Muallah, who were charged for their roles in the assassination plot, were closely followed throughout the Arab world, and the defiance of some of the accused Baathists, even though they faced execution if convicted, attracted widespread admiration, both inside Iraq and beyond. In essence they argued that they had a patriotic duty to murder Qassem because he was handing the country over to the control of the communists. When the trials concluded, six of the accused actually received the death sentence, although the sentences were never carried out.
The newfound notoriety of the Iraqi Baathists pleased Afleq, who sought to exploit for his own ends the political instability the failed assassination attempt had caused in Baghdad. At this juncture Afleq was playing a double game. He organized the expulsion of Fouad al-Rikabi and other members of the Baath leadership in Baghdad on the grounds that they should not have involved the party in the assassination plot. Afleq then sought to place his own supporters in key positions in the Iraqi Baath Party, and to this end he arranged for Saddam to acquire his much-coveted full party membership. Although Afleq later said that he could not recollect meeting Saddam until after 1963,10 the quietly spoken ideologue and the restless young murderer would soon form a symbiotic attachment. It was mainly due to the efforts of Afleq, who for a time controlled the Baath Party in both Syria and Iraq, that, in 1964, Saddam was elected to a key position in the leadership of the Iraqi Baath Party. Saddam repaid the compliment by ensuring, when he finally achieved power, that Baathism became Iraq’s official political doctrine. In the same way that Josef Stalin would use Lenin’s name as a means of legitimizing his own rule, so Saddam would invoke Afleq’s name to justify his own position in Iraq. Saddam had “a living Lenin who could be wheeled out on suitable occasions to ratify his decisions and above all his status as guardian of party orthodoxy against successive groups.”11 And when Afleq, who was himself later forced into exile in Baghdad, died in 1989, Saddam paid (or rather, the state did) for a massive tomb to be built for the founder of Baathism.
After two to three months in Syria, Saddam and the other surviving members of the assassination squad moved to Cairo where they joined up with a group of about five hundred exiled young Baathists who had congregated in the Egyptian capital. These young Baathists were sent to Egypt by the Syrian government, the junior partner in the political union between Cairo and Damascus. The purpose of sending them to Cairo was to continue their education; at the time of his involvement in the assassination plot against Qassem, Saddam had still not completed his secondary education. President Nasser, as head of the first pan-Arab union, now opposed Qassem for reneging on his commitment to bring Iraq into the confederation. Afleq and the other Baathist leaders believed that the young assassins would be safer under Nasser’s watchful eye than in Damascus, where the regime was less stable. The campaign to remove Qassem, meanwhile, was to be left to more senior, and experienced, Baathists.
This was the only time in his life that Saddam lived abroad, and soon after arriving in 1960 he enrolled at the Qasr al-Nil High School. After all the exhilaration of committing his first murder in Tikrit, and attempting his first assassination in Baghdad, life in Cairo was by comparison a relatively staid affair. Nevertheless, with Gamal Nasser in his full pomp, and Cairo the undisputed capital of Arab nationalism, Saddam could not help but be moved by a city that was a hive of political activity. Apart from his studies, Saddam involved himself fully in politics, joining the Egyptian Baath Party. Within months Saddam had become a member of its Regional Command, i.e., the Egyptian branch, although the influence of the Baathists was limited by the overpowering presence of Nasser, a fact that was ultimately to lead to Syria unilaterally seceding from the pan-Arab union in 1961.
Saddam’s own recollections of his years in exile are uncharacteristically modest and low-key. One of his biographers reported that he “emulated Nasser and played a good deal of chess and was not distracted by night life and read a good deal.”12 This account was supported by Abdel Majid Farid, who was Nasser’s secretary-general, and who was responsible for looking after the young Baathists. According to Farid, the Egyptian authorities helped him with his education and assisted with finding a suitable apartment. “He was one of the leaders of the Iraqi Baath. He used to come to see me now and then to talk about developments in Baghdad. He was quiet, disciplined, and didn’t ask for extra funds like the other exiles. He didn’t have much interest in alcohol or girls.”13 Abdul Karim al-Shaikhly, who became close friends with Saddam in Cairo, wrote to his family in Baghdad that Saddam spent most of his time trying to catch up on his education and finish his high school education. Shaikhly, a future Iraqi foreign minister, became such close friends with Saddam in Cairo that the two young men regarded each other as twin brothers. Shaikhly, who would be one of Saddam’s first victims after he became president, spent his time in Cairo finishing his medical degree. In one letter to his family he described his new friend as “a quiet man, not a social person, someone who is trying hard to educate himself.”14
Other contemporaries, however, do not paint such a rosy portrait. A Cairene café owner who served Saddam and his friends regularly described him as a troublemaker who never paid his bills. “He would fight for any reason,” recalled Hussein Meguid, the owner of the Andiana Café, which, together with the Triumph, were Saddam’s favorite haunts. “He would fight for any reason. We wanted to bar him from coming here.”15 But the police came back and said he was protected by Nasser, and when Saddam finally left Cairo he owed several hundred dollars. Perversely, it was not a debt that Saddam forgot. In the 1970s, when he was vice president of Iraq and had returned to Cairo on official business, Saddam made a surprise return to the café and paid his bill in full, leaving the owner a three hundred dollar tip. Saddam would not be Saddam if darker tales were not in circulation about his alleged misdeeds in Cairo. He was accused of killing an Egyptian in 1960 by throwing him out of his apartment window,16 and also of killing a fellow Iraqi in 1963.17 But as there are no records of the alleged offenses, and as Saddam was free to leave when he chose, they must be discounted as mere wishful thinking.
However much Saddam tried to put a brave face on his stay in Egypt, it was generally accepted that he regarded life in Cairo as the equivalent of a prison sentence. He did, however, manage to complete his high school education and in 1961 enrolled at the University of Cairo to study law. Saddam was provided with a modest allowance paid by the Arab Interest Section of Egyptian intelligence. Saddam never completed his studies, but still managed to secure a degree several years later when he turned up at the annual law examinations at Baghdad University in full military uniform. Before sitting down to take the examination, Saddam placed his gun on his desk to make himself feel “more comfortable.” As with the headmaster who wanted to expel him, the sight of the gun did the trick, and Saddam was duly awarded his degree.
Saddam’s sojourn in Cairo was the occasion of two other important events in his life—his first marriage, and his mysterious dealings with the Central Intelligence Agency. It was during his time at Cairo University that Saddam became engaged to his cousin Sajida, the daughter of his uncle Khairallah. Marrying within the family was the expected norm for someone from Saddam’s background, and by becoming engaged to his uncle’s daughter he was observing family tradition. Sajida was probably born in 1937 (which explains why Saddam may have tampered with his birth records to make him the same age as his wife, and not her junior), and Saddam spent most of
his childhood growing up with her and her brother Adnan at Khairallah’s homes in Tikrit and Baghdad. In effect Saddam and Sajida were brought up as brother and sister. According to Saddam, the marriage had actually been arranged when they were children and his grandfather betrothed Sajida to him. Saddam, aware of his tribal duties, observed Arab custom and asked his stepfather Hassan al-Ibrahim to approach his uncle and formally ask permission for him to marry Sajida. Relations appear to have improved between Hassan and Saddam, perhaps because Hassan sensed that Saddam might make a success of his life, and might therefore prove of use to the indolent stepfather. Hassan did as Saddam requested, Khairallah consented, and Saddam became officially engaged. Although the couple was not married until Saddam returned to Iraq in 1963, Saddam celebrated the engagement in traditional Arab style in Cairo in early 1962 and, to reassure Sajida of his good intentions, he sent her a wedding ring. The engagement party was organized by his good friend Abdul Karim al-Shaikhly.
The other significant development for Saddam during his residence in Cairo was the relationship he developed with the CIA. Like most of Saddam’s activities in Cairo, his dealings with the Americans are shrouded in mystery, particularly as most of his direct contemporaries have been killed.18 But there is nonetheless sufficient circumstantial evidence to indicate that Saddam made contact with the CIA’s Cairo station. The early 1960s were a period when cold war tensions between Washington and Moscow were approaching a critical stage, as demonstrated by the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. The CIA saw its primary purpose as countering any attempt by the two communist superpowers, the Soviet Union and China, to extend their activities beyond their existing spheres of influence. China’s move into Southeast Asia was ultimately to provoke the United States’ ill-fated involvement in Vietnam’s civil war. Moscow’s desire to extend its influence in the Islamic world, from the Central Asian Soviet republics to the oil-rich Arab states of the Middle East, was to result in the region becoming a tinderbox, primed to ignite by the heated rivalries engendered by the cold war.
Iraq, situated at the heart of the Middle East, was regarded by Washington as a key strategic asset. For this reason the United States had encouraged the formation of the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact, the regional defense organization set up in the mid-1950s comprising Britain, Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan. Indeed, the Americans were so concerned about the level of political instability in Baghdad following the overthrow of the monarchy that Allen Dulles, the CIA director, in 1959 declared that “Iraq was the most dangerous spot on earth.”19 By 1961, political developments in the region prompted the Americans to be proactive in countering what they regarded as a serious Soviet attempt to take over the Middle East.
Concern had been expressed about President Nasser’s now notorious arms deals with Moscow, and the Soviets were suspected of being involved in General Qassem’s decision to draw on the support of the Iraqi Communist Party to keep him in power. Qassem’s decision unilaterally to withdraw from the Baghdad Pact in 1959, which made the region more susceptible to Soviet infiltration, and to rely increasingly on Soviet foreign aid and military supplies, did little to allay Washington’s suspicions. The West was even more alarmed when in 1961 Qassem attempted to occupy Kuwait, which the Iraqis had always regarded as part of their own territory, and to nationalize part of the foreign-owned Iraqi Petroleum Company, a move that, for the Americans, had unpleasant echoes of the nationalization program Nasser had implemented during his early years in power.
The Egyptians under President Nasser were just as determined as the Americans to influence the political development of the modern Middle East, particularly as the decision by Syria in 1961 to withdraw from the United Arab Republic had seriously dented Nasser’s ambition of creating a united Arab state. Iraq, therefore, which had reneged on its promise to join the UAR when Qassem seized power, was of particular interest to the Egyptians, and Egyptian intelligence was as active as the CIA in attempting to establish a sympathetic government in Baghdad.
As someone who had already participated in one attempt to overthrow Qassem, it was hardly surprising that Saddam and his exiled Baathist colleagues should find their activities arousing the keen interest of both the Egyptian and American intelligence services. Saddam was paid a modest retainer by the Egyptian authorities and allowed to study. But relations between the exiled Iraqi Baathists and the Egyptians cooled considerably after their fellow Syrian Baathists withdrew from the UAR, a move, moreover, that was actively encouraged by Michel Afleq, the founder of the Baath and who was Saddam’s personal mentor. Saddam’s biographers claim that Saddam was kept under close observation in Cairo, that he was continually harassed, and that his apartments were searched on several occasions.20 This could, of course, have been due to Saddam’s alleged criminal activities, and the Egyptians would have been obliged to search him for weapons if, as was alleged, he was threatening his opponents in Cairo with physical violence, in the same way that he had done in Baghdad.
None of the official biographers, however, made any mention of Saddam’s frequent visits during this time to the American embassy in Cairo. The Americans, for different reasons, were as keen as Saddam to have Qassem removed from power, and there was strong circumstantial evidence to suggest that Saddam was in close contact with the CIA toward the end of his stay in Cairo.21 Said Aburish, another of Saddam’s sympathetic biographers, suggested that Saddam’s meetings with the CIA were condoned by Egyptian intelligence, even though Washington and Cairo were pursuing diametrically opposed policies toward Baghdad. Although the true extent of Washington’s courtship of the young Saddam may never be known, it cannot be discounted that Saddam Hussein started his political career as an agent of the CIA. The nearest anyone has come to shedding light on this intriguing aspect of Saddam’s career was a meeting the authors Marion Farouk-Sluglett and Peter Sluglett had with a high-ranking former official of the U.S. State Department who confirmed to them “that Saddam Hussein and other Baathists had made contact with the American authorities in the late 1950s and early 1960s.”22 Certainly the issue was of sufficient sensitivity for Saddam that, later in his political career, he liquidated those Iraqi contemporaries who may have been in a position to shed light on his spying exploits.
Qassem survived until February 1963 when he was finally overthrown in a coup masterminded by the CIA. The coup, which, even by Iraqi standards, was particularly gruesome, was led by General Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr, another of Saddam’s mentors to whom he had been introduced by his uncle, Khairallah, when he first moved to Baghdad. Bakr, a fellow Tikriti, had become a prominent member of the Iraqi Baath during Saddam’s exile in Cairo. A quiet and determined man, he shared Khairallah’s virulent hatred of communists and was consequently held in high regard by the Americans. Bakr had joined the Baath while in jail for plotting against Qassem. The Iraqi leader, who lacked the ruthless streak required to survive in Iraqi politics, was forever releasing political opponents he had jailed for trying to remove him. Bakr was no exception, and soon after he was freed he teamed up with other Baathists to plan the coup to oust Qassem.
The 1963 coup followed the gory tradition that had been established with the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958. The action against Qassem had to be brought forward because some of the conspirators were arrested, and when it was launched many army units refused to mobilize in support of the Baathists. Bakr, drawing on the services of four Hunter Hawker fighter jets, managed to launch an assault on Qassem’s well-defended redoubt at the Ministry of Defense. The fighting lasted for two days, leaving hundreds of dead and wounded in central Baghdad, before Qassem was finally forced to surrender. His captors denied his request that he be allowed to keep his firearm, nor would they allow his trial to be held in public. After a summary hearing, Qassem was executed by firing squad. The whole process between his unconditional surrender and his execution took just one hour. To reassure the doubting Iraqi public that the president was indeed dead, Qassem’s bullet-riddled body was featured in a grotesque film that was sh
own repeatedly on Iraqi television. “Night after night…. The body was propped up on a chair in the studio. A soldier sauntered around, handling its parts. The camera would cut to scenes of devastation at the Ministry of Defense where Qassem had made his last stand. Back to the studio, and close-ups of the entry and exit points of each bullet hole. The whole macabre sequence closes with a scene that must forever remain etched on the memory of all those who saw it: the soldier grabbed the lolling head by the hair, came up close, and spat full face into it.”23
Once the television station had finished with the body, the deceased president was still not allowed to rest at peace. Initially Qassem’s corpse was buried in a shallow, unmarked grave, but the body was unearthed by dogs who began eating it. Horrified farmers then reburied the body in a coffin, only to have the secret police dig it up again and throw it in the Tigris. Despite this gruesome turn of events—not dissimilar to the treatment Qassem’s supporters had meted out to monarchists in 1958—Washington professed itself satisfied with the change of regime. James Critchfield, the head of the CIA in the Middle East at the time and a specialist in communist infiltration, later expressed himself deeply satisfied with the outcome. “We regarded it as a great victory,” he recalled many years later. “We really had the ts crossed on what was happening.”24
Saddam, much to his frustration, was marooned in Cairo for the duration of these dramatic events but, once the new regime had been installed, he lost no time returning to Baghdad to participate in the bloody purges that followed. Saddam flew back to Baghdad with Abdul Karim al-Shaikhly—his fellow conspirator in the plot to assassinate Qassem in 1959—and some of the other Iraqi exiles. They were met at the Baghdad airport by a large crowd of cheering Baathists, family members, and friends. Soon after his arrival Saddam reacquainted himself with Bakr, who had been rewarded for his role in overthrowing Qassem with the post of prime minister by the new president, Abdul Salam Arif. Bakr appointed many fellow Tikritis to positions of prominence, although Saddam initially found himself sidelined from mainstream politics. The party had moved on during his three years in exile, and the new leadership at first would not accept the membership Saddam had acquired in exile. Saddam was offered a lowly position at the Central Farmer’s Office, where his duties were to look at ways of improving the lot of the Iraqi peasantry. Despite the difficulties he faced on his return to Baghdad, his friends and acquaintances noticed a significant change in Saddam’s development. “When he fled Baghdad, he had not even finished high school. He was a thuggish kid who was good with his fists. But the Saddam who returned from Cairo was better educated and more adult.”25