Saddam : His Rise and Fall

by Con Coughlin

  Initially Saddam tried to keep the scandal a family secret, but reports soon began to appear in the foreign press, and Saddam was obliged to go public. Uday was jailed and a special commission set up to investigate the killing, and Saddam declared that if the commission held Uday responsible, he would be put on trial for murder. The manner in which the court was set up and the background lobbying that took place to secure Uday’s eventual release is highly revealing about the nature of the byzantine politics that lay at the heart of Saddam’s regime. The judge appointed to conduct the investigation, Abdel Wahab Hussein al-Douri, was in fact a cousin of the vice-chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri. The commission was quickly assisted in its deliberations when Geogeo’s father, who was, after all, employed as Saddam’s personal cook, asked for the charges to be dropped. In addition he invoked the tribal custom of appealing to Saddam to spare the life of Uday. Saddam was subjected to intensive lobbying on Uday’s behalf by Sajida and her brother, Adnan Khairallah, the Iraqi defense minister, and Saddam’s first cousin. Sajida railed at Saddam, demanding to know why he should punish Uday for killing the food taster when he had done nothing about Uday’s previous killings. “Why arrest him?” she reportedly asked her husband. “After all, it is not the first time he has killed. Nor is he the only one in his family who has killed.”9 The latter remark was clearly a dig at Saddam’s own youthful transgressions.

  The reluctance of the judicial commission to upset the president, combined with the intensive lobbying that was undertaken by Uday’s relatives, resulted in the case being dropped. Saddam remained furious with Uday for having the gall to intrude upon his romantic liaisons, and his eldest son was sent into exile to Geneva to join his half uncle, Barzan al-Tikriti, who himself was still sulking over Saddam’s refusal to allow his son to marry one of the president’s daughters. Uday’s banishment to a country like Switzerland, which prided itself on its civility, was no doubt intended to curb his wilder instincts. But Saddam’s hopes that Geneva would become a finishing school for his errant son were short-lived. Reports of Uday’s behavior in Baghdad had reached the attention of the Swiss authorities, and when Barzan and Uday applied for their diplomatic residence permits, they approved Barzan’s while postponing a decision over Uday. A few weeks later the Swiss made a formal request to Uday to leave the country. Even while his application for diplomatic status was pending, he had managed to involve himself in an altercation with a Swiss policeman, in which he pulled a knife during a row at a restaurant in Geneva. Uday’s departure was so abrupt that his plane crossed paths with that of his mother, who was unaware of his expulsion and was traveling to Switzerland to see him. He returned to Baghdad, where a reconciliation of sorts was effected with his father. Uday received a presidential pardon, was reelected unanimously as president of the Iraqi Olympic Committee, and was allowed to resume many of his former activities. Former Iraqi officials who went into exile after the Gulf War reported that Uday had developed into a carbon copy of his father. “He is rude and shows no respect. He is a bully and thug.”10

  If Saddam was prepared to come to terms with his son, the same cannot be said of his relations with his wife. It was because of Sajida’s jealousy over Saddam’s mistress that Uday had been encouraged to murder Geogeo in the first place. As Iraq’s first lady, Sajida herself was virtually immune from any form of retribution, especially as the press reports of Geogeo’s murder had made it clear that it was Saddam, and not his wife, who was ultimately responsible for the scandal by having the affair in the first place. Unable to avenge himself directly on his wife, Saddam resolved to punish her by acting against her brother and his childhood friend, Adnan Khairallah.

  By 1989 Saddam and Adnan, who had grown up together in Khairallah Tulfah’s house in Tikrit, had been friends, companions, and colleagues for more than thirty years. Adnan had been a key ally in Saddam’s rise to power. His appointment as defense minister in 1977 had been a watershed moment in Saddam’s preparations to take over the presidency, as it meant Saddam no longer had to contend with any threat from the military establishment. Adnan had worked closely with Saddam during the Iran-Iraq War. Like his father, Khairallah Tulfah, he was not averse to exploiting his position for personal gain. Apart from acquiring a fortune in real estate deals with his father, Adnan had also skimmed off millions of dollars in commissions on the arms deals he had negotiated on behalf of the government. By 1989, when the rest of the country was still suffering the austerity of the war years, Adnan had acquired an estimated five hundred cars for his personal use.

  Relations had already been strained between Saddam and Adnan before the row over Uday became public. As defense minister, Adnan had claimed some of the glory for the “victory” over Iran for himself, and was coming to see himself more and more as Saddam’s heir apparent. Saddam was always deeply suspicious of colleagues who looked as though they might be in a position to challenge him. Unlike Saddam, Adnan had attended the prestigious Baghdad Military Academy as a young man, and had made a reputation for himself as a highly competent military officer. A long-standing member of the Baath, Adnan was courteous and was capable of presenting his ideas in a professional, military manner. Before becoming defense minister, he had served in Iraq’s 10th Armored Brigade, the “Golden Brigade,” and unlike most of the other members of the regime, he had not been involved in the atrocities and torture conducted by Saddam’s security officials. Consequently he was popular with his fellow officers. During the war with Iran Adnan’s superior military knowledge and capability became a source of constant friction with Saddam. If, for example, an Iraqi officer withdrew from an engagement with the enemy, Adnan was able to grasp the tactical explanation for the maneuver. Saddam, on the other hand, who had no military training, would interpret any retreat as cowardice, and demand that the officer responsible be executed. Relations between Saddam and Adnan had become so strained during the war that Adnan seriously considered resigning his position as defense minister, but was persuaded to stay by his father, Khairallah Tulfah, who, although elderly and infirm, continued to enjoy his status as the regime’s unofficial “godfather” until his death in the 1990s.

  After the war, as criticism of Saddam’s leadership qualities mounted, articles began appearing in the Arab press suggesting the possibility that Adnan Khairallah might replace Saddam as president. The articles had a similar theme; Adnan was better trained, more professional, and more reasonable than Saddam and was better suited to running the country. Furthermore, Iraq was a nation in which successful military officers had previously taken control of the government. Saddam’s intelligence officers kept him fully informed about the articles appearing in the foreign press, and also about the impact they were having on the ruling elite in Baghdad. His suspicions about Adnan were further heightened by reports that he had become rather too familiar with the CIA officials who had been based in Baghdad during the war, and had provided Iraq with crucial intelligence material.11

  Adnan’s decision to side publicly with his sister in the dispute over Saddam’s mistress was the last straw. Saddam was aware that, true to the Arab tradition, Adnan would always stand by his blood relatives when it came to any dispute. And as defense minister Adnan was also responsible for Saddam’s personal protection. In this respect Adnan’s position was not helped in January 1989 when Saddam was forced to cancel the annual Iraq Army Day celebrations—the first held since the end of the war—after his ever-vigilant security agents uncovered a plot to kill him during the military procession. A group of dissident military officers, no doubt still seething at Saddam’s bungling during the war effort, had planned to attack the reviewing stand during the official march past. There were even suggestions that rebellious pilots were to strafe and bomb the stand. Although the plot was uncovered in time, the fact that it had not been discovered earlier left the impression that Adnan was not paying sufficient attention to the fulfillment of his duties. Adnan did not have to wait long for Saddam to exact his reveng
e. Four months later he was killed in a helicopter crash. The official explanation was that Adnan, who was piloting the helicopter, was disoriented by a sandstorm, lost control, and crashed while returning from a tour of inspection in Kurdistan.

  The true story of Adnan’s death was provided a few years later by Hussein Kamel al-Majid, Saddam’s first cousin and son-in-law. According to Hussein Kamel, Adnan had been to a family gathering near Mosul, in northern Iraq, with Saddam and Sajida. The meeting was an attempt by Saddam to heal the rift within the family that had been caused by the row over Uday. During the meeting, however, a dispute broke out between Saddam and Adnan, and Adnan decided to leave the gathering. At this point Saddam told Hussein Kamel “to take care of matters.” Hussein Kamel admitted that he placed the explosives on Adnan’s helicopter with a timer set to make them explode once the aircraft was airborne.12

  Adnan’s murder signaled the end of Saddam’s relationship with his first wife. Shortly before Adnan had boarded the helicopter Sajida had had a premonition that it might not be safe for him to fly back to Baghdad, especially as it was getting dark. Saddam had attempted to reassure her, saying that Adnan must carry out his duty, and consoled her with the words “We must put our faith in God to protect us.” After Adnan’s murder Sajida was in no doubt who had been responsible for her brother’s death, and she vowed never to speak to Saddam again. An official separation between Saddam and Sajida was later arranged whereby she acquired the official title “Lady of the Ladies,” while Samira, who became Saddam’s second wife soon afterward, took the title “First Lady.”

  Saddam’s domestic difficulties no doubt had a bearing on the policies he pursued in the immediate aftermath of the war. For once Saddam appeared to be on the defensive, aware that his own position was susceptible to political challenges, both from within his own ruling elite and from the military. Between the end of the Iran war and 1990 several attempts were made on his life. The first took place in November 1988 and reportedly involved a plan to shoot down his plane on his return from a state visit to Egypt. The second was at the Iraq Army Day parade. This was particularly worrying for Saddam as it involved officers from the Republican Guard, his elite bodyguard unit. Dozens, if not hundreds, of officers were executed in the reprisals that followed. A third coup attempt was aborted in September 1989, at a time when the Iraqi leader was being hailed as the new Nebuchadnezzar at a national festival in the rebuilt Babylon. And in January 1990 Saddam narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by army officers while he was riding in his car through Baghdad.

  Aware that his personal popularity was at a low ebb, Saddam embarked on an Iraqi form of perestroika, a program to liberalize some of the state institutions. One of his first steps was to hold new elections in April 1989 for the National Assembly, the body that came closest to providing a genuinely democratic platform for political expression. As in previous elections, however, all the candidates were carefully scrutinized by the security services. Non–Baath Party members were allowed to run as “independents,” and a large number of these so-called independent candidates were elected, although the authorities were less keen to publicize the fact that any potential candidate who was regarded as being “dangerous to the state”—a status that enjoyed a broad definition—was not allowed to run. Apart from arranging the elections the regime indicated that it would in the future tolerate a degree of criticism of government ministers and policies, although it stressed that such criticism could only be directed at ministers, the technocrats responsible for running the country. The president, his relatives, and other members of the ruling circle were immune from adverse comment, which was just as well in view of the antics of some of Saddam’s more headstrong relatives at that time.

  A “Freedom Wall” was established at the University of Baghdad where students were encouraged to air their grievances. The state-controlled media began to carry a considerable number of articles detailing public complaints about everyday life, which enabled the minister of information and culture, Latif Nusseif al-Jasim, to claim, without any hint of irony, that “there is no censorship in Iraq. No person is asked about what he has written. The only limitations relate to issues of national security.”13 In order to demonstrate to the outside world the changes that were taking place in Iraq, a number of Western journalists were flown into the country to observe its flourishing “democratic process” firsthand. Saddam also initiated a charm offensive with the Arab press, and leading editors in Egypt who were invited to Baghdad reportedly received “spanking new red, white, blue and light brown Mercedes Benz 230 cars…. Lesser figures received Toyotas.”14

  Saddam’s efforts at liberalizing the country’s political institutions were accompanied by a systematic purge of the armed forces. By 1988 Iraq had developed the fourth largest army in the world. Saddam’s inept handling of the war, and in particular his rash interventions during the Fao Peninsula crisis of late 1986, had resulted in the military high command imposing curbs on his political power (see Chapter Nine). In retrospect this would have been the ideal moment for the military to make their move against Saddam. But after more than a decade of close supervision by security agents and the Baath Party’s highly effective network of commissars, the Iraqi military establishment had been virtually brainwashed against the notion of entertaining any political ambitions. Saddam had neither forgotten nor forgiven the humiliation he had suffered at the hands of his military commanders, even though the constraints they were able to impose on him had contributed to their success in eventually winning the war.

  The discovery of various military plots to overthrow Saddam between 1988 and 1990 enabled him to reassert his authority over the military establishment. Apart from executing any officer suspected of being involved in the coup attempts, others were accounted for in mysterious accidents—more Iraqi military officers died in helicopter crashes in one year than had died during the eight years of war with Iran. Saddam was determined to break the bonds of comradeship that had formed during the war years which he believed, if left unchecked, could present a formidable challenge to his leadership. Thus his purge of the military was conducted with great brutality. For example, Lieutenant General Omar al-Hazzaa was sentenced to death after being overheard speaking ill of the Iraqi president. Saddam ordered that prior to his execution his tongue be cut out; for good measure, he also executed Hazzaa’s son, Farouq. Hazzaa’s homes were bulldozed, and his wife and children left on the street.

  Even those officers who came from the same provincial background as Saddam, or were directly related by clan or marriage to the president’s ruling circle, were not immune from prosecution. Saddam’s treatment of General Maher Abdul al-Rashid was a case in point. Not only was Rashid a fellow Tikriti, but his daughter was married to Saddam’s second eldest son, Qusay. But Rashid had become far too powerful for Saddam’s liking, and he resolved to cut him down to size. First, Rashid’s brother was killed in a mysterious accident. Then Rashid himself was forced to retire from his position and placed under virtual house arrest at his ranch outside Tikrit, a move that prevented him from maintaining contact with the substantial body of officers who were loyal to him. Although Saddam had other reasons for wanting his cousin and defense minister Adnan Khairallah out of the way, his death in the spring of 1989 in a helicopter crash fitted the pattern of purges that were being conducted in all areas of the armed forces.

  For all the difficulties Saddam was experiencing with his relatives and in bringing the military to heel, by far the biggest challenge he faced was on the economic front. The war had wrecked the Iraqi economy. At its outset Iraq had been one of the most prosperous countries in the world; at the end it was one of the most bankrupt—apart from incurring $80 billion of debt, the cost of reconstruction was put at $230 billion. Iraq’s oil revenues of $13 billion did not cover the cost of the nation’s expenditure, and the regime needed an extra $10 billion per annum simply to balance the books.15 As Saddam’s regime relied heavily on patronage, the shortage of funds in a c
onsumption-oriented economy like Iraq’s created widespread resentment and led to charges of incompetence being leveled at the government. The extent of Iraq’s indebtedness meant that Saddam was reliant on the goodwill of his creditors, a position that further weakened the president’s image as an all-powerful leader.

  In an attempt to revive the economy Saddam initiated a series of measures to accelerate the economic liberalization process that had begun during the war. Price controls were removed, entrepreneurial activity was encouraged, and a number of state factories were sold off to private individuals, as were some other minor state assets. The overall impression created by these changes was that Saddam was committed to dismantling Iraq’s large public sector16 Licenses were granted for private industrial projects, which resulted in the private sector accounting for nearly a quarter of all imports. The regime went out of its way to attract lucrative investment from the oil-rich neighboring Gulf states. All these changes succeeded in achieving, however, was the creation of a small group of wealthy entrepreneurs, most of whom were closely connected to the ruling regime and who were able to exploit the opportunities presented by privatization.

  In terms of improving Iraq’s economic performance, therefore, Saddam’s reforms made little impact. The high expectations aroused by the changes were matched only by high inflation, which forced Saddam to reintroduce price controls. In the spring of 1989 he sought to place the blame for the country’s economic fortunes on his ministers, and two of them were sacked for incompetence. But with 50 percent of Iraq’s oil income being spent on debt repayments, the economic situation deteriorated, rather than improved. Saddam was forced to implement a series of austerity measures, such as reductions in the number of government employees and the demobilization of thousands of troops from the armed forces, which only served to increase unemployment and did not help the growing sense of restlessness among the Iraqi people. Even so the postwar years were a period of grandiose ambition on the part of the Baathist regime. On one occasion Saddam announced that he was going to build a world-class subway system for Baghdad, a multibillion-dollar project, and then claimed he would construct a state-of-the-art national railway system around it. The only restriction on his undertaking these fantastic projects was a lack of funds. The country was, after all, broke.