Saddam : His Rise and Fall (18 page)

Shaikhly's demotion and expulsion from Baghdad, coming at the same time as the purge of Tikriti and Ammash from the armed forces, sent shock waves through the country's ruling elite and revealed Saddam's position as a significant power behind President Bakr's throne. If Saddam could act against Shaikhly, then no Baathist was safe. As a final act in eradicating Baathist opposition, in July 1973 Saddam moved against Abdul Khaliq al-Samurrai who, like Shaikhly, enjoyed a reputation as a leading “theoretician” and was touted as a future candidate for the party's leadership. In July he was impris
oned and held in appalling conditions in solitary confinement for six years. Then, a few days after Saddam had succeeded in his ambition of becoming president of Iraq, he was dragged out of his prison cell and shot.

Samurrai's imprisonment was related to one of the most serious attempts that were made to depose the Bakr/Saddam axis. Thanks to Saddam's efforts, by 1973 most of the known opponents of the regime had been dealt with. Saddam's enthusiasm for cutting down his personal rivals, however, understandably engendered much bitterness within the party among those who survived, particularly as, in view of what had happened to their colleagues, they could expect to share a similar fate. The deep sense of paranoia that Saddam had managed to create at the heart of the government resulted in one of the most bizarre, but nonetheless dangerous, episodes in the early history of the Baath government. What made the coup attempt of late June 1973 all the more remarkable was that it was mounted by Nadhim Kazzar, one of Saddam's closest associates and someone whose reputation had been built on the brutal techniques he had devised at the Palace of the End for eradicating dissent.

In many respects Kazzar, who shared with Saddam similar disadvantages of background, acquired the same ruthless ambition and determination as his Baathist colleague. The son of a policeman, he came from Al-Amara, one of the country's most wretched and poverty-stricken communities. One of the few Shiites to reach the higher echelons of the Baath, Kazzar had joined the party in 1959, when he moved to Baghdad to study at the Technological Institute. He distinguished himself as a party member during the persecution of the communists following the 1963 coup. Indeed his activities at the Palace of the End, during which he initiated the young Saddam in the barbaric art of extracting information and breaking the human spirit, was so impressive that he was made chief of the Security Police in 1969—at Saddam's personal insistence. Kazzar was in many respects the Beria of the Baath Party. Fearless and impulsive, he was responsible for the arrest, torture, and secret executions of several hundred opponents, including communists, Kurds, Nasserites, dissident Baathists, and any other group foolhardy enough to challenge Saddam's wing of the Baath.

As Kazzar's reputation was built on violence, it was hardly surprising that he was a consistent advocate of using violent methods to attain political goals. He believed that force was the only way to deal with the Kurds and the communists, and repeatedly demanded that the Kurdish military apparatus should be crushed. On this issue he came into conflict with those Baathists, including
Saddam, who argued in favor of a less confrontational approach, especially so far as the Kurds were concerned. Even if Saddam had no intention of honoring his deals with the Kurds, that was nevertheless his official position.

Underlying Kazzar's restlessness was a mounting frustration within the Baath that the country was dominated by a small clique of military officers and Tikritis, whereas the original intention of the Baathists when they undertook the 1968 revolution was to have a broad-based government. Kazzar and his supporters, who included long-standing party ideologues such as Samurrai, wanted to convene a special conference of the Baath to elect a new leadership. If Kazzar had good reason for wanting the Bakr/Saddam clique removed, the way in which he set about attaining his objective left much to be desired. Even by the standards of revolutionary Iraq, the scheme devised by Kazzar to seize control of the country was particularly harebrained. As head of the Security Police, he believed that by kidnapping the heads of the army and the civilian police force he would somehow assume control of the country's entire security apparatus. Furthermore, if he could assassinate Bakr and Saddam, Kazzar would then easily persuade his captives to back him (his ultimate powers of persuasion, of course, were located in the cellars at the Palace of the End), and he would be able to take control of the country.

The first act of this highly credulous scheme was put into effect on the morning of June 30, 1973, when Kazzar invited General Hammad Shihab, the defense minister, and Saadoun Ghaydan, the interior minister, to inspect new electronic surveillance equipment that he was having installed at an espionage and counterespionage center he was building on the outskirts of Baghdad. Ghaydan has recalled how he was surprised to receive the call from Kazzar, as he had already previously visited the center.
²⁷
He was nevertheless persuaded by Kazzar to make the trip, and he left his office with his bodyguard. When he arrived at the center, he left his bodyguard outside, “trusting Kazzar as a party member.” No sooner had he entered than four security policemen, armed with machine guns, surrounded him and told him he was under arrest. He was taken to an underground prison cell where he was held, handcuffed, until later that evening. After a while Ghaydan realized that Shihab, the defense minister, was imprisoned in an adjoining cell. When he inquired about their detention, Shihab informed him that an uprising was taking place and that they were being detained “for their own protection.”
²⁸

With Shihab and Ghaydan safely out of the way, Kazzar moved on to the second stage of his scheme, namely the assassination of Bakr and Saddam.
His plan was to kill them when President Bakr's plane touched down at the Baghdad airport at 4
P.M
. on his return from an official visit to Poland. Saddam would be waiting at the airport to greet Bakr, and Kazzar arranged for a detachment of his Security Police to be at the airport to kill them the moment that Bakr stepped off the plane. The plan went awry, however, when Bakr's plane was late in leaving Warsaw, and then delayed further when it touched down in Bulgaria to refuel, only for Bakr's party to discover that the Bulgarian government had laid on an impromptu welcome for Bakr during his brief stopover. Consequently it was nearly 8
P.M
. before the presidential plane finally arrived at Baghdad, by which time the head of the security squad, believing the plot had been discovered, dispersed his men and made good his escape.

Kazzar, meanwhile, had settled down in front of his television set to watch the assassination, as the state-controlled television network had been ordered to interrupt its programming to report on the president's activities—even something as mundane as his return from a routine visit to somewhere like Poland. When Kazzar saw Bakr safely disembark and disappear in an armed convoy with Saddam, he concluded, wrongly, that the plot had been discovered, and decided to flee the country. To guarantee his safety, Kazzar took Shihab and Ghaydan along with him as hostages. The party left Baghdad in a fleet of armored cars and headed straight for the Iranian border where Kazzar believed the Iranians, because of their dispute with Baghdad over the future of the Shatt al-Arab waterway, would provide them with refuge. On his way he contacted Bakr and offered to meet him to discuss his differences with the regime, and to resolve them peacefully. Among his demands he called for a purge of “opportunist elements” in the Baath Party, a clear reference to Saddam. Kazzar threatened to kill Shihab and Ghaydan unless his demands were met. Bakr refused to negotiate and ordered Kazzar's capture, dead or alive. Saddam was given the task of apprehending Kazzar, and responded with relish to the challenge. Having secured Baghdad, the army and air force were scrambled to stop Kazzar before he reached the border. His group was intercepted by helicopters and warplanes, and brought to a halt. Before surrendering, Kazzar ordered his soldiers to shoot Shibab and Ghaydan: Shihab was killed, but Ghaydan, although severely wounded, survived because Shihab's body fell in front of him and took the brunt of the machine-gun fire.

From the moment of his surrender Kazzar must have known his fate; his only consolation was that he was spared the horrors normally meted out to
traitors at the Palace of the End. A Special Court of four RCC members was convened, and on July 7, eight security officials and thirteen officers, including Kazzar, were sentenced to death and executed later that same day. The following day another thirty-six people were tried, including two members of the Regional Command, Abdul Khaliq al-Samurrai and Muhammad Fadil. It was their misfortune that Kazzar had telephoned them during his coup attempt to inform them that it was taking place. The Special Court took the view that they should have passed on this information to the relevant authorities. Their failure to do so was tantamount to treason, and they were sentenced to death, together with twelve others. Samurrai, because of his importance as one of the party's main ideologues and because his previous record was unblemished, had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment, but the others were executed as soon as judgment was passed.

The crushing of the Kazzar plot confirmed Saddam's position as the second most powerful man in Iraq after President Bakr, a formidable achievement in view of the fact that immediately after the 1968 revolution he had been regarded by many Baathists as the “weakest link” in the party. In the space of just five years he had eradicated all his main rivals, be they friend or foe, and had neutralized the factions hostile to the Baath government, such as the Kurds and Shiites. One prominent Baathist, who had not seen Saddam for several years but ran into him in Baghdad at about this time, inquired why Saddam had not been seen much in public. “I have been dealing with all the jackals,” was Saddam's enigmatic reply.

Following the exposure of the Kazzar plot, the Baath lost no time restructuring the government to ensure that the position of the ruling elite became even more unassailable. Even while the trial of Kazzar and his fellow conspirators was taking place, an emergency meeting of the Baath leadership was called at which it was agreed to hold new elections, which would allow candidates loyal to Saddam to be elected to the Baath's governing council. The Security Police was to be purged and brought under Saddam's control for its failure to prevent the Kazzar coup, and it was agreed to demolish the Palace of the End, as the party now felt sufficiently confident that it no longer had any need for Kazzar's torture chambers. The government resolved to undertake a new mission whereby it would consolidate its position by easing the restrictions on civil liberties, and embark on a program of social and economic development, which would create an atmosphere of well-being in the country, and further inspire confidence in the government.

With power came affluence. For the first two years after the July Revolution, Saddam occupied a small side office in the Presidential Palace, which befitted his status. As his standing in the party improved, so too did his accommodation, and by the early 1970s he had moved into a larger office in the National Assembly building, which also housed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The National Assembly complex, which was located in the same compound as the Presidential Palace, had been commissioned in the late 1950s when the idea of creating democratic institutions in Iraq had been in vogue. From 1970 onward, after Salih Mahdi Ammash had been purged from the government, Saddam moved into Ammash's office, which had previously been used by Iraqi prime ministers, and came complete with an infrastructure of secretaries, advisers, researchers, and assistants. Saddam continued to work long hours, arriving at his office at dawn and staying until late at night, but his industry, combined with his extensive, and all-pervasive, intelligence network, gave him the crucial advantage of always being one step ahead of his colleagues.

For the first time in his career, Saddam was lucratively rewarded, and he soon developed expensive tastes to match his status as the country's strongman. In common with many wealthy men of peasant origins, his primary interest lay in expensive clothes and cars. He started to frequent one of Baghdad's most expensive tailors, Haroot, which was located in the city's Chaakia district and which was well beyond the price range of most Iraqis. Later, once he had become president, Saddam indulged himself by visiting his tailor often, as
much as once a week, ordering several suits at a time. His interest in cars was confined to purchasing three or four top-of-the-line Mercedes limousines, which he bought each year in Kuwait—complete with all-important air-conditioning, an essential prerequisite for surviving the heat of a Baghdad summer.

Saddam also had to accommodate his growing family. By 1972 three daughters had been added to his two sons, Uday (1964) and Qusay (1966); Raghad was born in 1967, Rana in 1969, and Hala in 1972. For the first few years after the 1968 revolution, Saddam and his family lived in a large house on the grounds of the Presidential Palace, which, apart from housing the main presidential residence and the National Assembly, was a large, heavily fortified complex that provided accommodation for most leading members of the regime. Saddam's family lived in some comfort, and most of the houses were equipped with swimming pools and teams of servants. Access to the compound was gained by crossing one of two heavily guarded bridges: the Muallak, or hanging, bridge (because of its proximity to Liberation Square) or the al-Jamhuriyya bridge situated on the Tigris, which were located at either end of the compound.

This was also the period when Saddam began acquiring land to build houses for himself and his family outside Baghdad. Construction began on the first of Saddam's many houses in 1970, and Saddam exploited his close professional relationship with Bakr to seize key plots of land. In time the houses would become so lavish that they were more like palaces than ordinary family homes, and in later years they would be used for a very different purpose than that for which they were originally intended—storing his illicit arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. There was, of course, a strong whiff of corruption about the personal fortunes being amassed by the new Baathist elite. Saleh Omar al-Ali, who became minister of information after the revolution, claimed he had to deal with a deluge of complaints from party members in the Tikrit region about the amount of land being sequestered by Bakr, Saddam, and Khairallah Tulfah. “It started off on a small scale, but after a time they were just taking what they wanted,” Ali recalled. “People were being thrown off their land and being deprived of their livelihoods. Khairallah Tulfah was the worst offender, but Bakr and Saddam were soon just as bad. They caused a lot of ill feeling among ordinary Baath members.”
¹

Never one to miss a propaganda opportunity, Saddam was keen to exploit the stability of his family life, which was deliberately portrayed in the government-owned Iraqi media as the model to which the socially mobile
Iraqi middle classes should aspire. Saddam placed particular emphasis on the fact that Sajida, his wife, was working as a part-time schoolteacher while raising five children. Pictures began to appear of Saddam and his family in the state-owned Iraqi press, including pictures of him playing in the sea with his children while on vacation. The development of a personality cult around Saddam was to be a key part of his strategy for seizing power and, at this early stage in his career, the propaganda campaign was mainly concentrated on the Hussein family's contented family life. In the portraits published in the Iraqi press Saddam's family appears genuinely happy, and it did Saddam no harm at all to be presented as the head of the perfect Iraqi family.

Even Saddam's eating habits changed. The poor peasant boy from Al-Ouja, who had been raised on a subsistence diet of rice and beans, now developed a taste for American-style food, which was becoming highly popular among the newly emerging Iraqi bourgeoisie. He was particularly fond of barbecues, and his favorite dish was spare ribs. This he washed down with his favorite drink, Portuguese Mateus rosé wine, a rather saccharin affair and not exactly the most sophisticated choice for a future head of state. As a young man Saddam smoked a pipe, an affectation that appears to date from his sojourn in Cairo. Gradually, however, he switched to cigars, which he continued to smoke throughout his career. When not working hard at his office, Saddam started to frequent some of Baghdad's smarter restaurants, establishments that would have been well beyond his range before the Baathist takeover. His favorite haunts were Dananir and Matam al-Mataam. For relaxation he liked to go hunting, which in the Arab world consists of shooting game. In the early 1970s his hunting companions were his political associates, such as the head of his Security Police, Saadoun Shakir, and his half brother, Barzan. Their favorite locations were Kut, Swaika, Sammara, al-Dour, and Tikrit, and the hunting expeditions were a weekly fixture in Saddam's routine. He was usually accompanied by one of his bodyguards and some Baath Party officials. The hunting party would mostly shoot pheasants, which would later be barbecued. Saddam, who enjoyed a reputation as a good shot, would invite his family and friends for an al fresco picnic. An invitation to one of Saddam's hunting parties, however, did not necessarily mean that the future career of a young Baathist was secure; the event could also be used by Saddam to identify any possible future rivals, or, by taking advantage of the relaxed atmosphere, to bring any ideological differences to the surface. At least two of Saddam's hunting companions were to regret the experience;
Tahir Ahmed Amin was executed for treason in 1969, and Saad al-Sammurai was assassinated in 1982.

When not out hunting, Saddam's favorite haunt in Baghdad was the Nadi al-Said club, which literally translates as “the hunting club” and is located in the city's Mansour district. Since the establishment of the monarchy, Baghdad had boasted a number of hunting clubs. The British had socialized at the al-Alwiya club during the heyday of the monarchy, and there were a number of other clubs, most of them located close to the Tigris, that were frequented by different social groups: the Hindya club, for example, was patronized by Christian families, while membership of the newer al-Mansour club was mainly drawn from Baghdad's newly emerging middle class. From the early 1970s the Nadi al-Said club tended to be associated with the country's new governing elite. Apart from a comfortable clubhouse, the club's extensive, and immaculately maintained, grounds contained a swimming pool, tennis courts, and horse-riding facilities. The club would also arrange a variety of activities, such as shooting parties and social functions, for the entertainment of its members. It was a place where the country's ruling elite could visit during their spare time for much-needed relaxation.

Once he had firmly established himself in power, Saddam used the club almost as his personal fiefdom, so much so that in the early 1970s he authorized a development program to extend the club's facilities. Saddam took an intense, almost proprietorial, interest in the building project and was often to be found at the construction site inspecting progress on a Friday afternoon, the middle of the Islamic weekend. This was a time when middle-class Iraqis would join senior Baath Party officials for a relaxing lunch at the club with their families. Former club members recall that the most striking aspect of Saddam's inspection visits was the number of bodyguards he would bring with him. “There would be at least eight armed men with him all the time. Generally there would be two bodyguards on either side and four behind him. No one else in the Baath needed protection like this, and the presence of the bodyguards gave Saddam a rather sinister air.”
²

Despite his intimidating air, Saddam nevertheless went out of his way to charm the other members of the club. The shy awkwardness that had afflicted his early attempts at social intercourse in Baghdad appears to have been replaced by an altogether more urbane approach. The hunting club was Saddam's refuge, the place where he could seek sanctuary at the end of a long working day, or on the weekends. He would usually arrive at the club with
some of his close colleagues, such as Abdul Karim al-Shaikhly or Saadoun Shakir, and the ever vigilant bodyguards. He would take a corner table and sit quietly talking with his circle of friends while drinking Johnnie Walker Black Label whiskey. Most of the time Saddam would prefer to keep his own company, and did not socialize much with the other club members. Unlike most of the other male members, however, who were often accompanied by their wives for lunch or dinner, Saddam was never accompanied by Sajida, even when the club had laid on evening social functions, such as a dinner dance or a cabaret. The only members of Saddam's family who came to the club were his children, particularly his sons, Uday and Qusay, who, when they were older, were brought to the club on weekends, and would play with the other children. But Sajida, who would have had her hands full with five children, was hardly ever seen in public, apart from her occasional appearances in the Baghdad press. Despite his reticence, Saddam knew most of the club members, and would engage them in polite conversation if the necessity arose. As most of them by the early 1970s were well aware of the activities of Saddam's security forces, even Saddam's attempts at making a joke could easily be misconstrued. One former club member, who was married to a British woman, recalled how one day he was at the club with his two young daughters, and was talking to them in English. Saddam overheard them, and came up to the member and remarked: “I think it is high time you spoke to them in Arabic.” Saddam was smiling at the little girl as he made the remark, but the member, who held a senior position in the Baath government, was not convinced Saddam had made the comment in jest, and resolved in future to converse with his daughters in Arabic when in public.
³

The early 1970s was a period when Saddam sought to cultivate a favorable public image, and many Iraqis were the recipients of impromptu acts of “generosity” on the part of “Mr. Deputy.” Located close to the Presidential Palace in the middle of the Tigris is a small island known locally as “Pig's Island,” which in the summer is a popular picnic spot for Baghdad families. Because of its proximity to the palace, however, the island was kept under constant surveillance in case opponents of the regime might try to use it as a staging post for an attack on the regime's nerve center. There were several occasions when Iraqi families who were picnicking on the island on public holidays had their festivities interrupted by Saddam, who would make his way to the island with his bodyguards from the Presidential Palace in a motorboat. Saddam would go from one family to another, making their
acquaintance and inquiring as to their general well-being. Although the main purpose of his visit was to check that the island was not being used for any subversive activity, he would nevertheless attempt to make a favorable impression. When, for example, he saw that the men at one picnic party were drinking whiskey, he sent one of his bodyguards back to the boat to fetch a case of liquor, which was promptly delivered to the picnickers. Farther along the island he came across another party that was drinking wine, and so he sent his bodyguards to bring a case from the boat. These might have been token gestures on Saddam's part, but they nevertheless had the effect of winning him a reputation among the residents of Baghdad as someone who cared for ordinary Iraqis.

Somehow this opulent lifestyle had to be paid for, and Saddam proved himself to be adept at exploiting unconventional revenue streams to pay both for his own expanding needs and those of his security forces. One of the first such ventures initiated by Saddam was the reintroduction of horse racing. During the monarchy, horse racing had been a national sport and, even though betting is regarded as un-Islamic, gambling had generated a healthy income for the government. The puritanical President Qassem had banned horse racing, but once the Baathists were established in power Saddam lifted the ban. Gambling on horse races was tolerated, and the canny Saddam set up a system whereby some of the profits from the new gambling syndicates were channeled into his own accounts, thereby affording him the means to finance his own requirements and those of his security services.

The most significant development, however, in the attempts by Saddam and the Baathists to finance their grandiose plans for modernizing Iraq was the nationalization of the Iraqi oil industry. Iraq contains the world's second largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia—in the 1970s Iraq was estimated to have known reserves of 130 billion barrels, compared with 150 billion barrels in Saudi Arabia. With the right market conditions, it was estimated that Iraq could be capable of producing 11 million barrels a day. Iraqi oil, moreover, is very cheap to extract—roughly six cents per barrel compared with eight cents per barrel in Saudi Arabia. Since the creation of modern Iraq, control of the country's oil industry had resided in the Iraqi Petroleum Company (IPC), which by the 1970s was in effect a consortium comprising five of the world's largest oil companies—BP, Shell, Esso, Mobil, and Compagnie Française des Pétroles (CFP). Foreign ownership of Iraq's key resource had long been an affront to generations of Iraqi nationalists, and many of the coups had been
motivated by the desire that the government should have ultimate control over the country's fabulous oil wealth. Certain efforts had been made by various Iraqi administrations to rein in IPC's dominance over the industry, most notably when in 1961 President Qassem wrested control of 99.5 percent of the land from IPC, which was refusing to develop it. In 1964 President Arif set up the Iraqi National Oil Company (INOC) to develop the country's oil reserves and sell it on the open market, but this was thwarted by the international oil companies, which, among other retaliatory measures, refused to sell oil to countries that dealt directly with the Iraqi government. This was essentially the situation inherited by the Baathists after they seized power in 1968, and Saddam, with Bakr's backing, resolved to settle an issue that was widely regarded as a national disgrace.