by Con Coughlin
Members of Saddam’s immediate family were reaching the age when they could assume positions of responsibility in the government. It has become the habit among secular Arab despots to groom their sons as their political heirs; Bashir Asad became president of Syria on the death of his father, and both President Mubarak of Egypt and Colonel Gadhafi of Libya gave their sons privileged government positions in the hope that they might prove worthy successors. Saddam was no different, and when Uday graduated in engineering from the University of Baghdad in 1984, he rewarded his eldest son by appointing him director of Iraq’s Olympic Committee. Even the most committed sports enthusiast would be hard-pressed to recall the last occasion on which an Iraqi athlete qualified for an Olympic event, but the Olympic Committee was more of a showcase position that enabled the twenty-year-old Uday to learn the art of government. In fact most of Uday’s responsibilities concerned youth development, a task for which he was singularly unsuited in view of the unruly, selfish, and thuggish demeanor he had displayed both in high school and the university. Uday had graduated with an average grade of 98.5 percent, an unlikely score given his known preference for nightclubs over classrooms. It has also been claimed that tutors who were not prepared to give him the highest grade possible were tortured and lost their jobs.3
With both sons reaching marriageable age, Saddam had an opportunity to further his family’s dynastic ambitions. In late 1984 Saddam arranged for Uday to marry his cousin Saja, who was the daughter of Saddam’s half brother Barzan. As Saddam himself had shown with his own marriage to his first cousin, it was not uncommon for Iraqi men to marry close relatives. Although the Baath Party had made a heroic effort to modernize Iraq’s economic and social structure in the sixteen years it had been in power, the ties of family and tribe remained immutable, and arranged marriages remained the norm. Barzan was still living in exile in Geneva following the family feud that had broken out the previous year over Saddam’s refusal to allow Barzan’s son to marry Saddam’s eldest daughter, Raghad. By allowing one of Barzan’s daughters to marry his eldest son, Saddam clearly hoped to settle the feud and persuade Barzan to return home and provide him with some much-needed moral support during the dark days of the war.
The union between Uday and Saja duly took place, and everything appeared set for a formal reconciliation between Saddam and his half brother. But Saddam had failed to appreciate just how out of control his eldest son had become, even after entering adulthood. Neither son had exactly been subjected to much discipline during their childhood, and the coffee shops and bazaars of Baghdad were frequently regaled with tales of the latest indiscretions of both Uday and Qusay. Their favorite haunt was the rooftop discotheque of the Melia Mansour Hotel, and Qusay, who was rather more fastidious in his choice of companion, was said to import blondes from Scandinavia for his personal entertainment. Even though both sons aspired to a playboy lifestyle, the failure of Uday’s marriage after less than three months was truly scandalous even by the low moral standards of the Hussein clan. The precise reason for the marital breakdown has never been adequately explained, although it has become generally accepted within Iraqi society that the principal cause of the split was Uday’s impotence.4 Despite Uday’s love of fast cars and racy nightclubs, suggestions persisted that he rarely achieved sexual fulfillment, which was the underlying psychological cause of his violent temper. When the brokenhearted Saja returned to her father’s home in Geneva, it was generally accepted that the marriage had not been consummated. She returned home covered with cuts and bruises, the result of a savage beating she had received as a parting gift from Uday. Frustrated by his own inadequacy, violent outbursts were to become one of Uday’s defining characteristics. Barzan, meanwhile, was less inclined than ever to contemplate a reconciliation with his half brother.
Saddam enjoyed more success in arranging the marriage of his other son, Qusay, who was quieter in temperament and more studious than his elder brother. For once one of Saddam’s children was allowed to marry outside the family, although not outside the Tikriti clan. Qusay took for his bride Sahar, the daughter of one of the few genuine heroes of the war with Iran, General Maher Abdul Rashid, the Iraqi officer who was credited with having saved Saddam from capture by the Iranians in 1982. Although Saddam and Rashid had their differences (see Chapter Eight), Rashid was a Tikriti, after all, and a marriage into one of the more respectable Iraqi military families would undoubtedly raise the Husseins’ social standing, a factor that was as important for Saddam as it was for his wife, Sajida. Qusay’s marriage in 1985 was as much a political affair as it was dynastic, and any romantic element seems to have been completely lacking. As soon as two children had been produced, the marriage was dissolved. The collapse of this marriage might also have had something to do with the fact that, by the end of the war, Saddam, who was preternaturally jealous of the success enjoyed by any of his military officers, had placed his son’s father-in-law under house arrest. The final piece in Saddam’s dynastic jigsaw was put in place the same year when his second eldest daughter, Rana, married another of Saddam’s first cousins, Saddam Kamel al-Majid, who was the younger brother of her elder sister’s husband, Hussein Kamel al-Majid. By strengthening the ruling family’s ties to the al-Majids, the relatives of Saddam’s natural father, Saddam increased the estrangement of the al-Ibrahims, his stepfather’s family, for his three half brothers had all nurtured the aspiration that their own sons might become betrothed to one of the president’s daughters.
Saddam’s preoccupation with feathering his family’s nest while the rest of the country was suffering the bitter privations of war did little to improve his popularity among Iraqis. Stories about the venality of the Hussein clan, and particularly their interest in acquiring property, became commonplace. In 1985, to accommodate the requirements of his growing family, Saddam was said to have sequestered an entire town along the banks of the Euphrates. The owners of the valuable land and houses were paid sums of money determined by Saddam’s family rather than by market conditions. When Saddam came to hear that the evicted landowners were less than pleased with the compensation they had received, he exploded, “They were without jackets and shoes before me.”5 Any number of lurid myths began to circulate about Saddam’s family. It was widely believed, though never confirmed, that a young man who had taken a fancy to Saddam’s youngest daughter, Hala, his favorite and the only one of his five children who was unmarried, was buried up to his neck and stoned to death. And even though Saddam had passed draconian anticorruption laws to deter Iraqis from profiteering from foreign contracts, his ruling inner circle seemed to have no qualms about ostentatiously flaunting their wealth. Adnan Khairallah, Saddam’s brother-in-law and defense minister, collected a huge fleet of expensive cars. He would import a dozen Mercedes at a time and had a chauffeur for each. Adnan’s greed made a deep impression on his nephews, Uday and Qusay, who began collecting their own fleets of cars, although the younger members of the Hussein clan were more interested in sports cars. In Saddam’s view, the wealth being accumulated by his family was nothing less than what they deserved. “We have grabbed the lines of the sun,” he declared on one occasion, “and we will not go.”6 So far as Saddam was concerned, Iraq’s vast oil wealth was the exclusive domain of his family.
The lavish expenditure of Saddam’s ruling elite contrasted sharply with the sacrifices demanded from ordinary Iraqis to fund the war effort. In 1983, for example, when Iraqi oil exports were at their lowest, Saddam called on Iraqi civilians to donate their jewelry and savings to the nation, “to allow women or elderly people to take part in the battle for the homeland, each according to his or her ability.” Taha Yassin Ramadan, the Iraqi deputy prime minister, put it more succinctly. “This is a referendum in favour of the party…in favour of the revolution and the leadership of Saddam Hussein.” The response was immense, whether from peasant farmers donating their life savings or elegant Baghdad ladies carrying their Moroccan leather jewel cases to the collecting centers. The finance minister
was so impressed by the amount collected that he claimed “the gold amassed will be an extra reserve to strengthen the Iraqi currency.” In theory, all the money and valuables handed over were merely on loan for the duration of the war, and would be handed back when the war ended. In most cases, however, the Iraqis received nothing in return for their generosity.
By far Saddam’s biggest achievement during the mid-1980s was to turn Iraq’s disastrous performance in the war against Iran to his, and the nation’s, advantage. Iraq’s “voluntary withdrawal” from Iran in the summer of 1982, as the regime referred to the defeats it had suffered at the hands of the Iranians, had fooled no one, least of all the Iraqi public. The “second Qadisiya” was now more commonly known as “Saddam’s war,” and the wholesale failure of the Iraqi military to achieve any of the stated war aims was Saddam’s personal responsibility. The setbacks, however, only made Saddam more determined than ever to reassert himself as the undisputed ruler of the Iraqi people and their destiny. The purges carried out on senior military officers during the disastrous summer of 1982, together with the reorganization of the RCC, had reaffirmed Saddam’s position as the country’s supreme leader. In late 1982 he convened a special meeting of the Baath Party’s Regional Command at which he sought, and received, confirmation of his absolute control over the machinery of government. The final report of the Ninth Party Congress stated unequivocally that “Saddam Hussein is the symbol of freedom, independence, pride, integrity and hope for a better future for Iraq and the Arab nation.” But with absolute power came absolute responsibility, and the responsibility for the perilous plight Iraq faced from the ayatollahs rested squarely on Saddam’s shoulders.
From the summer of 1982 onward the main thrust of the Iranian counteroffensive was directed at Basra, Iraq’s second largest city and the capital of the country’s Shiite community. The Iranians’ objective was to cut the main Baghdad-Basra highway and to take control of the Shiite heartlands. The Iraqis, however, proved better at defending their positions than they had been at going on the offensive, and were able to repulse the Iranian attacks and inflict heavy losses. From this point onward the conflict was locked in stalemate, with neither side able to make a significant breakthrough. The Iraqi engineers were fully occupied constructing an elaborate network of defensive positions that were not so very different from those constructed in northern France during the First World War. Well dug in, with a plentiful supply of ammunition and two other major defensive lines to protect the Iraqi heartland in the event of an Iranian breakthrough, Saddam’s approach was to grind the Iranians into submission. The Iranians persisted with the same tactic that had succeeded in driving the Iraqis out of Khorramshahr. The basij, the young suicidal Iranian volunteers who were prepared to walk through minefields to claim their place in heaven, persisted with their human-wave attacks against the Iraqi positions. But the Iraqis had learned their lesson during the humiliating retreat from Khorramshahr, and were easily able to fight off these kamikaze tactics. On the rare occasions that the Iranians succeeded in making a breakthrough, the Iraqis were able to regain the initiative by calling in their helicopter gunships and fighter aircraft.
Saddam displayed considerable political skill during this period in turning the Iranian counteroffensive to his advantage. Somehow the Iranian attempts to capture Iraqi territory enabled the Iraqi government to achieve something it had failed to do in the early years of the war—unite the nation. With their backs to the wall, fighting to defend their territory and to prevent an invasion by the Iranians, the people of Iraq were transformed. Not only did the army fight with greater tenacity, there was also a noticeable drop in the volume of dissent. As one Western diplomat who was based in Baghdad during this period recalled, the bottom line was that the Iraqis were more afraid of the Iranians than they were of Saddam. “The Iraqi people were well aware that Saddam was a dictator and treated people badly if they crossed him, but they were far more alarmed at the prospect of the Iranian revolution being exported to Iraq. They wanted Saddam to be strong and they wanted him to win.”7
The Iranians’ three-pronged attack on Basra in late summer 1982 set the pattern for the dozens of others that would follow. The Iranians gained ground—in this instance about four miles—but were eventually stopped and driven back, losing large numbers of men in the process. Well protected behind their fortifications, the Iraqis showed a new spirit, fighting with skill and determination as they defended their homeland rather than having to hold some nebulous, unnatural line inside Iran. Saddam was highly successful in publicizing the military’s success in halting these Iranian onslaughts as a great victory. Rallies and celebrations were held in Baghdad and in towns and villages throughout the country. The speeches made by Saddam and the Baath leadership made a point of blaming Iran for the outbreak of hostilities in 1980. The demands made at the start of the war, such as the realignment of the border along the Shatt al-Arab and the resolution of Iraq’s claim to Arab territories in Iran, were quietly dropped. All Saddam was looking for now was the restoration of the status quo ante of 1980.
Iraq’s success in repelling the Iranian human-wave attacks, however, made little impression on the ayatollahs in Teheran. The Iranians’ main objective remained the capture of Basra and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Their strategy was to besiege the city and destroy its garrison or force it to surrender, or to bypass it completely and drive into the west, effectively cutting Iraq in two. The Iranians reasoned that by seizing a sizable slice of territory in southern Iraq, the Shiite heartland, it would be possible to announce a provisional government to which the opponents of Saddam Hussein could rally. The fear that the Iranians would attempt to implement a similar strategy in the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm in 1991 was one of the reasons the victorious allies refused to support the Shiite revolt against Saddam.
The Iranians remained determined to take Basra even though they were unable to achieve a significant breakthrough. Different attacks were launched in different sectors, each one gaining a little ground and nibbling away at the Iraqi border areas. No matter how great the sacrifice, the ayatollahs would not give up on their objective. As a consequence the casualties on both sides were horrendous. By 1984 Iraq had suffered at least 65,000 killed, with at least three to five times as many wounded and between 50,000 to 60,000 combatants taken prisoner. By comparison the Iranians had lost up to 180,000 killed, with as many as 500,000 injured.8 The casualty figures were far higher than anything Iraq had experienced since independence, and there was hardly a family in the country that had not suffered some loss. The manpower situation was so bad by the end of 1984 that the government had to revert to calling up seventeen-year-olds for service. Saddam tried to cushion the discontent caused by the appalling waste of life at the front by making generous payments and benefits available to bereaved families and widows. Even so, there was further public disquiet in Iraq about the level of casualties and from 1984 Saddam ordered a change in tactics that were designed to reduce the level of casualties at the front. The Iraqis relied even more on heavy artillery and air strikes to repel the frequent human-wave attacks being launched by the Iranians. And the Iraqis managed to harass the Iranians by launching raids deep inside Iranian territory, in the hope of demonstrating the incompetence of the authorities in Teheran in protecting their own people.
The only breakthrough of any significance made by the Iranians during the war of attrition, as this period in the conflict became known, came in early 1984 when the Iranians captured the Majnun Islands, two thin strips of territory, loaded with oil, that commanded the northern approach to Basra. The Iranian operation was brilliantly executed. Attacking at night, Iranian commandos in small fiberglass boats had made their way silently through the Howeiza marshes, taking the few Iraqis guarding the levees by surprise. By dawn the Iranians were fully in control of both islands, north and south, and well dug in. They constructed a pontoon bridge to bring up supplies and fresh troops. Within days they had increased the bridgehead to
some 30,000 troops and had built a dirt causeway linking the Majnun Islands to the mainland in Iran. The Iraqis counterattacked time after time, trying to drive the Iranians into the swamps and back over the border. But the reed-filled marshes got the better of them. The heavy undergrowth fouled the propellers of Iraq’s amphibious tanks, making them an easy target for the Iranian gunners. Saddam, furious that his troops were unable to dislodge the stubborn Iranians, decided that there was only one option available to him—to use the poison gas now being manufactured at his new chemical weapons plants that had come on-line at Salman Pak and Samarra.
Iraqi pilots dumped canisters from Soviet-, German-, and French-built helicopters. A small electric pump inside the drums triggered on impact, dispersing the mixture into a deadly cloud. In other attacks the helicopters sprayed the Iranians with a greasy yellow liquid that filled the area with the odor of garlic. The Iranians, who had no protective clothing, fell ill immediately. Within minutes they began vomiting a yellowish liquid, and their skin turned red. By the time the medics reached the battlefield, some of the troops were already dead, their faces horribly blackened by the gas. Others had amber-colored blisters all over their bodies and were having trouble breathing.9