Saddam : His Rise and Fall

by Con Coughlin

  Despite the grueling demands of the war, Saddam still found time in his busy schedule to eliminate his enemies. Although the savage measures he had taken against the Shiites had effectively destroyed their ability to oppose his rule, Saddam was concerned about the activities of Ayatollah Sayyed Mahdi al-Hakim, a highly respected and influential Shiite cleric who lived in London with his wife and four children. Hakim had been living in exile in Britain since 1969 when he had been accused of being a spy by the Baathists and forced to flee. Seventeen members of his family, men and women, young and old, had been executed by Saddam’s government. During the Iran-Iraq War, Hakim had become involved in attempts to rally Iraqi opposition groups to intensify their efforts to remove Saddam. His activities soon came to the attention of Saddam’s ever-watchful security services. Toward the end of 1987, Hakim received an invitation to address a Muslim conference in Sudan. Accepting the invitation, he arrived there on January 17, 1988. As he was waiting in the lobby of the Hilton Hotel in Khartoum, three members of an Iraqi assassination squad walked over to where the learned man was sitting. One shot him at point-blank range while the others each fired two shots in the air. The three assassins then walked calmly out of the hotel and headed for a waiting car bearing diplomatic number plates, which then drove them to the Iraqi embassy in Khartoum. A few days later they flew back to Baghdad.

  TEN

  The Invader

  Saddam had won the war and, for him, that was all that counted. The country was virtually bankrupt, its infrastructure lay in ruins, and the population was exhausted by the demands of the war effort. But Saddam was only interested in making sure the victory played to his advantage. The guns had hardly fallen silent at the front before Saddam’s arc de triomphe appeared in the center of Baghdad. It consisted of two pairs of giant crossed swords, held by huge bronze fists embedded in concrete. Lest anyone be in any doubt about who was responsible for the triumph over Iran, the fists holding the sabers were modeled on those of the Iraqi president1 Throughout the war Saddam’s propaganda machine had constantly sought to compare the exploits of the Iraqi president with heroic figures from antiquity. With the war over, Saddam sought to pay tribute to these illustrious ancestors by holding official burial ceremonies for the remains of the Babylonian kings and building new tombs on their graves. At the same time he ordered a massive reconstruction of the site of ancient Babylon. Whole sections of the ancient ruins were bulldozed to be replaced by yellow-bricked walls. Tens of thousands of bricks used in the construction bore a special inscription reminding future generations that the “Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar was rebuilt in the era of the leader President Saddam Hussein.”

  Despite Saddam’s attempts at triumphalism, however, there were clear signs that eight years of relentless conflict had severely dented his confidence. Saddam’s sense of paranoia was highly developed at the best of times, and the pressures the war had brought to bear on his leadership had made him even more suspicious. His public appearances became fewer, and he made good use of the network of bunkers and palaces that had been set up during the war to protect himself against any possible coup attempts. While Iraqis took to the streets of Baghdad in their hundreds of thousands in the immediate aftermath of the cease-fire announcement to celebrate the war’s end, Saddam was well aware that the euphoria would be short-lived, and that it would not be long before the people began to ask searching fundamental questions about their president’s judgment, and in particular whether the eight years of sacrifice that they had just endured was either necessary or worthwhile. Saddam suspected, correctly, that his political and military colleagues would soon be engaged in attempts to overthrow him. Foreign diplomats based in Baghdad at the conclusion of the Iran-Iraq War noted that Saddam had become more reclusive in his general demeanor. In their view he did not enjoy the fruits of victory, but locked himself away from the public view. As one former diplomat commented: “After the war there was very little triumphalism in evidence in Baghdad.”2

  During the latter stages of the conflict Saddam had formed the habit of moving from one of his presidential palaces to another every few days. Each palace looked much like the other, and was fully equipped with its own orchards and vegetable gardens, which provided a guaranteed food supply. The walls of all the palaces were specially reinforced to withstand a missile attack, and each of them had its own security units. It is not known precisely how many of these palaces were built during the 1980s; one indication of their preponderance is the fact that no fewer than fifteen of Saddam’s palaces were known to exist within a thirty-one-mile radius of northern Kurdistan. A Western diplomat who traveled widely throughout Iraq during the late 1980s reported that virtually everywhere he visited he found large, high-walled fortresses under construction, even in the most remote areas of the country. All of them had a similar design, and when he asked local people what they were, he was informed that they were regional centers of government. The diplomat later learned that the fortresses were in fact Saddam’s new palaces, places where he could seek protection from his enemies. Apart from providing a sanctuary for the president, the heavily fortified palaces provided a convenient hiding place for Iraq’s military assets, particularly the nonconventional weapons. All the palaces were linked to one another by a number of different communications systems so that, if one system failed, there were at least two or three others that could keep the presidential party in touch with developments elsewhere in the country at any given time.

  A meeting convened by Saddam of the director-generals of the country’s key ministries in the late 1980s provides a chilling insight into his state of mind at this time. The officials were ordered to assemble at a certain point at 8 A.M. When they arrived they were put on a bus with blackened windows and then driven around Baghdad. They changed buses twice, and the exercise was repeated. The officials were then taken to a palace on the outskirts of the city, where they were searched and required to empty their pockets of all their belongings, which were placed in envelopes with their names written on them. Again they boarded the bus and were driven to another palace, where they were searched again and were ordered to wash their hands in disinfectant. They were then shown into a large hall and ordered to take a seat, where they waited for three hours. By now it was late afternoon, and none of the officials had been given anything to eat or allowed to go to the bathroom. “We were simply too afraid to ask,” recalled one of the officials present. “We thought Saddam was going to declare a new war or something. All his bodyguards seemed so serious.”

  Finally, at about 6 P.M., Saddam entered the room, and the officials duly rose to their feet and started clapping. Saddam made a short, rambling speech about the state of the nation, and the need for government officials to carry out their duties efficiently. “He did not say anything interesting or anything that was new.” After thirty minutes he left. The bemused officials were then invited to form a queue at the side of the platform. As they took their places they noticed that huge piles of Iraqi dinars were stacked on a table at one side of the stage. Each of the officials was invited onto the stage, and handed bundles of dinars, which were each worth thousands of dollars. Having collected their “present” from Saddam, they were taken into a garden at the side of the hall where an attempt had been made to lay out a sumptuous feast. The only problem was that little thought had been given to the presentation of the food, and the cakes and jellies were mixed up with legs of lamb and stuffed chicken, which had the effect of making the whole spread appear deeply unappetizing. The famished officials packed it away nonetheless, before being escorted from the palace, put on the bus, and returned to their original assembly point, having made various detours along the way. “As government officials all of us knew the country pretty well, but none of us had the faintest idea where we had been,” said the official who attended the meeting. “The sole purpose of the exercise was intimidation; Saddam simply wanted to remind us who was the boss. He gave us the money and the banquet to show how we would be rewarded if we did
as he asked.”3

  If anything, Saddam’s personal security after the war increased, rather than diminished. So long as Iraq was at war Saddam calculated it was unlikely that there would be a popular movement to remove him, and by murdering his health minister at a cabinet meeting in 1982 he was confident that he had persuaded his close colleagues against trying to unseat him. After the war Saddam convinced himself that he was under threat, with the result that his security arrangements intensified. He maintained the nomadic existence he had undertaken during the war years. The fact that the palaces looked alike was very much to his advantage. If he gave a television interview, for example, it was impossible to work out his location from the backdrop. On the increasingly rare occasions that Saddam appeared in public, details of the event would appear in the Baghdad press only after it had taken place. If Saddam’s enemies wanted to get rid of him, their first task was to find him.

  Of all the problems with which Saddam had to contend at the end of the war the one that immediately caused him most difficulty was the conduct of his own family. During the war years Saddam had succeeded in containing the rivalries among various clans within his family that were forever jostling to increase their power and influence within the government’s ruling Tikriti clique. Relations between the Ibrahims and the Majids had not quite reached the level of the Montagues and Capulets in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, but Saddam had his work cut out repairing the rift with his three half brothers that had been caused by his choice of groom for his eldest daughter, Raghad (see Chapter Eight). Saddam had managed to effect a reconciliation with the Ibrahim wing of his family toward the end of the war, and his three half brothers—Barzan, Watban, and Sabawi—were rehabilitated and given high-ranking jobs in the regime. Sabawi took over Barzan’s old job as head of the Mukhabarat and Watban was made head of State Internal Security, while Barzan remained in Geneva as ambassador to the United Nations.

  Saddam’s success in keeping his family under control, however, proved to be short-lived. The cause of the new rift that erupted in October 1988, just two months after the cease-fire with Iran had been negotiated, was Saddam’s alleged infidelity to his wife Sajida. Rumors about Saddam’s unfaithfulness to Iraq’s first lady had become commonplace in Baghdad during the war. Saddam was known to have a penchant for blondes and, in an attempt to keep her husband from straying, at some time in the mid-1980s Sajida had changed the color of her own hair. Reports of Saddam’s infidelities included the claim that he had an affair with the wife of an Armenian merchant living in Baghdad, while another girlfriend was supposedly the daughter of a former Iraqi ambassador. But the affair that was to provoke Saddam’s biggest family crisis was his relationship with Samira Shahbandar, the wife of the director-general of Iraqi Airways.

  Precisely when the affair began is not known, although it may have dated back to 1986, the period when Saddam was embroiled in a power struggle with his military chiefs and the first intimations of his mental instability began to manifest themselves. Samira filled all of Saddam’s requirements for a potential mistress—she was tall, blonde, articulate, in her mid-thirties, and married. Numerous Iraqi exiles who were intimately involved in the regime at the time have claimed that from the mid-1980s onward Saddam’s philandering was so well established that it followed a set pattern. “He particularly enjoyed having affairs with married women because it was his way of humiliating their husbands,” commented an official who worked at the Presidential Palace for several years.4 The woman would be taken against her will from her home while the husband was out and brought to a special house in the Mansour district of Baghdad, not far from the hunting club that had been Saddam’s favorite socializing haunt in the early 1970s. Once Saddam had finished with his assignation, the woman would be returned to her home later that same night.

  Most of Saddam’s dalliances were arranged through one of his bodyguards, Kamel Hana Geogeo, who had worked for Saddam in one capacity or another for nearly twenty years. Geogeo was the son of Saddam’s personal chef, and one of his duties was to act as the presidential food taster; Saddam reckoned that the cook would not deliberately poison his own son. It was through Geogeo that Saddam came to know Samira. Unlike his previous assignations, however, on this occasion Saddam struck up a serious relationship with Samira, who, unlike his wife, came from a well-respected Baghdad family. In the past Sajida, the mother of Saddam’s five children, had been aware of her husband’s philandering, but only intervened when one of Saddam’s conquests looked as if she might pose a threat to the marriage. In those instances she would call on one of Saddam’s half brothers, either Barzan or Sabawi, who ran the country’s all-powerful security forces, to intervene. On one occasion, for example, Barzan had arrested one of Saddam’s mistresses and sent her into exile in Turkey.

  When Sajida learned that Saddam was becoming attached to Samira, she resolved to break up the relationship. With Barzan in Geneva, Sajida made the mistake of imploring her eldest son, Uday, to intervene. According to an account of the affair that was widely circulated in Baghdad at the time, Sajida was so consumed with jealousy that she almost had a nervous breakdown. She told Uday that unless he acted quickly, Saddam would marry Samira and their inheritance would be at risk. Uday reacted true to character. He learned that Geogeo had been invited to a party being hosted by one of Iraq’s vice presidents on the “Island of Pigs,” the island in the center of the Tigris not far from the Presidential Palace that was a favorite picnic spot for Baghdadis. The party was being thrown in honor of the wife of the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, as part of Iraq’s attempts to improve relations with the Arab world after the war with Iran. Uday arrived at the party with his bodyguards and went straight to Geogeo, whom he felled with a single blow from a heavy club. Uday then proceeded to beat the unconscious victim as he lay on the ground. Geogeo later died in the hospital.5

  In the past Saddam had always turned a blind eye to his children’s excesses. Neither of his sons had known much discipline during their childhood. Since taking control of the Olympic Committee in 1984, Uday had done little to endear himself to the Iraqi people, even if, in his father’s eyes at least, he was being groomed for the succession. His only contribution to the war effort had been to keep Baghdad’s nightlife in business while most other young Iraqis of his age were engaged at the front. There were constant reports of him being involved in drunken brawls at nightclubs, and he was implicated in at least two other murders before killing his father’s food taster. His first victim was an army colonel who had opposed Uday’s attempts to seduce his teenage daughter, while the second was an army officer who had taken exception to him making passes at his wife in a Baghdad discotheque.6 Perversely, Uday’s previous murders had won approval at the Presidential Palace, where his father appeared to take pride in the fact that his son and heir had been “bloodied.”

  If Saddam had been willing to excuse Uday’s past excesses, he was not prepared to have his son interfering with his own love life. The killing of Geogeo provoked a furious reaction from Saddam, who immediately denounced his son on television, and ordered that he should stand trial for murder. The Arab press was soon filled with lurid accounts of Saddam going to his son’s house and beating him up and then, when his wife intervened on her son’s side, beating her up, too.7Another account, provided by a man who acted as one of Uday’s “doubles,” claimed that Uday was so overcome with remorse that he swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills and was taken to the same hospital where Geogeo had been taken after Uday attacked him. Unlike Geogeo, Uday’s life was saved by the medical staff. As they were pumping out his stomach, Saddam arrived in the emergency room, pushed the doctors aside, and hit him in the face, shouting: “Your blood will flow like my friend’s.”8

  Given the considerable political strain Saddam was under following the disastrous war with Iran, the domestic scandal caused by Uday’s murder of the presidential food taster did little to improve the president’s popularity. Aware that he needed to take firm action if he
was to stand any chance of salvaging the ruling family’s reputation, Saddam ordered that both his wife and Uday disappear from public view. This was particularly embarrassing for Sajida, who had been hosting various state functions in Baghdad in honor of President Mubarak’s wife Suzanne when the murder took place. When Mrs. Mubarak went to the Baghdad airport to catch her return flight home to Egypt on October 21, Iraq’s first lady was curiously absent from the farewell ceremonies. The day after the killing Uday’s name was dropped from the masthead of the local sports newspaper of which he was nominally editor in chief. A few days later he was stripped of his official positions as head of the Iraqi Olympic Committee and the Iraq Football Federation. A brief announcement stated simply that he had resigned “for personal reasons.” Uday’s resignation from the football association was particularly embarrassing as he had just been unanimously reelected by its members—all of whom belonged to the Baath Party—to serve another four-year term. He was also required to stand down from his newly acquired post as rector of the Saddam University for Science and Technology in Baghdad.