Saddam : His Rise and Fall
Page 53
Apart from the recurrent pain he suffered from his slipped disc, U.S. doctors found that Saddam was in relatively good health, and an initial diagnosis that he might be suffering from prostate cancer was eventually found to be prostatitis, a chronic inflammatory condition that is treated with antibiotics. Saddam was not allowed to congregate with his former Baathist colleagues, and his only contact with the outside world was in the letters he received from his wife and daughters through the Red Cross. In one letter to Sajida, Saddam showed that he had lost none of his self-confidence. “In the name of God the Merciful, to my small family and my big family, peace be with you. As for my spirits and morale, they are high, thanks to the greatness of God.” In conversations with his prison guards Saddam insisted that he was still president of Iraq, even inviting the young Pennsylvania National Guardsmen responsible for his welfare to visit the country once he was restored to power. And he was dismissive of the American President and his father. “The Bush father, son, no good,” Saddam told the guardsmen in jilted English.3
Saddam’s refusal to accept his fate was demonstrated in public in early July 2004 when he was brought before Iraq’s Special Tribunal, which was set up to try Saddam and his former colleagues for war crimes.
Saddam, codename HVD-1—High Value Detainee One—was driven to a makeshift courtroom in an armor-plated bus. The courtroom was situated in the al-Faw palace on the outskirts of Baghdad, a place where in former times Saddam had entertained foreign dignitaries. On this occasion Saddam at first did not seem to recognize his surroundings. He was shown into the courtroom wearing a gray pinstriped jacket, brown trousers, and shiny black shoes. He looked leaner and fitter than when he had been pulled from his hiding hole six months previously. Even if he faced the death penalty, Saddam wanted to look his best.
At the start of the proceedings Saddam appeared to be disconcerted, but he soon composed himself. When asked his name, he replied: “I am the president of Iraq.” When the judge challenged this claim, insisting that Saddam was now an ordinary citizen, Saddam interjected: “I am the president of the republic, so you should not strip me of my title to put me on trial.” As the twenty-six-minute hearing continued, Saddam became more and more forthright both in rejecting the charges against him and the legitimacy of the court itself. When the judge, for his own security, declined to identify himself, Saddam accused him of being a stooge of the American occupiers. Referring to President Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign, Saddam remarked, “I do not want you to feel uneasy. But you know this is all theater by Bush to help him with his campaign. The real criminal is Bush.” Later during the hearing, Saddam could not restrain himself when the judge accused him of unlawfully invading Kuwait. “I can’t believe you, as an Iraqi, would say that was a crime,” he said. “I was president when we invaded Kuwait. I was looking out for Iraqi interests against those mad dogs who had tried to turn Iraqi women into ten-dinar prostitutes.” In the opening hearing Saddam outlined the key arguments he was to employ throughout his defense: he was still the legitimate ruler of Iraq, and the court did not have the jurisdiction to try him. No matter what evidence was presented to the court, Saddam, as he had been on so many occasions in the past, was determined to fight to save his skin.
As the final preparations were made in the summer of 2005 to put Saddam on trial, the first of three charges was laid against him by the Special Tribunal, including the massacre at Dujail in 1982 (see chapter eight page 193), in which more than one hundred fifty Iraqi Shiite Muslims were killed. Saddam faced the death sentence if convicted.
If the fallen dictator found it impossible to reconcile himself to his fate, at least the Iraqi people had the consolation of knowing that so long as Saddam was safely locked up in custody, he no longer posed a threat to their well-being. Saddam’s thirty-five-year reign of terror had finally and conclusively come to an end, and the Iraqi people were free to embark on the daunting and challenging task of attempting to rebuild their devastated country.
NOTES
PROLOGUE: THE OUTLAW
1 Author’s interview, May 2002.
2 Private source.
3 Wall Street Journal, June 14, 2002.
4 Wall Street Journal, June 14, 2002.
5 Iraqi Television, December 14, 2001.
6 Private source.
7 Newsweek, November 26, 2001.
8 Daily Telegraph (London), March 4, 2002.
9 Daily Telegraph (London), March 4, 2002.
ONE: THE ORPHAN
1 There are two authorized biographies, or rather hagiographies, of Saddam’s life: Amir Iskander, Munadilan, wa Mufakiran, wa Insanan (Paris: Hachette, 1981), and Fuad Matar, Saddam Hussein: The Man, the Cause and His Future (London: Third World Centre, 1981). There is also a thinly disguised autobiographical work of his early life: Abdel Amir Mu’ala, The Long Days, n.p., n.d.
2 Author’s interview, April 2002.
3 Hamid al-Bayati, The Bloody History of Saddam Al Tikriti, p. 23
4 Goff Simons, From Sumer to Saddam (London: Macmillan, 1994), p. 271.
5 Vanity Fair, August 1991.
6 Matar, p. 22.
7 saddam Hussein, Al-Dimuqratiyya Masdar Quwwa li al-Fard wa al-Mujtama, p. 20.
8 Author’s interview, February 2002.
9 Efraim Karsh and Inari Rautsi, Saddam Hussein, A Political Biography (London: Brassey’s, 1991), p. 10.
10 Iskander, p. 11.
11 Vanity Fair, August 1991.
12 John Bulloch and Harvey Morris, Saddam’s War (London: Faber and Faber, 1991), p. 31.
13 Karsh and Rautsi, p. 9.
14 Andrew Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn, Out of the Ashes (New York: HarperCollins, 1999), p. 62.
15 H. V. F. Winstone, Gertrude Bell (London: Jonathan Cape, 1978), p. 222.
16 David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace (New York: Andre Deutsch, 1989), p. 508.
17 Author’s interview, April 2002.
18 Matar, p. 31.
19 Cockburn and Cockburn, p. 71.
20 Said Aburish, Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge (London: Bloomsbury, 2000), p. 20.
21 Iskander, p. 29.
22 Matar, p. 292.
23 Quoted in Samir al-Khalil, Republic of Fear (Berkeley: University of alifornia Press, 1989), p. 17.
24 Author’s interview, November 2001.
25 Hani Fkaiki, Dens of Defeat: My Experience in the Iraqi Baath Party (London: Riad el Rayyes Books, 1993), p. 142.
26 Matar, p. 31.
27 Witness statement of Falih al-Nisiri al-Tikriti, proceedings of the People’s Court, published by the Ministry of Defense, 1959, p. 410.
28 Cockburn and Cockburn, p. 71.
TWO: THE ASSASSIN
1 Matar, p. 31.
2 Ibid.
3 The full account of Saddam’s involvement in the assassination attempt, and his subsequent escape, is provided in ibid. pp. 32–44.
4 Author’s interview, April 2002.
5 Quoted in Adel Darwish and Gregory Alexander, Unholy Babylon (London: Victor Gollancz, 1991), p. 197.
6 Independent (London), March 31, 1998.
7 Dr. Hamid al-Bayati, The Bloody History of Saddam al-Tikriti (London, 1969), p. 25.
8 Independent (London), March 31, 1998.
9 Edith Penrose and E. F. Penrose, Iraq: International Relations and Development (London: Ernest Benn, 1978), pp. 362–363.
10 “I first met Comrade Saddam after the Ramadan Revolution of 1963.” Michel Afleq quoted in Matar, p. 211.
11 Edward Mortimer, “The Thief of Baghdad,” New York Times Review of Books, September 27, 1990, p. 8.
12 Iskander, p. 75.
13 Quoted in Cockburn and Cockburn, p. 73.
14 Author’s interview, June 2002.
15 New York Times, October 24, 1990.
16 Al-Bayati, p. 63.
17 Simons, p. 274.
18 Three of Saddam’s closest friends in Cairo have since perished—Abdul Karim al-Shaikhly (assassinated 1980), Medhat Ibrahim Jum
a’a (murdered 1986), and Naim al-Azami (killed early 1980s). His only known surviving contemporary, Farouk al-Nuaimi, lives in Baghdad.
19 Quoted in Aburish, p. 54.
20 Matar, p. 44; Iskandar, p. 79.
21 Bulloch and Morris, p. 54.
22 Marion Farouk-Sluglett and Peter Sluglett, Iraq since 1958 (London: Kegan Paul International, 1987), p. 283.
23 Samir al-Khalil, Republic of Fear (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), p. 59.
24 Quoted in Cockburn and Cockburn, p. 74.
25 Author’s interview, May 2002.
26 Dr. Ali Karim Said, From the Dialogue of Ideas to the Dialogue of Blood (Beirut: Dar al-Kunuz al-Adabiyyah, 1999).
27 Al-Khalil, p. 6.
28 Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and Revolutionary Movements of Iraq (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 985.
29 Saddam quoted in Matar, p. 44.
30 Aburish, p. 61.
31 Judith Miller and Laurie Mylroie, Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf (New York: Random House, 1990), p. 31.
32 Author’s interview, March 2002. 33 Author’s interview, November 2001.
34 Author’s interview, October 2001.
35 Symons, p. 275.
36 Iskander, p. 97.
37 Author’s interview, November 2001.
38 Matar, p. 45.
39 Author’s interview, January 2002.
40 See Fkaiki, p. 325. Fkaiki claims Saddam frequently met President Arif and Bakr to inform them of various Baathist plots to overthrow them. This might explain why Saddam received benign treatment in prison.
41 Matar, p. 46; Iskander, pp. 80–81.
THREE: THE REVOLUTIONARY
1 Author’s interview, April 2002.
2 Ibid.
3 Le Monde, October 9, 1968.
4 Quoted in Iskander, p. 110.
5 Matar, p. 46.
6 Iskander, p. 116.
7 Quoted in Matar, p. 47.
8 Author’s interview, November 2000.
9 Matar, p. 47.
10 Aburish, p. 79.
11 Author’s interview, January 2002.
12 Private source.
13 Private source.
14 Author’s interview, January 2002.
15 Author’s interview, November 2001.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 Sluglett and Sluglett, p. 110.
19 Author’s interview, February 2002.
20 Author’s interview, November 2001.
21 Ibid.
22 bid.
23 Quoted in Batatu, p. 1100.
FOUR: THE AVENGER
1 Quoted in al-Khalil, p. 52.
2 Baghdad Domestic Service, March 20, 1971.
3 Quoted in Al-Khalil, p. 50.
4 Ibid., p. 51.
5 For a detailed analysis of Iraq’s security structure, see Al-Khalil, Chapter One.
6 Author’s interview, May 2002.
7 Batatu, p. 1099.
8 Quoted in al-Khalil, p. 231.
9 Majid Khadduri, Socialist Iraq (Washington, D.C.: The Middle East Institute, 1978), p. 54.
10 Karsh and Rautsi, p. 44.
11 Al-Khalil, p. 54.
12 Quoted in Karsh and Rautsi, p. 75.
13 J. Bulloch, The Making of War: The Middle East from 1967 to 1973 (London: Longman, 1974), p. 131.
14 Bulloch and Morris, p. 31.
15 Ibid. p. 71.
16 Al-Khalil, pp. 292–296.
17 Atlantic Monthly, May 2002.
18 Author’s interview, May 2002.
19 Ibid.
20 Private source.
21 Quoted in Guardian, July 4, 1973.
22 Iskander, p. 81.
23 Author’s interview, February 2002.
24 Aburish, p. 97.
25 Author’s interview, May 2002.
26 Ibid.
27 Khadduri, p. 65.
28 Kazzar also ordered the arrest of eleven other prominent Baathists, most of them friends or relatives of the president, whom he felt might conspire against him during the uprising. Ibid. p. 65.
FIVE: THE NATION BUILDER
1 Author’s interview, April 2002.
2 Author’s interview, May 2002.
3 Ibid.
4 Saddam Hussein, Notre Combat et La Politique Internationale, collected writings of Saddam Hussein (Lausanne: n.p., 1977), p. 57.
5 Quoted in Matar, p. 233.
6 Author’s interview, May 2002.
7 New York Times, February 22, 1972.
8 Le Monde, June 20, 1972.
9 Sunday Telegraph (London), April 1, 1973.
10 Baghdad Domestic Service, October 17, 1971.
11 Phebe Marr, The Modern History of Iraq (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1985), p. 242.
12 Saddam Hussein, Propos sur les Problèmes Actuels, text of April 8, 1974, press conference, collected writings, pp. 98–99.
13 Author’s interview, May 2002.
14 Matar, pp. 228–229.
15 Saddam Hussein, Current Events in Iraq (London: Longman, 1977), p. 38.
16 Quoted in Karsh and Rautsi, p. 81.
17 Economist, October 18, 1975.
18 Quoted in Matar, pp. 231–232.
19 Ibid.
20 Economist, June 24–30, 1978.
21 Edward Mortimer, “The Thief of Baghdad,” New York Review of Books, September 27, 1990.
22 Karsh and Rautsi, p. 186.]
23 Ibid., p. 88.
24 Efraim Karsh, The Iran-Iraq War: A Military Analysis, Adelphi Papers, No. 220 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, n.d.) pp. 10–11.
25 Marr, p. 229.
SIX: THE TERRORIST
1 Der Spiegel, August 6, 1990.
2 Kenneth R. Timmerman, The Death Lobby: How the West Armed Iraq (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991), p. 20.
3 Ibid., p. 35.
4 Private source.
5 Washington Post, May 25, 1988.
6 Timmerman, pp. 49–50.
7 Matar, p. 217.
8 Aburish, p. 140.
9 Ibid., p. 139.
10 Timmerman, p. 31.
11 Quoted in ibid., p. 32.
12 Khidhir Hamza, Saddam’s Bombmaker (New York: Scribner, 2000), p. 77.
13 Timmerman, pp. 59–60.
14 Quoted in ibid., p. 92.
15 Ibid., p. 116.
16 A. Baram, “Qawmiyya and Wataniyya in Baathi Iraq: The Search for a New Balance,” Middle East Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2 (April 1983), pp. 188–200.
17 A detailed list of Abu Nidal’s terror activities is provided in Patrick Seale, Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire (New York: Random House, 1992), pp. 235–242.
18 Vanity Fair, May 2002.
19 Author’s interview, April 2002.
20 Newsweek, July 17, 1978.
21 Author’s interview, May 2002.
22 Author’s interview, November 1998.
23 British Foreign Office spokesperson, speaking at the time of the expulsion.
24 Author’s interview, May 2002.
25 Quoted in U.S. News and World Report, May 16, 1977.
26 Quoted in Seale, p. 112.
27 New York Times, April 12, 1975.
28 Newsweek, July 17, 1978.
29 Author’s interview, March 2002.
30 Ibid.
31 Matar, p. 51.
SEVEN: MR. PRESIDENT
1 BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, July 18, 1979 (ME/6170/A/2).
2 New York Times, December 4, 1974.
3 Newsweek, May 9, 1977.
4 Author’s interview, May 2002.
5 Alif Ba magazine (Baghdad), February 16, 1979.
6 BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, June 21, 1979 (ME/6147/A/3).
7 Patrick Seale, Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East (London: I. B. Tauris, 1988), p. 355.
8 Miller and Mylroie, p. 43.
9 Private source.
10 Matar, p. 54.
11 Author’s interview, March 2002.
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12 Excerpts from the film were shown on BBC Panorama, February 11, 1991.
13 Karsh and Rautsi, p. 115.
14 Miller and Mylroie, p. 45.
15 The five RCC members alleged to be involved in the plot were Muhie Abdul Hussein Mashhadi, Mohammed Ayesh, Adnan Hussein al-Hamdani, Mohammed Mahjub Mahdi, and Ghanem Abdul Jalil Saudi.
16 Author’s interview, November 2001.
17 Private source.
18 Ibid.
19 Hamza, p. 114.
20 Baghdad Domestic Service, August 8, 1979.
21 Iraqi News Agency, August 8, 1979.
22 Author’s interview, November 2001.
23 Al-Thawra (Baghdad), May 3, 1980.
24 Al-Khalil, p. 37.
25 Amnesty International, “Iraq, Evidence of Torture,” April 29, 1981, p. 6.
26 Amnesty International, “Torture in Iraq 1982–84,” pp. 10–11.
27 Quoted by Deborah Cobbett, “Women in Iraq,” in Saddam’s Iraq: Revolution or Reaction? (London: Zed Books and CARDRI [Committee Against Repression and for Domestic Rights in Iraq], 1989), p. 123.
28 Human Rights in Iraq (New York: Middle East Watch, 1990), pp. 23–24.
29 New Scientist, April 2, 1981.
30 Ali Hassan, “Profile—Modhaffar al-Nawab,” in Index on Censorship, March 1981.
31 As Safir, December 5, 1985.
32 Iskander, p. 400.
33 Author’s interview, May 2002.