Saddam : His Rise and Fall

by Con Coughlin

  To prepare the way for his eventual accession Saddam felt he still needed several more building blocks in place so that, when the time came for him to make his move, any opposition he encountered would prove futile. The first significant attempt by Saddam to weaken Bakr’s position came in January 1977 when he arranged for ten new members to be appointed to the Baath Party’s Regional Command, giving Saddam a comfortable majority of fourteen out of the twenty-one members. Seven months later all these newcomers were appointed to the RCC, providing Saddam with a decisive majority in the country’s most influential decision-making body. Among those making their debuts within the party’s ruling elite was one of the Baath’s few Christian activists, Tariq Aziz. After studying at the University of Baghdad, where he obtained an M.A. in English literature, Aziz had started his professional life as a schoolteacher. In the 1960s he had joined and left the Baath Party, before rejoining in 1968. An educated and cultured man, who had managed to steer clear of the violence and bloodshed that was coming to characterize the Baath Party, he had a keen interest in international politics and enjoyed a reputation for being, like Saddam, a staunch anticommunist and committed Arab nationalist. In 1969 Aziz was appointed editor of the Baath Party’s newspaper al-Thawra and in November 1974 he became minister of information. During his editorship of al-Thawra, Aziz had proved himself to be an ally of Saddam, penning helpful editorials in support of Saddam’s policies. In 1976, for example, during one of Saddam’s perennial spats with the communists, Aziz wrote simply: “There is no place for a communist party in our country.”22 When Tariq Aziz’s son was born a few years later, he paid his mentor the ultimate tribute by naming the child Saddam.

  Having sorted out the regime’s civilian wing, Saddam turned his attention toward ensuring that he faced no threat from the military. This he achieved in October 1977 by engineering the elevation of his favorite cousin, Adnan Khairallah, to be the new minister of defense. Adnan had already, like Tariq Aziz, been elected to the Regional Command the previous January, and of all the schemes Saddam devised to increase his own power base, Adnan’s appointment was arguably the most significant. Saddam had looked up to Adnan ever since he had followed his example and forced his way into the Iraqi school system. Following Saddam’s move to his uncle Khairallah’s house in Tikrit, he and Adnan had been brought up together almost as brothers. They had moved to Baghdad together, although Adnan, who had better educational qualifications, had fulfilled every aspiring Iraqi schoolboy’s dream of enrolling at the Baghdad Military Academy, while Saddam had been required to content himself with a career in the far less glamorous Baath Party. Saddam had married Adnan’s sister Sajida, while Adnan, at the instigation of his father and Saddam, had married one of Bakr’s daughters. It is difficult to imagine a more incestuous arrangement dominating the ruling elite of a modern republic. In 1978 the bonds of family and kinship triumphed, and Adnan joined Saddam in the government. The appointment could not have been easy for Adnan, who was effectively undermining his father-in-law. Until Adnan’s appointment Bakr had held the defense portfolio himself, along with his many other government positions. Adnan’s promotion stripped his father-in-law of a crucial executive function. It also meant that henceforth the armed forces would be under Saddam’s control.

  Adnan’s elevation to defense minister was just one of many appointments made by Saddam where members of his own family and his Tikriti clan were gradually taking control of the country’s security and defense infrastructure. Barzan, his half brother, had already become head of the directorate general of intelligence in the wake of the Kazzar affair, and had taken over the functions of some of the other security departments. The National Security Office was headed by Saddam’s friend Saadoun Shakir—who helped Saddam escape from jail in 1966 and had been a member of his Saddameen gang of thugs—and reported directly to Saddam. Saddam’s other two half brothers, Watban and Sabawi, had been made governor of the newly expanded province of Tikrit and deputy chief of police respectively. And Khairallah Tulfah, the father of the new defense minister, was mayor of Baghdad. The more Saddam’s power increased, the more the government came to be controlled by a tightly knit Tikriti clique.

  With Adnan firmly established in command of the armed forces, another round of purges was instigated to eradicate the last vestiges of anti-Baathist sentiment from the officer corps. In the summer of 1978 Adnan conducted his own “cleansing operation”; dozens of officers were purged, including the commander of the air force and several divisional commanders, and some sixty military personnel were executed.23 In July 1978 the RCC enacted a decree rendering non-Baathist political activity an illegal act, punishable by death, for members of the armed forces. At the same time as the armed forces were being purged, Saddam was funding a substantial military buildup, mainly to counter the threat posed by the belligerence of the shah. Saddam had probably considered doing something to improve the strength of Iraq’s armed forces in the past, but had hesitated because he did not feel that he could entirely trust the military establishment, and by arming them the cautious Saddam would have felt that he was merely strengthening the position of his political rivals. Despite his own personal failure to secure a place at the Baghdad Military Academy, Saddam had managed to persuade Bakr in 1976 to appoint him to the rank of lieutenant general (which he insisted on having backdated to 1973), the equivalent of chief of staff. Soon after his inauguration as president, Saddam would appoint himself field marshal.

  Adnan’s appointment to the Defense Ministry meant Saddam enjoyed more control over the military. Consequently the period between 1977 and 1979 saw Iraq embark upon a frenzy of military spending that resulted in the Iraqi armed forces purchasing some of the Soviets’ most advanced weapons systems, including 450 T-52 tanks, and dozens of 122-and 152-millimeter self-propelled guns, Tu-22 bombers, Mi-24 helicopters, and Il-76 transport aircraft. But Saddam had learned his lesson during the Kurdish conflict about relying too heavily on the Soviets for his military hardware, and resolved to find new markets. The most logical alternative to the Soviets was the French, who had also provided much-needed moral support during the oil crisis. Thus the Iraqi air force received 40 top-of-the-line Mirage-F1 fighters, and Iraq’s antitank potential received significant reinforcement with the purchase of 60 Gazelle helicopters.24 Most of these purchases were negotiated by a special three-man committee Saddam had set up at the end of 1974, whose long-term aim was to guarantee Iraq’s long-term independence of military supplies. Chaired by Saddam, the other committee members were his cousin Adnan Khairallah and Adnan Hamdani, the Iraqi deputy prime minister who was to play a key role in helping to build up Iraq’s arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. The takeover of the military by Saddam and Adnan seriously reduced both the power and influence of President Bakr, who was increasingly becoming little more than a figurehead, so much so that by the late 1970s Iraqis were openly referring to the Presidential Palace as “the tomb of the well-known soldier.”

  By 1977, Saddam’s position had become almost impregnable. Officially the country was run by the triumvirate of Bakr, Saddam, and Adnan, with their intricate network of family and tribal ties. Indeed, the preponderance of Tikritis in prominent positions had prompted the government in 1976 to make it an offense for public figures to use a name that indicated their tribe. From 1974 onward, a combination of bad health and family tragedies made Bakr, as has been shown, a peripheral figure, and Saddam’s office became the central focus of power and decision making in Iraq. The extensive Baath Party organization, which extended to every village and town; the intelligence structure; and the key ministers, who under the constitution owed their allegiance to Bakr, all reported to Saddam’s office.25 Saddam was well aware of the importance of his position in the country, and apart from his insistence that he be called “Mr. Deputy” at all times, demanded strict observance of official protocol when engaged in public duties. When, for example, he was waiting outside Bakr’s office, Saddam would insist that one of Bakr’s officials form
ally invite “Mr. Deputy” to enter the president’s office. It was now simply a question of time before he made that office his own.

  SIX

  The Terrorist

  After Iraq, the world. If Saddam could dominate the Iraqi stage, then he saw no reason why he could not become a dominant figure in international affairs. Even while he was biding his time as Bakr’s second-in-command, Saddam had acquired a taste for diplomacy and, armed with the new oil wealth, he firmly believed that it was Iraq’s destiny to be the preeminent force in Middle East politics. The more power he acquired in Iraq, the more he felt he should be taken seriously as an international player. He had demonstrated his negotiating skills in the deals he struck with the Soviets, the Iranians, and the Kurds, even though in all three cases he would eventually renege on the agreements. Saddam saw himself as the natural heir to Nasser, a powerful figurehead providing leadership over the entire Arab world. But if he were to achieve the lasting glory he so patently desired, then he would need more than the skills of the negotiating table. To compete with the big superpowers like the United States and the Soviet Union it was essential that Iraq develop its military strength. And in Saddam’s view that meant acquiring an arsenal of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.

  The ease with which Saddam was able to strengthen Iraq’s nonconventional military capability in the 1970s was greatly assisted by the indulgent attitude taken by the West toward the Baathist regime, particularly after Saddam’s oil nationalization resulted in Baghdad’s various government ministries being awash with petrodollars. Iraq was a wealthy country, and Western companies, including defense contractors, were lining up to do business with Baghdad. The impact of Iraq’s new oil wealth can be seen in the dramatic rise in the country’s military expenditure from $500 million in 1970 to $4.5 billion in 1975. Western companies leaped at the opportunity to exploit the new Iraqi arms market, particularly after Saddam came to the conclusion that his strategic alliance with Moscow, which had been so crucial to his ruse of nationalizing the IPC, had outlived its usefulness. Saddam was determined to avoid what he regarded as Iraq’s crippling dependence on the Soviet Union for arms, and from the mid-1970s onward he controlled the three-man committee whose responsibility it was to diversify Iraq’s arms procurement needs. When Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet Union’s foreign minister, complained about Iraq’s new arms purchasing arrangements, Saddam replied candidly, “I do not care where my weapons come from. What counts is that these weapons will serve my purpose.”1 The comment accurately summed up Saddam’s philosophy, and not just with regard to arms deals.

  No one seemed too concerned about the regime’s brutal disregard for human rights, and by the late 1970s Iraq was buying arms from France, Italy, West Germany, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Yugoslavia, and Brazil. While the Soviet Union remained Iraq’s main arms supplier, its share of Baghdad’s overall arms acquisitions dropped from more than 95 percent in 1972, when Saddam negotiated the cooperation pact, to 63 percent on the eve of the Iran-Iraq War in 1980. France, which had been the first Western country to make conciliatory gestures to Baghdad after the nationalization of IPC, was the main beneficiary and quickly became Iraq’s second largest supplier after the Soviet Union. In the summer of 1977 Iraq concluded its first arms deal with France for the supply of Mirage-F1 fighters, to be followed a year later by further agreements on the sale of Alouette attack helicopters, Crotale-I surface-to-air missiles, and electronic equipment.

  From an early stage in Iraq’s military development, Saddam made it abundantly clear that he was not just interested in conventional weapons and from the mid-1970s onward he concentrated a significant amount of energy on building up Iraq’s nonconventional capability. Iraq’s attempts to acquire chemical and biological weapons can be traced back to 1974 and the creation of the three-man committee, known as the Strategic Planning Committee, which was dedicated to fulfilling this goal and was personally headed by Saddam. The committee members were the same as those on the arms procurement committee, Adnan Khairallah and Adnan al-Hamdani, a lawyer by training who became Saddam’s bagman and chief negotiator. Hamdani had been a protégé of Abdul Karim al-Shaikhly, the former foreign minister whom Saddam had sent into exile at the UN in New York in 1971 for declining to marry his sister Siham (see Chapter Four). Saddam had come into contact with Hamdani when he was working on one of the planning committees and, impressed by his sharp mind and technical ability, promoted him to work as his aide-de-camp.

  Hamdani’s first initiative was to establish contact with a Beirut company run by two Palestinian entrepreneurs called Arab Projects and Developments (APD), which specialized in finding work for highly qualified Arabs. Estimates of the number of Arab scientists recruited by the Iraqis range from between several hundred and four thousand. Egyptians, Moroccans, Palestinians, Algerians, Syrians, and other Arabs were persuaded to leave good jobs in the United States, Britain, Canada, Brazil, and dozens of other countries, bringing to Iraq a wealth of expertise. Most of them were employed in petrochemical and infrastructure projects, but some of them inevitably found themselves employed on more sensitive scientific projects. The other key contribution APD made to Iraq’s development was to help with the creation of Iraq’s higher education system, which would provide Saddam with his own homegrown scientists to work on his various weapons projects.

  Saddam’s initial interest in biological weapons centered on the bacteriological variety, which were cheap, relatively simple to manufacture, and potentially deadly. A single vial of the anthrax virus, for example, dropped into an urban water system is sufficient, in the right conditions, to launch a full-scale epidemic. It was a terrorist’s weapon if there ever was one. At Saddam’s request, Izzat al-Douri, a high-ranking Baath official who served on the Revolutionary Command Council as minister of agriculture, traveled to Paris in November 1974 where he signed a contract with France’s Institut Merieux to set up Iraq’s first bacteriological laboratory. The spurious justification provided by the Iraqis for wanting such a facility was the need to manufacture large quantities of vaccines to help develop agricultural and animal production. The official Iraqi purchasing agency was called the General Directorate of Veterinary Services.2 No one in France seemed in the least concerned. Douri was rewarded with a promotion on his return home to Baghdad, and was soon appointed minister of the interior, while still retaining special responsibility for “agricultural” development.

  Having laid the foundations for the biological weapons program, in 1975 Saddam’s committee decided on its next move—the acquisition of poison gas. At the meeting Adnan Khairallah argued that chemical weapons were a “force multiplier.” Unlike the sophisticated electronics systems then being developed by the superpowers, the technology for chemical weapons was well within the grasp of a developing nation like Iraq. The committee decided to make an all-out effort to acquire the technology for producing various types of poison gas, including suffocating agents, like mustard gas, and nerve agents, like the more sophisticated Tabun and Sarin. Tabun had been discovered in 1937 by scientists working for the German company I. G. Farben, which gained international notoriety during the Second World War for providing the gas used at the Nazi extermination camps. The scientists discovered that certain organic phosphorous compounds, which were easy to obtain, could be transformed into a deadly gas that attacked the central nervous system. Hitler’s Third Reich began manufacturing large quantities of the new nerve agent, but the Führer never used it in combat. After the war I. G Farben patented the new compound and called it Tabun.

  Tabun, and its first cousin, Sarin, are almost identical in composition to the organic phosphate compound Parathion, a well-known and highly dangerous insecticide. Tabun and Sarin are so deadly that a single drop is sufficient to kill a man. Nerve gas also has the advantage of being odorless and colorless. It is easy to make and easy to spread, and it makes killing easy and efficient. Both agents can be obtained from organic phosphate compounds, which in turn are derived from different type
s of phosphate minerals. It was Saddam’s good fortune that Iraq had large phosphate deposits in its western desert, close to the Syrian border.

  In order to put the chemical weapons plan into effect in late 1975, Saddam moved Adnan al-Hamdani to the all-powerful Ministry of Planning where he could oversee Iraq’s entire industrial development. Hamdani’s job was to slip strategic weapons projects into large contracts ostensibly aimed at developing Iraq’s civilian manufacturing or agricultural potential. For this task he was aided by two senior members of the Revolutionary Command Council, Izzat al-Douri, the new minister of the interior (who still retained his special responsibility for “agricultural development”), and Taha al-Jazrawi, the minister of industry and minerals. Hamdani cleverly concealed the strategic weapons projects in Iraq’s Second Five-Year Plan. Under the heading “agricultural development” he inscribed a little-noticed entry that called for “the creation of six laboratories for chemical, physiological, and biological analysis.” To operate the laboratories, the plan recommended training 5,000 technicians from foreign companies. Under the heading “Chemical Industries” the plan proposed the construction of a pesticides plant at Samarra capable of producing 1,000 tons a year of organic phosphate compounds.3 Most Western countries had stopped using these highly lethal compounds for pest control years before because of their high toxicity. The same organic phosphorous materials form the basis of nerve gas compounds such as Sarin and Tabun.

  Although APD had been helpful in the general recruitment of technical expertise, the Iraqis realized that they would need outside assistance to achieve their goal of becoming self-sufficient in the manufacture of chemical and biological weapons. To this end Saddam established the Al-Haythem Institute in Baghdad’s Masbah district. Although the Institute reported directly to Saddam, the day-to-day running was managed by Saadoun Shakir and the Mukhabarat. The institute developed close links with various dissident Palestinian groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which helped the Iraqis to acquire sensitive material from countries such as East Germany.4