by Con Coughlin
It has been said that attempting to untangle the various personal feuds that afflicted the early years of the Baath in ideological terms is rather like a historian of Chicago during the Prohibition era attempting to explain the interaction between Al Capone and his rivals. Inasmuch as any of the participants in the rise to power of the Baath Party were interested in ideology, then Shaikhly passed for an ideologue. Born about the same time as Saddam in 1935, Shaikhly came from a distinguished Baghdad family whose ancestors had been responsible for administering Baghdad during the Ottoman Empire. Saddam, who had no idea of his own birth date, had taken Shaikhly’s birthday, April 28, for his own. One of the first members of the Baath, the university-educated Shaikhly was highly regarded by the founding fathers of the party and was regarded as someone who actually understood the principles of Baathism. By the summer of 1971, however, Shaikhly’s own career was progressing too well for Saddam’s comfort. As foreign minister and a senior figure in the RCC, Shaikhly was regarded in some circles as a future prime minister, or even president. Apart from Saddam, he was also the regime’s highest-ranking civilian.
Unlike Saddam, however, Shaikhly was a dilettante Baathist. As a bachelor in his early thirties, Iraq’s intelligent young foreign minister had the world at his feet, and took full advantage of the opportunity, so much so that he acquired a reputation as something of a womanizer. There were many aspects of the new Baath government that did not appeal to Shaikhly’s sensitive nature, such as the public executions that were regularly taking place in Liberation Square. “We did not like this kind of thing. We considered it uncivilized, as we did all the torture and disappearances that were going on,” recalled one of Shaikhly’s contemporaries. “But he was too involved in his own affairs to do anything about it. And he became too full of his own importance to take care of his position in the party.”23
On the same day that Saddam carried out his purge of Ammash, Shaikhly was relieved of his post as foreign minister and given the lesser title of ambassador to the United Nations. It has been generally assumed that the main reason for Shaikhly’s removal was ideological, namely that Saddam suspected him of trying to promote a reconciliation between the Iraqi and Syrian Baath parties, a move that Saddam felt would undermine his position as he was the person held responsible for creating the rift in the first place. Shaikhly’s appointment to New York was tantamount to being sent into exile, as it was impossible for him to influence events in Iraq from the United States. Shaikhly eventually returned to Baghdad when he retired, and, after Saddam became president, was murdered in 1980 as he visited a post office in Baghdad to pay his telephone bill.24
Another explanation for Shaikhly’s removal, however, which affords a fascinating insight into the family intrigues that dominated the Baath Party’s inner sanctum during this period, is provided by Shaikhly’s cousin, Salah al-Shaikhly, who became Saddam’s deputy director of planning before fleeing into exile in the late 1970s. According to his version of events, Saddam and Shaikhly were such close friends that Saddam had hoped that Shaikhly would one day marry his younger sister Siham, as is generally the custom among Arab men. Even though the Shaikhly family would previously have dismissed the idea out of hand of allowing their menfolk to marry into a peasant family from Al-Ouja, Shaikhly was actively encouraged by the family elders to give serious consideration to marrying Saddam’s sister as they regarded that the balance of power had moved from the traditional ruling elite and was now with the peasants. Although Shaikhly and Saddam were close, their relationship was more professional than personal. The urbane, intelligent Shaikhly appreciated Saddam’s bravery and physical prowess, and saw him as someone who would ensure the success of Baath Party. But away from politics Saddam was not someone whose company Shaikhly sought.
When it came to marriage Shaikhly might have been disposed to keep Saddam happy, but the situation was further complicated by the fact that President Bakr, who had five daughters, was keen to marry off one of his own offspring to one of the government’s rising stars. On several occasions Bakr dropped heavy hints to Shaikhly that he should marry one of his daughters. Caught between a rock and a hard place, Shaikhly opted to marry a woman of his own choice, who was unrelated either to Saddam or Bakr. Saddam is said to have been so upset by Shaikhly’s decision that, although he attended the wedding ceremony, he stayed only a half hour at Shaikhly’s reception. And within two to three weeks of his wedding, Shaikhly had been thrown out of the government and forced into exile in New York.25 The fact that the political career of one of the Baath Party’s most respected performers could be destroyed over a dispute such as this was indicative of the strength of the family and tribal ties that bound together the ruling Baath clique, ties that would lie at the very heart of many of the crises that would have serious implications for the regime’s future stability.
Unlike the dismissal of Hardan al-Tikriti, Saddam appeared to have effected Shaikhly’s removal without acrimony. On the night of Shaikhly’s dismissal from the government the two men were photographed dining at Baghdad’s Farouk restaurant. The following day the Baghdad newspapers carried front-page pictures of Saddam and Shaikhly happily dining together. Saddam was keen to absolve himself of any blame for the dismissal of Shaikhly, who had a strong following both within the party and the military. Even if Shaikhly’s choice of bride had not soured their relationship, it is unlikely that Shaikhly would have survived in office for much longer. In the opinion of Salah al-Shaikhly, his cousin’s dismissal had as much to do with the success he had achieved in Bakr’s government as the perceived insult he had caused Saddam by not marrying his sister. “Karim posed too much of a threat to Saddam. He was popular and talented. But, like so many of us, he should have seen it coming. If he had done something about Saddam then, the history of modern Iraq might have been a lot happier.”26
Shaikhly’s demotion and expulsion from Baghdad, coming at the same time as the purge of Tikriti and Ammash from the armed forces, sent shock waves through the country’s ruling elite and revealed Saddam’s position as a significant power behind President Bakr’s throne. If Saddam could act against Shaikhly, then no Baathist was safe. As a final act in eradicating Baathist opposition, in July 1973 Saddam moved against Abdul Khaliq al-Samurrai who, like Shaikhly, enjoyed a reputation as a leading “theoretician” and was touted as a future candidate for the party’s leadership. In July he was imprisoned and held in appalling conditions in solitary confinement for six years. Then, a few days after Saddam had succeeded in his ambition of becoming president of Iraq, he was dragged out of his prison cell and shot.
Samurrai’s imprisonment was related to one of the most serious attempts that were made to depose the Bakr/Saddam axis. Thanks to Saddam’s efforts, by 1973 most of the known opponents of the regime had been dealt with. Saddam’s enthusiasm for cutting down his personal rivals, however, understandably engendered much bitterness within the party among those who survived, particularly as, in view of what had happened to their colleagues, they could expect to share a similar fate. The deep sense of paranoia that Saddam had managed to create at the heart of the government resulted in one of the most bizarre, but nonetheless dangerous, episodes in the early history of the Baath government. What made the coup attempt of late June 1973 all the more remarkable was that it was mounted by Nadhim Kazzar, one of Saddam’s closest associates and someone whose reputation had been built on the brutal techniques he had devised at the Palace of the End for eradicating dissent.
In many respects Kazzar, who shared with Saddam similar disadvantages of background, acquired the same ruthless ambition and determination as his Baathist colleague. The son of a policeman, he came from Al-Amara, one of the country’s most wretched and poverty-stricken communities. One of the few Shiites to reach the higher echelons of the Baath, Kazzar had joined the party in 1959, when he moved to Baghdad to study at the Technological Institute. He distinguished himself as a party member during the persecution of the communists following the 1963 coup. Indeed his
activities at the Palace of the End, during which he initiated the young Saddam in the barbaric art of extracting information and breaking the human spirit, was so impressive that he was made chief of the Security Police in 1969—at Saddam’s personal insistence. Kazzar was in many respects the Beria of the Baath Party. Fearless and impulsive, he was responsible for the arrest, torture, and secret executions of several hundred opponents, including communists, Kurds, Nasserites, dissident Baathists, and any other group foolhardy enough to challenge Saddam’s wing of the Baath.
As Kazzar’s reputation was built on violence, it was hardly surprising that he was a consistent advocate of using violent methods to attain political goals. He believed that force was the only way to deal with the Kurds and the communists, and repeatedly demanded that the Kurdish military apparatus should be crushed. On this issue he came into conflict with those Baathists, including Saddam, who argued in favor of a less confrontational approach, especially so far as the Kurds were concerned. Even if Saddam had no intention of honoring his deals with the Kurds, that was nevertheless his official position.
Underlying Kazzar’s restlessness was a mounting frustration within the Baath that the country was dominated by a small clique of military officers and Tikritis, whereas the original intention of the Baathists when they undertook the 1968 revolution was to have a broad-based government. Kazzar and his supporters, who included long-standing party ideologues such as Samurrai, wanted to convene a special conference of the Baath to elect a new leadership. If Kazzar had good reason for wanting the Bakr/Saddam clique removed, the way in which he set about attaining his objective left much to be desired. Even by the standards of revolutionary Iraq, the scheme devised by Kazzar to seize control of the country was particularly harebrained. As head of the Security Police, he believed that by kidnapping the heads of the army and the civilian police force he would somehow assume control of the country’s entire security apparatus. Furthermore, if he could assassinate Bakr and Saddam, Kazzar would then easily persuade his captives to back him (his ultimate powers of persuasion, of course, were located in the cellars at the Palace of the End), and he would be able to take control of the country.
The first act of this highly credulous scheme was put into effect on the morning of June 30, 1973, when Kazzar invited General Hammad Shihab, the defense minister, and Saadoun Ghaydan, the interior minister, to inspect new electronic surveillance equipment that he was having installed at an espionage and counterespionage center he was building on the outskirts of Baghdad. Ghaydan has recalled how he was surprised to receive the call from Kazzar, as he had already previously visited the center.27 He was nevertheless persuaded by Kazzar to make the trip, and he left his office with his bodyguard. When he arrived at the center, he left his bodyguard outside, “trusting Kazzar as a party member.” No sooner had he entered than four security policemen, armed with machine guns, surrounded him and told him he was under arrest. He was taken to an underground prison cell where he was held, handcuffed, until later that evening. After a while Ghaydan realized that Shihab, the defense minister, was imprisoned in an adjoining cell. When he inquired about their detention, Shihab informed him that an uprising was taking place and that they were being detained “for their own protection.”28
With Shihab and Ghaydan safely out of the way, Kazzar moved on to the second stage of his scheme, namely the assassination of Bakr and Saddam. His plan was to kill them when President Bakr’s plane touched down at the Baghdad airport at 4 P.M. on his return from an official visit to Poland. Saddam would be waiting at the airport to greet Bakr, and Kazzar arranged for a detachment of his Security Police to be at the airport to kill them the moment that Bakr stepped off the plane. The plan went awry, however, when Bakr’s plane was late in leaving Warsaw, and then delayed further when it touched down in Bulgaria to refuel, only for Bakr’s party to discover that the Bulgarian government had laid on an impromptu welcome for Bakr during his brief stopover. Consequently it was nearly 8 P.M. before the presidential plane finally arrived at Baghdad, by which time the head of the security squad, believing the plot had been discovered, dispersed his men and made good his escape.
Kazzar, meanwhile, had settled down in front of his television set to watch the assassination, as the state-controlled television network had been ordered to interrupt its programming to report on the president’s activities—even something as mundane as his return from a routine visit to somewhere like Poland. When Kazzar saw Bakr safely disembark and disappear in an armed convoy with Saddam, he concluded, wrongly, that the plot had been discovered, and decided to flee the country. To guarantee his safety, Kazzar took Shihab and Ghaydan along with him as hostages. The party left Baghdad in a fleet of armored cars and headed straight for the Iranian border where Kazzar believed the Iranians, because of their dispute with Baghdad over the future of the Shatt al-Arab waterway, would provide them with refuge. On his way he contacted Bakr and offered to meet him to discuss his differences with the regime, and to resolve them peacefully. Among his demands he called for a purge of “opportunist elements” in the Baath Party, a clear reference to Saddam. Kazzar threatened to kill Shihab and Ghaydan unless his demands were met. Bakr refused to negotiate and ordered Kazzar’s capture, dead or alive. Saddam was given the task of apprehending Kazzar, and responded with relish to the challenge. Having secured Baghdad, the army and air force were scrambled to stop Kazzar before he reached the border. His group was intercepted by helicopters and warplanes, and brought to a halt. Before surrendering, Kazzar ordered his soldiers to shoot Shibab and Ghaydan: Shihab was killed, but Ghaydan, although severely wounded, survived because Shihab’s body fell in front of him and took the brunt of the machine-gun fire.
From the moment of his surrender Kazzar must have known his fate; his only consolation was that he was spared the horrors normally meted out to traitors at the Palace of the End. A Special Court of four RCC members was convened, and on July 7, eight security officials and thirteen officers, including Kazzar, were sentenced to death and executed later that same day. The following day another thirty-six people were tried, including two members of the Regional Command, Abdul Khaliq al-Samurrai and Muhammad Fadil. It was their misfortune that Kazzar had telephoned them during his coup attempt to inform them that it was taking place. The Special Court took the view that they should have passed on this information to the relevant authorities. Their failure to do so was tantamount to treason, and they were sentenced to death, together with twelve others. Samurrai, because of his importance as one of the party’s main ideologues and because his previous record was unblemished, had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment, but the others were executed as soon as judgment was passed.
The crushing of the Kazzar plot confirmed Saddam’s position as the second most powerful man in Iraq after President Bakr, a formidable achievement in view of the fact that immediately after the 1968 revolution he had been regarded by many Baathists as the “weakest link” in the party. In the space of just five years he had eradicated all his main rivals, be they friend or foe, and had neutralized the factions hostile to the Baath government, such as the Kurds and Shiites. One prominent Baathist, who had not seen Saddam for several years but ran into him in Baghdad at about this time, inquired why Saddam had not been seen much in public. “I have been dealing with all the jackals,” was Saddam’s enigmatic reply.
Following the exposure of the Kazzar plot, the Baath lost no time restructuring the government to ensure that the position of the ruling elite became even more unassailable. Even while the trial of Kazzar and his fellow conspirators was taking place, an emergency meeting of the Baath leadership was called at which it was agreed to hold new elections, which would allow candidates loyal to Saddam to be elected to the Baath’s governing council. The Security Police was to be purged and brought under Saddam’s control for its failure to prevent the Kazzar coup, and it was agreed to demolish the Palace of the End, as the party now felt sufficiently confident that it no longer had any need for Kazz
ar’s torture chambers. The government resolved to undertake a new mission whereby it would consolidate its position by easing the restrictions on civil liberties, and embark on a program of social and economic development, which would create an atmosphere of well-being in the country, and further inspire confidence in the government.
FIVE
The Nation Builder
With power came affluence. For the first two years after the July Revolution, Saddam occupied a small side office in the Presidential Palace, which befitted his status. As his standing in the party improved, so too did his accommodation, and by the early 1970s he had moved into a larger office in the National Assembly building, which also housed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The National Assembly complex, which was located in the same compound as the Presidential Palace, had been commissioned in the late 1950s when the idea of creating democratic institutions in Iraq had been in vogue. From 1970 onward, after Salih Mahdi Ammash had been purged from the government, Saddam moved into Ammash’s office, which had previously been used by Iraqi prime ministers, and came complete with an infrastructure of secretaries, advisers, researchers, and assistants. Saddam continued to work long hours, arriving at his office at dawn and staying until late at night, but his industry, combined with his extensive, and all-pervasive, intelligence network, gave him the crucial advantage of always being one step ahead of his colleagues.