by Con Coughlin
During the period when Saddam was busily building the power base that would eventually lead to him becoming one of the most powerful figures in the new Baath government, he still remained a socially awkward individual who was often overcome by shyness when required to mix with his Baathist contemporaries. Although he was tall and well-built, he retained a strong peasant accent and his coarse, colloquial Arabic made him feel conspicuous among his more genteel contemporaries in Baghdad. Fellow Baathists who knew him at this time recall that on the few occasions that Saddam made a public appearance, he did not talk much and that when he did, most of his conversation was confined to a denunciation of the evils of communism. His wife Sajida, who soon became pregnant with Qusay, Saddam’s second son, after his release from prison, usually accompanied him to these functions. But on the whole Sajida was a neglected wife who was left at home to look after her young son while her husband devoted his every waking moment to furthering his career. For much of the time Sajida and the infant Uday stayed at Khairallah’s house. During the period immediately following his escape from prison Saddam hid in the houses of friends, such as Abdul Karim al-Shaikhly, or Baath Party activists. Even when it was safe for him to come out of hiding, he still stayed at different houses to protect himself from revenge attacks. It was a policy he continued long after he had become president. During the Gulf War in 1991, for example, it was said that he stayed at a different location every night of the conflict. As a full-time employee of the Baath, Saddam received a modest income of fifteen dinars per month (about thirty dollars), which was paid for out of the five dinars a month subscription that all Baath Party members were required to donate. He was given an old Volkswagen Beetle, which had been looted from the communists in 1963, in which to conduct his official Baath business. This was later upgraded to an old Mercedes, which had been acquired by similar means.
For the first few months after his escape Saddam remained in hiding. Even though there were suspicions that the government had somehow been complicit in his liberation from jail, he still needed to keep a low profile. By the autumn, however, the charges against Saddam were quietly dropped and he was able to assume a more public role. Other Baath Party activists came to regard Saddam as Bakr’s “second son.” Few of them had much respect for Saddam, who was still blamed by many for the horrific excesses carried out in the name of the Baath against the communists in 1963. But Bakr, who headed a powerful group of officers, was regarded as the party’s best chance of obtaining power, particularly after the mysterious helicopter crash that killed President Abdul Salam Arif in April 1966. Arif commanded respect, while his brother, who replaced him, possessed no natural authority, so that a destabilizing power vacuum was soon created. “We believed that Bakr was our best chance of delivering Iraq on a golden plate,” commented one of Saddam’s direct Baathist contemporaries from this era. “Because we supported Bakr, we did not question his relationship with Saddam.”11
Apart from enjoying a reputation for violence, Saddam was viewed with suspicion by his Baathist contemporaries because of the relatively easy time he had enjoyed during his imprisonment. Mindful of the brutal scenes that had accompanied the coups of 1958 and 1963, President Abdul Salam Arif was a firm believer in meeting violence with violence, and the Baathists rounded up in 1964 for plotting his overthrow were treated severely. The least any of them could expect was to have their arms bound tightly behind their backs, and to be beaten with a thick black rubber hose about their bodies and on the soles of their feet. Others were dragged around the prison compound tied to the back of army trucks and a variety of other excruciating tortures were inflicted on the prisoners, such as, in the case of Abdul Karim al-Shaikhly, having nails driven into their backs. But despite his deep and well-documented involvement in both Baath politics and the 1964 coup to overthrow Arif, Saddam suffered hardly any ill-treatment during his confinement.
Saddam’s comparatively benign treatment by the authorities has naturally raised suspicions about where his true loyalties lay. As has already been explained, Saddam, using lists provided by the CIA, was heavily involved in hunting down and liquidating communists during the purge of 1963. During this time it is also likely that he made contacts with senior figures in the Arif government. Saddam was never an ideologue, and always tended to follow those who were best placed to improve his own position. Saddam may have been informing on his Baath Party colleagues for the Arif government.12 Alternatively Saddam may have been working as an agent for either the British or American government (the CIA was the more likely suspect, given what is known of Saddam’s dealings with the American embassy in Cairo). Certainly many of his contemporaries believed that there must have been a foreign power intervening on his behalf during his incarceration. Suspicions were further raised about Saddam’s loyalty when, after his escape, he made contact with Robert Anderson, a CIA officer who made frequent trips to Baghdad to monitor efforts by the Soviets to take control of Iraq’s oil reserves. Anderson maintained such a high profile during his visits that he actually provoked demonstrations in Baghdad, with the crowds chanting, “Go back home, Anderson.” The CIA man, who was keen to see a government installed in Baghdad that would act as a counterweight to the new Marxist regime that had recently been established in Damascus helped to draw up pamphlets that were distributed by Saddam’s paramilitaries. The precise nature of Saddam’s dealings with Anderson was unknown, but suspicions about his real loyalties at this time were further complicated by the fact that Saddam was the author of a note sent to the British consulate in the southern Iraq port city of Basra asking for their help in overthrowing the Arif government.13
Apart from carrying out his Baath duties, Saddam decided to finish his education and enrolled at the law faculty at Baghdad University. At the time that Saddam enrolled for the law course, in September 1966, the university did not require high secondary school grades; merely to have completed secondary school was regarded as qualification enough. The only official qualification that Saddam had actually obtained was the secondary school certificate that all the exiled Baathists had received in Cairo, but Saddam never produced this in Baghdad. The course was so overenrolled that it was taught in two shifts. Saddam quickly distinguished himself as anything but the model student. Although socially shy, he was more forthcoming in the political hothouse of the university campus, and added to his physical presence was compensated was a commanding personality. “By comparison with all the other students he was very hawkish and hard-line,” recalled one former student. “He was brimming with aggression.” Apart from his extremist views, Saddam stood out from the other students because he was generally accompanied by four of five “bodyguards,” members of the Jihaz Haneen, and he was always armed with a pistol. “Saddam gave the impression of great physical strength because he was always surrounded by this group of thugs. Saddam would come into the canteen of the medical school, one of his favorite haunts, surrounded by his guards. These guys were real heavies, and were built like wrestlers. None of the other students ever felt like arguing with Saddam, even though we didn’t agree with his policies. He was the only Baathist on the campus who behaved like this.”14
Saddam’s group of guards were known by the other students as the “Saddameen” and, apart from protecting their leader when he ventured onto campus, they spent their time intimidating anyone who did not subscribe to Bakr’s right-wing Baathist agenda. In most respects the Saddameen were no different from the Nazi Brownshirts, and they certainly shared the Nazis’ hatred of communists and leftists. The Saddameen were used by Saddam to intimidate and terrify anyone who did not agree with his philosophy. They would break into the homes of leftists and loot them. On other occasions they would spray their homes with machine-gun fire. A classic example of their modus operandi was provided in the autumn of 1967 when Saddam himself appeared at a coffee shop in Baghdad that was frequented by young Baathists. Without pausing to greet his acquaintances, Saddam announced to anyone who cared to listen that he had just killed a l
eft-wing Baathist called Hussein Hazbar on the al-Jadiria bridge in central Baghdad. “I beat him over the head with my revolver until he could move no more,” Saddam boasted. “You won’t be seeing him again.”15 Contrary to Saddam’s expectations, the other Baathists gathered at the Baladia coffee shop in central Baghdad were horrified by the revelation, and protested vigorously that this was not the way in which to settle differences of opinion within the Baath Party. Saddam merely laughed and walked out, accompanied by his bodyguards. The remainder of the Baathists in the bar hurried to the local hospital, where they learned that the badly injured Hazbar was being treated. Both his arms had been broken, and he had sustained a fractured skull, but in spite of the severity of his injuries he survived. The young Baathists comforted him as much they could, telling him that they abhorred Saddam’s tactics. “We tried to impress upon him that we did not believe this was what the party was about,” said one of those present. “After what he had been through, it was difficult to make him understand that not everyone in the Baath party was a homicidal maniac.”16
Saddam’s bullyboy tactics were to play a crucial role in the buildup to the 1968 coup. The coup itself undoubtedly had its origins in the tumult that engulfed the Arab world in the aftermath of Israel’s resounding victory in the Six Day War in June 1967. The Iraqi expeditionary force that had been stationed in Jordan to take part in the proposed pan-Arab invasion of Israel was completely routed without hardly firing a shot in anger. Israel’s victory traumatized the Arab world, not least because it dealt a devastating blow to President Nasser’s belligerent claim that a unified Arab assault would be sufficient to destroy the “Zionist entity,” the euphemism by which he referred to Israel. Nasser himself never recovered from the shock of defeat, and died a broken man in 1970. Elsewhere in the Arab world the defeat provoked an outpouring of hostility toward the Arab governments held responsible for the disaster, which left the Israelis in control of the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula. In Baghdad the outrage of the Iraqi people was directed at President Abdul Rahman Arif.
Defeat in the Six Day War was the opportunity the Baathists had been looking for to agitate for a change of government, and from the autumn of 1967 Bakr, with Saddam’s help, began developing a concerted plan of action that would result in the coup of 1968. During the last months of 1967 and early 1968, the Baath was involved in a series of strikes and demonstrations that denounced the regime’s corruption and ineptitude and called for its replacement. Saddam himself played a prominent role in the strikes, particularly those taking place on the campus at Baghdad University. Perversely, in one of the earlier strikes, which had been called by all opposition parties other than the Baathists, Saddam acted as a strikebreaker, rather than as an enforcer. For a party to succeed in Iraq it had to demonstrate that it had street credibility, and so when, in late 1967, the major opposition parties called a nationwide strike to protest against the government, the Baathists decided to oppose it. This gave them an opportunity to show their organizational strength, which they did by forcing the strikers back to work. Saddam, backed by his Saddameen, was ideally suited for the task and concentrated his energies on forcing the students striking at Baghdad University back to their classes. “Saddam would arrive at the campus, firing his gun in the air to frighten the students and intimidate them,” recalled one of Saddam’s university contemporaries. “He would run around with the Saddameen and force them back to class to resume their studies. The tactic worked brilliantly and the strike at the university was quickly broken.”17
Through tactics such as this the Baath quickly established itself as the main party of opposition. Having displayed their organizational skills by breaking a strike, the Baathists determined to demonstrate their political power by organizing their own strikes and demonstrations. The early months of 1968 were a period of intense political instability in Baghdad with the Arif government desperately struggling to hold on to power. In April 1968 thirteen retired army officers, five of whom were Baathists, submitted a memorandum to Arif demanding the removal of the prime minister, Tahir Yahya; the establishment of a legislative assembly; and the formation of a new government. It is an indication of the Arif government’s weakness at this time that, rather than becoming alarmed by the growing confidence of the Baathists, it did nothing to suppress their activities and bent over backward to try to accommodate their demands. Yahya even conducted a number of clandestine meetings with the Baathists to see if the government could reach a political accommodation with them. At Yayha’s initiative Bakr and the Baath leadership, which was technically a banned organization, attended regular meetings at the Presidential Palace between 1966 and 1968 to discuss with the president the possibility of forming a government of national unity.18 With the Iraqi government on the defensive, it was simply a question of time before Bakr and his associates took control. Indeed, the coup might actually have taken place in the summer of 1967 were it not for the untimely intervention of the Six Day War.
Amid all this political turmoil Saddam was working hard to consolidate his position within the Baath Party. Already well established in the hierarchy of the Iraqi Baath, Saddam attempted to have himself elected to the Baath’s international leadership at a special summit held in Beirut in December 1967, the Ninth Pan-Arab Congress of the Baath Party, which was convened ostensibly to resolve the party’s differences, particularly those between the left-leaning Syrians and the right-wing Iraqis. This time, however, Saddam’s attempt to further his career was a humiliating failure. Saddam himself was not able to attend the meeting, but his good friend Abdul Karim al-Shaikhly was present and put forward Saddam’s name for inclusion in the new governing body. But Saddam’s reputation preceded him, no doubt because of the role he had played the previous year in helping Bakr to reconstitute the Iraqi Baath Party. Not only did the delegates refuse to vote for him; they would not even let his name be put down on the election list. One of those present at the Beirut meeting said that the main reason for Saddam’s rejection was that he was widely disliked within the Baath, and had no credibility. “The man was regarded as a thug. He was widely suspected of having links with foreign powers. He had no proper constituency within the party apart from his friendship with Bakr. No one was going to give him their vote. Shaikhly thought he was doing Saddam a big favor by putting his name forward, but all he did was humiliate him.”19 The rejection was certainly a massive blow to Saddam’s pride, and one that he never forgot. Added now to the list of those against whom Saddam was to hold a lifelong grudge, which till then had included all those who had patronized him in prison for being uneducated and having no social standing, were all those Baathists who had sought to curb his political ambition.
By the summer of 1968 the momentum was moving in favor of the Baathists, and their growing popularity was demonstrated at a rally held in the center of Baghdad in June on the first anniversary of the Six Day War. This, it should be remembered, was the same year that revolutionary demonstrations were taking place at campuses all over Europe and America, a time when youthful rebellion really believed it had a chance of changing the world. In Baghdad the revolutionaries were to succeed. For one of the demonstrations a makeshift platform was set up in Al Rashid Street, and Bakr, accompanied by Saddam, Shaikhly, and five retired Iraqi army officers, addressed the crowd. Bakr’s speech focused on criticizing the Arab regimes for their weakness in failing to confront Israel, and accused many of them of actually being infiltrated by Jewish spies, an ominous allegation in view of the anti-Jewish persecution that would take place once Bakr was safely installed at the Presidential Palace. The speech was so well received that even the police commanders, who had come to maintain order, came onto the platform and publicly applauded Bakr. Nor was the impressive public display of support for the Baath lost on the country’s military leaders who, since the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958, had ultimate control over who ran the country. The realization began to dawn on them that either they got behind the Baathists, o
r found themselves left behind in the revolution that was inevitably to come.
Ayad Allawi, who was a young medical student and head of one of the Baath Party cells in Baghdad, believed that the decision by key military commanders to support the coup was the crucial factor in the revolution passing off peacefully. “We had the commanders of the Republican Guard and military intelligence behind us, as well as the commanders of key military units in and around Baghdad. At least 25 percent of the officer corps were members of the Baath Party, and their support meant that the coup attempt, when it came, worked like clockwork.” Allawi was in charge of one of three cells that carried out the coup on the morning of July 17. One cell, mainly comprising the Republican Guards but also including some Baathists, including Saddam, was responsible for taking the Presidential Palace while another, led by the 10th Armored Brigade, was to take control of central Baghdad. A third group was detailed to take control of the television and broadcasting centers and the main bridge crossings into Baghdad. “The reason there was so little opposition is that nearly everyone knew that the revolution was going to happen, it was simply a question of when.”20