Saddam : His Rise and Fall

by Con Coughlin

  Having reached an agreement in principle to buy a French reactor during his meeting with Chirac, Saddam dispatched Hamza and a small group of Iraqi specialists to Saclay, the headquarters of the French atomic energy agency on the outskirts of Paris, to sort out the technical specifications. When the Iraqi scientists were unable to provide a convincing explanation to their French counterparts as to why they needed a nuclear research reactor, the French simply responded by doubling the price. But even though the French could see nothing wrong with the nuclear deal, as soon as it became general knowledge it provoked a storm of international protest, particularly from Israel, Britain, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. As a sop to his critics, President Giscard d’Estaing ordered the French atomic commission to develop a “clean” fuel for the Tammuz reactor that would be sufficient to power it up but that was totally useless for weapons production. Saddam was incensed, and threatened to cancel all the other trade contracts unless the French fulfilled the terms of the original deal. Eventually a compromise was reached whereby the French agreed to supply the original material, but in smaller consignments. To safeguard any further problems with the French, in 1979 Saddam secretly negotiated a ten-year nuclear cooperation agreement with Brazil, which committed the Brazilians to supply Iraq with large quantities of natural and low-enriched uranium, reactor technologies, equipment, and training. In addition American intelligence officials have claimed that Saddam signed secret nuclear deals with China and India, although no details have been published. The only piece of equipment Saddam lacked for completion of his nuclear adventure was the reprocessing laboratory necessary for extracting plutonium from the spent reactor fuel. This was rectified in April 1979 when the Italian company Snia Techint, a subsidiary of the Fiat group, agreed to sell four nuclear laboratories to the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission. The Italian deal would give the Iraqis enough plutonium in a year to make one bomb, and the project would be ready to go operational by late 1981.13

  Work continued on the quest for the Iraqi bomb throughout the 1970s, and the scientists involved in the project were carefully scrutinized and monitored by Saddam’s security agents. On one occasion Saddam arrived at the research headquarters to lecture the scientists on the need to conduct their business in secret. “A scientist must be security conscious otherwise he is useless,” Saddam declared, “and we don’t want him. Security must be uppermost in your minds and it can take many forms. One way is to pretend that you don’t know much.”14 Saddam’s insistence that the scientists work in complete secrecy hindered the pace of the project, as the scientists were effectively cut off from their colleagues abroad and isolated from the latest scientific discourse and developments. The project’s chances of success were not helped, either, when the cores of the two Iraqi reactors were severely damaged by sabotage in April 1979 at the plant at La Seyne-sur-Mer, near Toulon, where they were being assembled. The sabotage was the work of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, which had smuggled seven specialists into France to carry out the task. The attack was code-named Operation Big Lift, and the Israelis had carefully placed their bombs to cause maximum damage to the reactor cores, without damaging the rest of the complex.

  The other difficulty hindering the project was the fact that not all the scientists were aware that they were involved in a bomb-making project. This became painfully evident toward the end of 1979 when Saddam, shortly after he had become president, paid a surprise visit to the AEC headquarters, which were located at a military complex south of Baghdad. The scientists were made aware of Saddam’s impending arrival when armed guards suddenly appeared and locked the doors and filled the halls. Bomb-sniffing German shepherds then scoured the building looking for booby traps. Finally a motorcade of black Mercedes, filled with plainclothes agents carrying submachine guns, pulled into the compound. Saddam marched into the building and made his way to the office of the AEC chairman, Abdul Razzaq al-Hashimi, and ordered him to assemble all his top nuclear officials. When they were finally assembled, Saddam dispensed with the preliminaries and went straight to the point. “When will you deliver the plutonium for the bomb?” he demanded. Plutonium was crucial to the success of the bomb-making project, and the French reactors had been purchased to help the Iraqis extract their own supplies of the internationally restricted material. Responsibility for producing it—a highly complex scientific task—had been entrusted to Hussein al-Shahristani, a brilliant Iraqi scientist who was an expert in neutron activation. But while Shahristani was in charge of plutonium extraction, no one had told him he was working on a project to build an atom bomb. “Bomb, we can’t make a bomb,” replied the flustered scientist. He then started to lecture Saddam that it would be impossible to use the French reactors to produce weapons-grade plutonium because “they are covered by the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, and we will be held in violation of our treaty obligations.” Saddam looked at the hapless scientist with contempt. “Treaties,” he replied, “are a matter for us to deal with. You, as a scientist, should not be troubled by these things. You should be doing your job and not have these kind of excuses.” At that point Saddam cocked his head, a signal for his security guards to remove Shahristani. As the trembling scientist was led from the room, Saddam turned his back.15 Shahristani was taken to the headquarters of the Mukhabarat, the domestic intelligence service, in the wealthy Mansour district of Baghdad where he was so severely tortured that his children did not recognize his bloated face when they were allowed to visit him. Eventually he was subjected to a show trial by a special security court and jailed for life.

  The primary motivation for Saddam’s acquisition of weapons of mass destruction was his desire for Iraq to be self-sufficient in weapons production and to become a dominant force in both regional and world politics. Chemical and biological weapons would diminish Iraq’s heavy dependency on foreign arms suppliers and enable it to defend itself from attack; nuclear weapons would make Iraq the first Arab superpower, capable of dominating its neighbors and in time fulfilling the long-held Baathist doctrine of creating a united Arab republic, headed, of course, by Saddam Hussein. Although in the mid-1970s Saddam’s main concern was still the consolidation of the Baathist revolution in Iraq, he was nevertheless keen to implement the Baathist doctrine beyond Iraq’s borders under his aegis. “The glory of the Arabs stems from the glory of Iraq,” he declared on one occasion. “Throughout history, whenever Iraq became mighty and flourished so did the Arab nation. This is why we are striving to make Iraq mighty, formidable, able and developed, and why we shall spare nothing to improve its welfare and to brighten the glory of the Iraqis.” Saddam remained committed to the notion of inheriting Nasser’s mantle as a radical Arab leader, but was aware of Iraq’s limitations, especially when it came to confronting Israel. For the time being, Saddam was content to opt for a pragmatic approach; as he openly admitted, the liberation of Palestine through military means was not feasible before building up a “scientifically, economically and militarily strong Iraq.”16

  In his desire to dominate the Arab agenda it was inevitable, therefore, that Saddam would eventually become embroiled in the intrigues of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Iraq up to that point had enjoyed an undistinguished history in its involvement in the various wars with Israel. The force sent to help the Palestinian Arabs fighting the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 had performed so badly that the government had ended up being accused of colluding with the British to give Palestine to the Jews. An Iraqi expeditionary force was unable to prevent the Israelis inflicting their emphatic blitzkrieg against the Arabs in 1967, and the Iraqis fared little better during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The Iraqis sent 30,000 troops and an armored division to help the Syrians who were battling to drive the Israelis from the Golan Heights, but a lack of tank transporters meant the tanks were late in arriving. The Syrians, who had begun hostilities without even informing the Iraqis of their plans, had given the Iraqi reinforcements a cool reception. The Iraqis were not even provided with maps, but simply given vague
directions indicating the location of the front line. They were a sitting target when the Israelis attacked, and lost more than 100 tanks and suffered heavy casualties. Saddam complained that throughout the battle he had to rely on the radio news to discover the fate of the Iraqi forces, and when the fighting was over he withdrew his forces from Syria in a huff.

  The issue of liberating Palestine from Zionist control remained, however, the most pressing issue of the day, and in the absence of a military option, by the 1970s the Arab states had turned to another cheap, but highly effective, means of waging war—terrorism. As with chemical weapons, terror cells are relatively cheap to run and are highly disruptive of the enemy. Although extremist Palestinian movements had been involved in international terrorism since the late 1960s, Iraq’s involvement had been at best peripheral; Iraq’s failure, for example, to back Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement during the 1970 Black September civil war in Jordan had not been forgotten by the PLO chairman. The other factor that weighed heavily against Iraq’s attempts to become directly involved in the liberation struggle was that, unlike Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt, it did not enjoy a common border with Israel, and it was therefore cumbersome for Palestinian groups to direct operations from Baghdad, from where they needed to pass through an intermediary before they could strike at an Israeli target.

  The turning point for Saddam came in the diplomatic aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War when the infamous shuttle diplomacy of Dr. Henry Kissinger, the U.S. secretary of state, resulted in persuading Anwar Sadat, the new Egyptian president, to pursue a peace dialogue with Israel, a process that would later result in the Camp David peace treaty. Arafat also appeared to be backing the Egyptian initiative. Anxious to isolate the Egyptians and portray itself as a truly radical regime, the Iraqi government attempted to forge its own alliance with the Palestinians. To this end the Iraqis went so far as to invite Yasser Arafat to join their cabinet as minister of Palestine affairs. The Iraqis also promised the Palestinians substantial financial aid. Arafat, who was still angry with the Baathists for failing to back him during Black September, and was keen not have the Iraqis assuming leadership of the Palestinian cause, declined the offer. Saddam was furious. He ordered the closure of Arafat’s offices in Baghdad and started supporting a number of radical Palestinian groups, who were bitterly opposed to any deal with the Israelis and who were also opposed to Arafat’s Fatah organization.

  This was to be Saddam’s first involvement in the world of international terrorism. Up to this point Saddam’s terror tactics had generally been confined to his own people and country, and on those occasions when his operatives ventured outside Iraq, it was generally to target dissident Iraqis, such as with the murders of deposed General Hardan al-Tikriti in Kuwait in 1971, and General Mahdi Saleh Samurrai in Beirut the same year. But with his patronage of the infamous Palestinian terrorist Sabri al-Banna, otherwise known as Abu Nidal or “father of the struggle,” Saddam was sponsoring a sophisticated network of fanatical terrorists. Even by the standards of Middle East terrorism, Abu Nidal, had acquired almost legendary status through his exploits, such as the bomb attacks against the Israeli airline El Al ticket desks at Rome and Vienna airports in December 1985, which killed 18 people and wounded 110, many of them American tourists. He was also held responsible in late 1984 for the murder of British diplomats Ken Whitty and Percy Norris in Athens and Bombay respectively, and the brutal murder in 1986 of British journalist Alec Collett, a videotape of whose execution, in retaliation for the American bombing raid on Libya, was sent to his relatives.17

  Abu Nidal had first moved to Baghdad in 1970 as chief representative of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah organization, which was the dominant force in the PLO. To start with he was more involved with Bakr than Saddam, but as Saddam increased his power, so the two men were required to work together. Relations between the two were always strained, mainly because they recognized that they both shared the same sense of ruthless ambition. Abu Nidal was also close to Tariq Aziz and Saadoun Shakir, Saddam’s cousin and the head of Iraqi intelligence. Shakir, who took his orders directly from Saddam, is known to have worked closely with Abu Nidal from the mid-1970s when Abu Nidal was mainly concentrating his energies on murdering his opponents in the Palestinian movement. Backed by Saddam, Abu Nidal spent the late 1970s waging war against the PLO both in Europe and the Middle East. The PLO’s representative in London, Said Hammadi, a leading advocate of opening a dialogue with Israel, was assassinated in 1978, and other PLO delegates were murdered in Paris and Kuwait. For good measure, Abu Nidal, who described his relationship with Baghdad as a “close alliance,” also conducted a series of terrorist attacks aimed at the neighboring Baathist regime in Syria, which was then Saddam’s sworn enemy. There were two attempts on the life of the Syrian foreign minister, Abdul Halim Khaddam, and in 1976 a team of Abu Nidal terrorists blew up the Semiramis Hotel in Damascus.

  Another infamous Palestinian terrorist who was harbored by Saddam during this period was Dr. Wadi Haddad, one of the founding members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the PLO group responsible for turning the Palestinian cause into a vehicle for international terrorism in the early 1970s. Together with Dr. George Habash, the group’s other founding member, the PLFP was responsible for the multiple hijacking of three aircraft at Dawson’s Field in Jordan and the massacre of twenty-six people at Lod airport in Israel. The group’s activities were so outrageous that they even merited condemnation by both the Soviet Union and China, and they were held responsible for King Hussein of Jordan’s decision to expel the PLO from his country during Black September. The PLFP moved to Damascus, but when Habash turned against the policy of carrying out international terrorist attacks, Haddad moved to Baghdad in 1972, where he formed the splinter Special Operations Group. It was from there that he organized the infamous kidnapping of OPEC oil ministers during their meeting in Vienna in December 1975 and the hijacking of an Israeli airliner to Entebbe, Uganda. One of Haddad’s closest associates during this period was the legendary Venezuelan terrorist known as “Carlos the Jackal.” In addition to staging their own terrorist operations, Haddad’s organization linked up with a wide variety of European terrorist groups, including Germany’s Baader-Meinhof gang and the Japanese “Red Army.” By 1977, when Saddam was effectively running Iraq, Haddad was described as “the spider in the net of the intertwined terrorist groups throughout the world.” When Haddad died, of natural causes, in 1978, he was buried in Baghdad with full military honors. According to an Iraqi defector, a former member of the Iraqi security service with special responsibility for training foreign terror groups who escaped from Baghdad in late 2000, at least fifty members of the PFLP continued to reside in Iraq until the 1990s, and made frequent use of the Mukhabarat’s terrorist training facilities.18

  Iraq’s dealings with terrorist groups such as those run by Abu Nidal and Wadi Haddad were handled by Saddam’s personal office, and it was as a direct result of Saddam’s support for these internationally condemned terrorist groups in the 1970s that the U.S. State Department added Iraq’s name to the list of countries accused of sponsoring terrorism. David Mack, who was political officer at the U.S. embassy’s interests section in Baghdad in the late 1970s, says the Iraqis made no attempt to conceal their involvement with the different terrorist groups. “We all knew precisely where Abu Nidal’s house was located, although, of course, we weren’t allowed to go there,” he said. “Saddam liked to keep these groups there for show.”19

  The closest Saddam ever came to admitting in public his support for the Palestinian terrorist groups was during an interview with Newsweek in July 1978. Asked why Baghdad had become a haven for both Palestinian and European terror groups, Saddam responded: “Regarding the Palestinians, it’s no secret: Iraq is open to them and they are free to train and plan [terrorist attacks] here.”20 By the summer of 1978 hardly a week passed when one of the terror groups linked to Baghdad was not committing some atrocity or another, whether in Paris,
London, or Islamabad. A former CIA officer who specialized in Iraq during the 1970s said there was never any doubt in the minds of American officials that Saddam was personally involved in ordering the terrorist attacks. “From the mid-1970s Saddam controlled everything in Baghdad. And if Saddam was providing these groups with a safe haven, he would expect something in return. For Saddam, there is no such thing as free room and board.” Indeed, by the late 1970s Saddam’s reputation for being a generous backer had drawn a wide array of dissident groups to base themselves in Iraq: the hard-line Kurdish PKK movement, members of Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood, and even Ayatollah Khomeini, who posed the biggest threat to the shah of Iran, all enjoyed Saddam’s support. “Saddam liked to use these groups because it gave him great flexibility,” according to the former CIA desk officer. “He could turn them on and off at will. So long as they did his bidding he was happy to support them.”21 Abu Nidal’s group was one that frequently fell out with Saddam, particularly over Saddam’s insistence that the Palestinian terrorist continue his attacks against Syria. Abu Nidal, who regarded himself as a significant player on the Palestinian political scene, sometimes refused to obey Saddam’s instructions. As a result he would temporarily close his offices in Baghdad and relocate to places like Tripoli, Libya, where he found the interference of Colonel Gadhafi in his activities less intrusive. Eventually Saddam and Abu Nidal would reach a reconciliation and the Palestinian would move back to Baghdad.