Saddam : His Rise and Fall

by Con Coughlin

  Within two hours of the commencement of the Allied offensive, Saddam made a defiant statement in which he informed the Iraqi people that “the mother of all battles” had begun, and he urged them to live up to their glorious reputation. A few hours later Iraqi television showed their president visiting a Baghdad street where he was greeted by an elderly woman who clasped his hand with great reverence. Saddam had taken great care to prepare the Iraqi people for war. Elaborate instructions had been issued regarding self-protection against chemical and nuclear attacks. Citizens were told to black out their homes and to store a medicine cabinet in every apartment. Individuals and institutions had been ordered to clear their shelters for immediate use, and to store oil products for an emergency. Even civil defense drills had been held, with a large-scale evacuation of Baghdad involving hundreds of thousands of people.8

  Despite his public defiance, Saddam was under no illusions about the challenge that lay ahead. The conflict he now confronted was a very different proposition from that which he had faced during the war with Iran. Apart from the occasional air raid, and the missiles fired at Baghdad during the war of the cities, the majority of Iraq’s civilian population had been protected from the conflict. There were shortages, it is true, and most families were affected by the appalling attrition rate at the front, but Saddam had generally succeeded in rallying the people behind him. The confrontation with the formidable international alliance that President Bush had assembled under the auspices of the United Nations mandate was an altogether different proposition. The Allies had the means and the will to take the battle to the heart of Iraq, and from the opening shots of the war, Baghdad was subjected to intensive bombardment. The longer the bombing continued, the greater the damage that would be inflicted on Iraq’s infrastructure. One of the main reasons Saddam had, after all, invaded Kuwait was to distract attention from Iraq’s woeful economic plight, itself the consequence of the eight-year war with Iran. Operation Desert Storm could only make Iraq’s economic and military situation worse, and that would undoubtedly have repercussions for Saddam in the postwar world, assuming, that is, he survived the war. From the outset of the conflict, therefore, Saddam resolved to draw the Allies into a ground war as soon as possible. He still believed, as he had explained to Ambassador Glaspie the previous July, that the Western powers could not sustain a high level of casualties, and if he could tempt the Allies into committing their ground forces, he was confident that his forces would, at the very least, be able to inflict a substantial number of casualties on them. This in turn, or so he reasoned, would force the Allies to request an early cease-fire, and push them back to the negotiating table. As he remarked in another of the defiant speeches he made at the outset of the conflict, “Not a few drops of blood, but rivers of blood would be shed. And then Bush will have been deceiving America, American public opinion, the American people, the American constitutional institutions.”9

  An insight into Saddam’s thinking at the outbreak of hostilities was provided by General Wafic al-Samurrai, who was Iraq’s head of military intelligence during the Gulf War, and one of Saddam’s most trusted military advisers.10 According to al-Samurrai, shortly before the start of the Allied attack, Saddam had called a meeting of his generals at Basra at which he outlined his tactics. Saddam proposed capturing U.S. soldiers and tying them up around Iraqi tanks and using them as human shields. “The Americans will never fire on their own soldiers,” he declared triumphantly. In the fighting that lay ahead, Saddam anticipated that thousands of enemy prisoners would be captured, and that the Iraqis would be able to use them for this purpose. In turn this would enable Saddam’s forces to move unapposed into eastern Saudi Arabia, forcing the Allies to back down.

  Al-Samurrai and the other generals were appalled by Saddam’s naivete and inhumanity. To start with, it would be almost impossible for the Iraqis to capture Allied troops, whose bases in Saudi Arabia were well defended. And even if it could be done, the very idea of using soldiers as human shields was anathema to the professional military officers. To do so would be to breach all laws and international agreements, and it might so outrage the Allies as to provoke them into retaliating with nonconventional weapons. But even though Saddam’s generals knew his scheme was irrational, dangerous, and impossible to implement, none of them said a word. They all nodded and dutifully took notes. To question Saddam’s strategy would have meant to admit doubt, timidity, and cowardice. It might also mean demotion or death.

  Even so, on the eve of the outbreak of hostilities, Samurrai, as chief of intelligence, regarded it as his duty to inform the country’s commander in chief of the grave risk it faced from the coalition of more than thirty countries that were actively participating in Operation Desert Shield. Late in the afternoon of January 14, the general reported for a meeting in Saddam’s office in the Presidential Palace. Dressed in a well-cut black suit, the president sat behind his desk as Samurrai delivered his grim assessment. It would be very hard for Iraq to defend itself against the assault that was coming, said Samurrai. No enemy soldiers had been captured, and it was unlikely that any would be. Iraq was ill equipped to defend itself against the number and variety of weapons ranged against it. The Iraqi positions were also difficult to defend because of Saddam’s refusal to withdraw the bulk of his forces from Kuwait and move them back across the Iraqi border, where they might be more effective. According to Samurrai, the Iraqi forces were spread so thinly across the desert that there was little to stop the Americans advancing straight to Baghdad itself. The general then produced evidence to back his argument in the form of photographs and news reports. Iraq, he concluded, could expect nothing more than a swift defeat, and then it would have to face the possibility of Iran seeking to exploit its weakness by invading from the north.

  When Samurrai had finished outlining this litany of disaster, Saddam responded by asking, “Are these your personal opinions or are they facts?” Samurrai replied that this was his educated analysis on the basis of the facts he had available to him. To which Saddam said, “I will now tell you my opinion. Iran will never interfere. Our forces will put up more of a fight than you think. They can dig bunkers and withstand America’s aerial attacks. They will fight for a long time, and there will be many casualties on both sides. Only we are willing to accept casualties; the Americans are not. The American people are weak. They would not accept the losses of large numbers of their soldiers.”11 Saddam was repeating the same argument that he had presented to Ambassador Glaspie the previous July.

  There is also the question of whether, had Saddam succeeded in luring the Allies into an early ground confrontation, he would have been tempted to use his considerable weapons of mass destruction arsenal to inflict heavy casualties.12 Saddam had already won himself the distinction of being the first “field marshal” to use nerve agents on the battlefield. It was later established that at an early stage of the conflict he had deployed quantities of weapons-grade anthrax, botulinum toxin, and aflatoxin biological agents, together with their missile delivery systems, but it is generally accepted that they were not used.13 The most likely explanation is that the United States warned Baghdad, through diplomatic channels, that it would retaliate with nuclear weapons if Iraq attempted to use weapons of mass destruction. Hussein Kamel al-Majid, Saddam’s son-in-law and head of Iraq’s weapons procurement program, who was later to defect to Jordan, admitted as much when interviewed by Time magazine in September 1995. When asked why Saddam had not used his nonconventional weapons, Hussein Kamel replied: “How can you use them while you are fighting the whole planet? Any mistake of using these non-conventional weapons would make the major powers use nuclear weapons, which would mean Iraq being exterminated.”14

  The one country, however, that had in the past indicated that it would resort to its nuclear deterrent if attacked with nonconventional weapons was Israel. Throughout the military buildup to Operation Desert Storm, Saddam’s propaganda machine had accused the Israelis of masterminding the Allied assault on Ir
aq. In the speech Saddam made on the morning of the Allies’ first air strikes, he had immediately implicated the Israelis. Referring to the aerial bombardment, Saddam proclaimed, “Satan’s follower Bush committed his treacherous crime, he and the criminal Zionism.” Later that same day the Iraqis accused Saudi Arabia, from which Operation Desert Storm had been launched, of allowing Israel to deploy sixty of its aircraft on the holy soil of the Prophet.15

  In the circumstances it was hardly surprising that Saddam should launch missile attacks against Israel. His strategy was twofold. First, by attacking the Zionist state he hoped to rally the support of the Arab masses, who were always supportive of any Arab leader who confronted Israel. Second, by firing a series of Scud missiles at the Israeli coast, he anticipated an Israeli response, which in turn, he calculated, would force the Allies to launch their ground offensive earlier than they would have liked, as the Allies were desperate to prevent the conflict spreading to other areas of the Middle East. The leaders of all the Western powers involved in the international coalition were anxious for the conflict not to escalate into an Arab-Israeli conflagration. Thus when, in the early hours of January 18, three Iraqi ballistic missiles landed in Tel Aviv and a further two hit the northern port of Haifa, there were intensive diplomatic efforts to persuade the Israeli government from retaliating. This was not an easy option for the Israelis. For the first time since the establishment of their state, the country’s main population centers had come under indiscriminate military attack by a regular Arab army. Even so, the Israeli leader Yitzhak Shamir was persuaded by Washington that the long-term advantages of restraint outweighed the immediate desire for revenge, and although Saddam continued to fire Scuds at Israel, the Israelis refused to be drawn into the conflict.

  Having failed in his first attempt to draw the Allies into a ground offensive, Saddam tried a variety of other tactics. In late January he set fire to several oil installations in Kuwait and began pumping crude oil into the northern Gulf, creating the world’s largest ever oil slick—an estimated 240 square miles. A number of captured Allied pilots appeared on Iraqi television. Most of them had been harshly treated and were made to read prepared scripts in which they were critical of the Allied war effort. But rather than provoking the Allies into launching a premature ground offensive, all these acts achieved was to rally Western public opinion behind the war effort. Saddam’s acts of barbarism also prompted calls from some quarters for the war aims to be expanded beyond the liberation of Kuwait and to include the removal of the Iraqi leader from power. John Major, who had replaced Margaret Thatcher as Britain’s prime minister shortly before hostilities commenced, hinted that Saddam could be tried for war crimes after the war if he continued to indulge in “inhuman and illegal” behavior.

  Despite these setbacks Saddam appeared confident that he would eventually get his way. On January 20 he warned: “Our ground forces have not entered the battle so far…. When the battle becomes a comprehensive one with all types of weapons, the deaths on the allied side will be increased with God’s help. When the deaths and the dead mount on them, the infidels will leave.”16 A few days later, in an interview with Peter Arnett, the Cable News Network correspondent, Saddam appeared relaxed and confident. Iraq, he said, had managed to maintain its “balance” by using only conventional weapons, and would undoubtedly “win the admiration of the world with its fighting prowess.” When asked if he had any doubts that Iraq would win the war, he replied, “Not even one in a million.” Saddam also raised the issue of nonconventional weapons, claiming that Iraq had the capability to fix chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons to its missiles. “I pray to God I will not be forced to use these weapons,” he said, “but I will not hesitate to do so should the need arise.”17

  For all the public bravado, however, Saddam was becoming deeply frustrated by the course of the war. The intensity of the bombing campaign was taking its toll on the country. With Allied warplanes free to pick their targets at will, by the end of January Iraq’s four primary nuclear research reactors had been wiped out, and the chemical and biological weapons facilities had been badly damaged. The country’s strategic and economic infrastructure was being laid waste, with roads, bridges, power stations, and oil installations all coming under attack. Apart from being subjected to heavy bombardment, the armed forces were finding it increasingly difficult to operate as their command and control systems were put out of commission. Nor was the morale of the armed forces helped when an estimated 100 combat and transport planes of the Iraqi air force, including some of the country’s most sophisticated aircraft, such as the Soviet MiG-29 and French Mirage F1, flew to Iran to seek sanctuary. Saddam tried to give the impression that the mass defection was a prearranged ploy to preserve some of his best military assets, an unlikely story in view of the fact that ten years later they were still in Iran. A more likely explanation was that the pilots wanted to escape after a failed air force coup, which had been prompted by Saddam’s summary execution of his air force and air defense commanders for failing to repel the Allied attack.

  Saddam’s situation was becoming desperate, and in a final attempt to provoke the Allies to commence hostilities on the ground, in late January he launched a series of military assaults against the Allied positions. First a small Iraqi force comprising two infantry and one tank battalion crossed the Kuwaiti border and captured Khafji, a deserted Saudi Arabian town about twelve miles from the frontier. Despite its initial success, the force was quickly overwhelmed by the Allies’ superior firepower, with the loss of dozens of men and hundreds of Iraqis taken prisoner. Even so, Saddam could claim a victory of sorts, as his troops had demonstrated that they had the ability to penetrate the enemy’s lines. A few days later four Iraqi mechanized divisions with some 240 tanks and 60,000 soldiers were spotted massing near the Kuwaiti border town of Wafra. These units, which formed a ten-mile-long column, were subjected to ferocious air assaults, which exacted a heavy toll and forced Saddam to abandon what had clearly been intended as a second attack on the Allies. Much to Saddam’s irritation, President Bush saw these maneuvers as indicating the Iraqi leader’s desperation to engage the Allies on the ground before the air bombardment destroyed all his assets. The American president said the Allies would not be deterred from their war plan, and that the land offensive would be launched “if and when the time is right.”

  With the Allies failing to fall for his numerous ploys, Saddam had little going for him apart from his considerable talent for using his propaganda machine to portray every development as a triumph for the “hero president.” Thus the Iraqi defeat at Khafji became a humiliation for the Allies. “Bush tried to avoid a meeting of men face to face, one on one, and substituted for such confrontation technology that fires from afar.”18 Western journalists were invited to Baghdad to inspect the damage caused by the air strikes, which inevitably had an effect on the collective conscience of Western public opinion, and sparked a series of protests around the Arab world. The antiwar movement became particularly vocal after thirteen American bombers destroyed an air raid shelter in Baghdad, killing three hundred civilians. The normally pro-Western King Hussein of Jordan even went so far as accusing the Allies of committing war crimes. And while the Allied bombing was undoubtedly effective in decimating Saddam’s military capability, the daily bombardment had a dramatic impact on the everyday lives of Iraqi citizens. By early February there was no running water or electricity in Baghdad and the other main Iraqi cities. The government announced an indefinite ban on the sale of fuel, which effectively brought the country to a standstill. Saddam, of course, blamed the Allies for all these misfortunes, rather than his own disastrous miscalculation in invading Kuwait.

  The growing unease about the course of the air war, and Saddam’s desperation to extricate himself from certain defeat, resulted in the Soviet Union undertaking a diplomatic initiative to explore the possibility of arranging a cease-fire. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had been anxious to broker a cease-fire as soon as the f
ighting began, and by mid-February the Iraqis, who had scornfully dismissed previous mediation offers, indicated they were prepared to meet Gorbachev’s special envoy, Yevgeny Primakov, who had spent much of his career developing Moscow’s special relationship with Baghdad. Primakov arrived in Iraq and met Saddam on February 12 and was immediately given a tour of the bomb damage in Baghdad. The Russian envoy noted that Saddam had lost more than thirty pounds since they had last met in October 1990. Saddam appeared relaxed, even confident. To emphasize his sense of well-being, he did not meet Primakov in his bunker but rather in a guesthouse in central Baghdad, where the Russian was treated to a diatribe by Saddam, delivered in front of the leading members of the regime, against the Soviet position. Judging that the speech was directed more at Saddam’s RCC colleagues than himself, Primakov asked Saddam for a private meeting. According to Primakov, he was struck by the practical nature of Saddam’s outlook during their private conversation, which was different from the bravado of his public statements. “In the event of a withdrawal,” Saddam asked, “would retreating Iraqis be shot in the back? Would the air strikes stop? Would sanctions be lifted? Was it at all possible to effect a change in the Kuwaiti regime [i.e., to establish a government in Kuwait that was better disposed toward Baghdad than the ruling al-Sabahs had been]?”19

  Primakov came away from the meeting with the feeling that Saddam was seriously interested in a peaceful resolution of the conflict, and he returned to Moscow to brief Gorbachev. Two days later the RCC in Baghdad issued a statement indicating Iraq’s willingness to withdraw, a move that briefly caused much excitement among the Allies, who thought the horrors of a ground invasion might, after all, be avoided. It soon transpired, however, that Saddam had attached a number of conditions to withdrawal, such as the demand for Israel to withdraw from Palestine and the Arab lands it had occupied in Lebanon and Syria, the lifting of all UN sanctions against Iraq, and the cancellation of Iraq’s $80 billion foreign debt. Just how Saddam believed he could get away with any of these conditions is something of a mystery, as Primakov had been quite explicit in telling him just how determined the Allies were to liberate Kuwait. At any rate, Saddam’s proposal was dismissed as a “cruel hoax” by President Bush, who called upon the “Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands, to force Saddam Hussein the dictator to step aside.”20 Bush’s explicit invitation to the Iraqi people to pursue the “Ceausescu option” did not go down well with Saddam. He responded by repeating his threat to employ chemical weapons.