In the Eye of the Storm: The Rise and Dramatic Fall of Saddam Hussein

By

Shehu Usman Abdullahi

sheikhbeta@yahoo.co.uk

Mixed reactions greeted both the capture of the deposed Iraqi leader on December 13, 2003 and his arraignment before an Iraqi judge over six months later. On the first occasion, Mr. Hussein had appeared dishevelled and disoriented, almost unrecognisable in his overgrown whiskers; while, seated on the dock with the beard now cropped to a stubble, he had looked a little more like his former self if you ignored the fact that he had been chained on both his hands and legs during the drive to the court premises. In both cases he had identified himself as Saddam Hussein, the President of Iraq, even though his circumstances could hardly be any less presidential.

This humiliating end to a very proud man remained perhaps the only tangible gain of the Bush Administration’s misadventure in Iraq . Their joyous reaction was therefore predictable and was graphically captured by the chest thumbing of Paul Bremer, the American pro-consul in Iraq , when announcing the capture to the press corps in Baghdad : “Ladies and Gentlemen,” he exulted, pausing for dramatic effect, “we’ve got him.”  For the Americans, Saddam’s fall from grace had, quite apart from the intended regime change, the added advantage of sending clear signals to all would be arms proliferating dictators that the same fate awaited them should they chose to mess with the United States.

The majority of European nations exhibited more ambivalent feelings. Though glad that the reign of the troublesome Saddam was over, some E.U. members resented the overbearing manner the U.S went about the whole business, and fretted that the world’s only remaining superpower may be getting that little bit out of control. The fact that Iraq itself was still smouldering with rebellious violence several months after the official end of the war, only added to their concerns.

Feelings in the Arab world meanwhile were divided between the citizens and their governments. Notwithstanding the publicised collective opposition to the American invasion of Iraq by member countries of the Arab League, most Arab leaders were in private glad to see the back of Saddam whose very presence in their midst seemed to stir up one trouble or the other. Not so their populace, who for years have prayed for a very strong leader around which all Arabs will rally, the better to stand up to their historic enemy Israel, and saw in Saddam the best prospect for that leadership. The Iraqi populace might have some reservations about this dream, being the direct victims of Saddam’s heavy-handedness, but the average Arab outside Iraq had no such qualms: better some to suffer in the hands of brother Saddam, than for all to continue to endure the humiliations meted out by the obdurate Jewish State.

From the larger Muslim world, Saddam’s predicament elicited wide sympathy not so much because of the appeal of his Islamic credentials – though his support for the Palestinian cause had endeared him to some religious minded – but principally because Muslims resented America’s apparent bad blood against Islam, and therefore respected any man who challenged the superpower. If Israel should be allowed to maintain its stock of WMD, the average Muslim wondered, why shouldn’t Iraq ? And what gave a Christian American President, especially one that had inadvertently let slip that he was on a Crusade, the moral right to judge for all humanity what was good and what was evil?

For a man who engenders such passion around the world, Saddam Hussein still remains an enigma to most people. This is partly because over the years Saddam had built a cult like mystique around his person deliberately obscuring the real man; and partly because Western efforts to demonise and make him an object of hate around the world also ended up further masking his true character. It will be correct to say that the people who celebrated the fall of Saddam in Western countries and those who shed tears over the event, like some of us in Northern Nigeria , in reality know very little about the man.

Saddam Hussein at-Tikriti was born in 1937 in the village of Al Awja , near the town of Tikrit . As with several leaders of the world, he came from a very humble family. Unlike most, however, Saddam family’s poverty was particularly severe, forcing him to develop unorthodox and unscrupulous means of survival at an early age. These traits were to serve him well in later years when he would gladly accept duties that others considered too ‘low’ or ‘dirty’ for them, and used such posts as planks to achieve higher things.

Saddam received very little education as a result of his family’s straitened circumstances, and sought solace in politics with the Ba’th – or Renaissance – Party, then a growing influence in Iraq and Syria . His role in those early years was the equivalent of an enforcer for the Party, carrying out the dirty deeds that needed to be done: political thuggery or banga is clearly not an exclusively Nigerian phenomenon. In 1959, just two years after joining the Ba’th Party, he took part in an attempted coup against the Government of the day, headed by Prime Minister Abdulkadir al Qasim. The coup plot failed and, wounded, Saddam escaped to Syria and eventually to Egypt , then under the reign of Gamel Abdul Nasser.

Nasser was a committed and charismatic pan-Arab nationalist who dreamt of uniting all Arabs under one umbrella and making them independent of what he considered pernicious and exploitative western influences. Unfortunately, General Qasim, Iraq ’s leader, was a nationalist of a more local hue, pre-occupied with establishing a unique identity for his nation by uniting the various factions in his country like the Kurds, the communists, and other sundry groups. The Ba’ath Party members were also at this time firm believers in Arab unity, and therefore opposed the position of their country’s leader, aligning themselves with Nasser .

Saddam took advantage of his exile to enrol in the Cairo Law School from 1962 to 1963, though politics rather than scholarship was his major preoccupation. He was as a matter of fact already involved in the establishment of a working relationship with the United States . Though at this time only a minor Ba’ath Party official, Saddam made several visits to the American Embassy in Cairo where it was believed that he held series of meetings with the CIA desk officers there.  No ideological soul mates of the socialist Ba’athists, the Americans had taken an even greater dislike to General Qasim because of his overtures to the communists, and feared that he might drag Iraq completely into the Soviet fold. Allen Dulles, the CIA chief at the time, had even testified before Congress that Iraq was the most dangerous place in the world for America .

Washington therefore lent considerable moral and logistical support to the Ba’athists’ bid to dethrone General Qasim in 1963. It was strongly suspected that the Americans set up an electronic command centre in neighbouring Kuwait to guide the forces fighting Qasim to victory. Decades later when fortune turned against him, Saddam would recall this role to which Kuwait was put against their opponents, and bitterly suspect that the Americans were resorting to their old tricks again, with him now on the receiving end.

For their troubles, the Americans, through the CIA, supplied the new rulers with a list of undesirable elements in Iraq they felt needed to be neutralised, one way or another, in order to forestall the spectre of communism rearing its head in the country. Largely based on the CIA list, over hundreds of people were eliminated, with Saddam, now playing the role of an interrogator, almost certainly having participated in the atrocities. And as a bonus, U.S. technicians were able for the first time to lay their hands on certain models of Soviet tanks and MiG Fighters.

The Ba’athists stint in power lasted only briefly this time around. In fact, they had made the cardinal mistake of appointing a non-Ba’athist professional army officer, General Abdussalam Arif, as the President and only entrusted the more ceremonial post of Prime Minister to their Ba’athist officer, Colonel Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr. Soon differences arose over policy, and in November of 1963 Arif rounded up the leaders of the Ba’ath Party and placed them under arrest, assuming full control of Iraq . Saddam would spend several years in prison after a foiled attempt to regain power in 1964, only to escape and later re-emerge at the top echelon of the Ba’ath Party.

A lot of water had passed under the bridge of Iraqi and international politics when the Ba’athists made their next bid for power in 1968. In Iraq President Abdussalam Arif had died in a helicopter accident and had been succeeded by his elder brother, Abdurrahman Arif. Internationally, the Arabs had suffered yet another defeat in the hands of Israel during the Six-Day War of 1967. For most of the Arabs leaders in power at the time, these were indeed turbulent times. To their opponents on the political sidelines, it was a golden opportunity to make a grab for power. In 1968, the Ba’athists in league with a faction of the army, and in a second alliance of convenience with the U.S, made their move.

America ’s motive for supporting the Ba’athists this time was less ideological than economic. The U.S. had learnt that Iraq was about to grant huge oil concessions to both the USSR and France . Furthermore, the price of Sulphur , a chemical element with wide variety of applications, had suddenly shot up in the international market, with Iraq poised to start selling the commodity in huge quantities. America desperately wanted to have both for its own industries, and was damned if it would just sit back and allow the USSR or even France to corner the concessions.

Having only a minor role in the 1963 coup, Saddam was however in the vanguard of the 1968 revolution. In a group under the command of General Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr, he donned a military uniform to storm and occupy the presidential palace with the aid of conspiratorial palace guards led by Colonel Sa’ad Ghaydun, who opened the palace gate for them from the inside. President Abdurrahman Arif surrendered, and General al-Bakr, Prime Minister under the revolutionary government of 1963, and the secretary of the Regional Command of the Ba’ath party since 1964, was made President. He in turn appointed Colonel Abdurrazaq an-Nayif, head of military intelligence under Abdurrahman Arif and leader of the army faction collaborating in the coup, the new Prime Minister.

The honeymoon between the Ba’athists and the army on the one hand, and the Ba’athists and America on the other lasted less than a month. Non-Ba’athists and pro-American groups were soon purged from the new administration. Saddam, now de facto deputy to al-Bakr, personally drove the Prime Minister to the airport at gun point and bundled him off to exile in London . Given their bad experience in 1963, the conspirators were not about to repeat the same mistake of trusting their fate in the hands of the army again.

As for the fall out with the Americans, the new administration had urgently wanted economic as well as military assistance from Washington , and it become clear they were not going to get any. The Ba’athists were to learn that America would only go so far in its support for any Arab country, and was not in the habit of propping up regimes that could pose a threat to its client state of Israel.

Having been spurned by America , the Ba’athists turned their attention to the U.S.S.R and got what they wanted with little trouble: the cold war was after all at its chilliest. By 1972, the government had signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation with the Soviets, who considered Iraq to be a better strategic partner than Eqypt because of Iraq ’s wealth and its location as a gateway to the Gulf and all that oil. The Soviets went as far as instructing the local communist groups in Iraq to cooperate with the Ba’athist government, though that alliance did not last long.

Saddam was shouldering virtually most of the regime’s administrative functions by this time. President al-Bakr, who happened to be a relation of Saddam from Tikrit, was only too glad to let his energetic and highly organised deputy relieve him of the tedium of day to day bureaucratic routines, for he would not be bothered with administrative details and, moreover, his health was not as it used to be even before suffering a heart attack in 1976. Saddam took full advantage of this situation, and in no time was controlling the whole country.

He started his empire building with the acquisition of the Security portfolio which all his Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) colleagues had rejected as being unfit for gentlemen. Saddam, who had never pretended to be a gentleman, accepted the outfit and named it the Department for General Relations, and proceeded to expand it. Already he was in control of another division called the Peasants’ Department. Before long he had added four other titles to his belt: head of relations with the Kurds; head of the committee dealing with oil affairs; head of the committee in charge of relations with Arab countries; and head of the workers syndicate. He worked tirelessly, often for up to 18 hours a day to nurture and consolidate his growing influence. Friction inevitably started to develop between his close-knit departments and the army, so Saddam moved to clip the latter’s wings.

He neutralised the army first by infiltrating its ranks with relatives from his home town of Tikrit , appointing his brother-in-law as Chief of Army Staff. He then moved to strengthen his security outfit at the expense of the army, a tactic he borrowed from Stalin who happened to be the historical figure Saddam most admired and emulated. In the style of his alter ego, many of the security officers whose careers he promoted were common criminals with no claim to any other credentials beyond a blind loyalty to their benefactor and a readiness to do his bidding – a commitment Saddam exploited to the fullest.

Having more or less secured his position, Saddam set to work to transform Iraq into a modern nation. He sought and obtained the services of the best companies in the world and used them to execute important programmes in the oil business, agriculture, the construction of rail and roads, the mining of sulphur and phosphate, and in the building of factories. Such was the pace of the economic activities at the time, that Saddam imported 2 million workers from other Arab countries, a move that at the same time reinforced his bid for Arab leadership.

As with Adolf Hitler in the early 1930s when he was perceived by some of his country men to have restored German pride and economic fortunes lost during World War 1 at the hands of the Allies, Saddam was at this point much loved both by his people and the larger Arab population because he was working diligently to improve their lot, with considerable success. If here and there a few individuals got in the way and had to be eliminated, well, it just couldn’t be helped. But as with most dictators, he soon overreached himself, and became a danger both to his country and his neighbours.

In 1974, still officially only the vice president, Saddam made the first attempts to acquire nuclear capability for Iraq . He set up a 3-man Committee for Strategic Development which he headed, with the other members being his brother-in-law - the Chief of Army Staff - and his assistant, Adnan Hamdani. The operation of this committee was shrouded in secrecy such that not even the president knew what was happening most of the time. Saddam brought in several scientists and engineers from other Arab countries, and funded their efforts with money skimmed off the oil revenues – reportedly by as much as 5% of the oil income.

Despite all the hypocritical posturing of western nations in recent times, they did much to assist Saddam in his re-armament efforts then. Saddam obtained the blueprints for chemical weapons from American companies, with the full knowledge of the U.S government. He was offered fighter bombers both by France and the UK ; he bought helicopters and a nuclear reactor from France ; and obtained protective clothing against chemical and biological agents from the UK . The cold war did much to fuel western support for Saddam in the 1970s, with the NATO countries desperate to rid Iraq of Soviet influence.

In the Middle East , cold war politics gave way to Islamic revivalism at the end of the decade when Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi was deposed in Iran in 1979, and Ayatullah Ruhullah Khomeini proclaimed an Islamic Republic. In Iraq , meanwhile, president al-Bakr had finally succumbed to the inevitable, announcing his resignation and being succeeded by Saddam in July of the same year. Khomeini took an immediate dislike to the Ba’athist regime in Iraq , considering it an irreligious socialist filth that ought to be converted, along with many other Middle Eastern governments, into an Islamic Republic.

Arab leaders and their western masters were not amused by Khomeini’s avowed intention to export the Islamic Revolution. The idea of pan-Islamism in the strategic Middle East was anathema to western countries in general and America – which Khomeini had labelled “The Great Satan” – in particular. All considered the bearded, ascetic and inscrutable cleric a dangerous fanatic that ought to be stopped at all costs.

Saddam signalled his intention to fulfil this role of forming a bulwark against the spread of the Islamic Revolution, if the west and his Arab brothers would provide him with the necessary support. He also had another motivation: a simmering border dispute with Iran dating back to the time of the Shah, with Iran still holding on to three small though oil rich islands that were supposed to have been handed back to Iraq under a treaty signed by the two countries in 1975. Saddam calculated that if Iran realised the futility of fighting against the overwhelming odds of Arab and international solidarity, Khomeini would have no alternative but to accede to his terms.

In this evaluation he, like the commanders of Lord Tennyson’s Light Brigade, blundered badly. As the irresistible force of Saddam’s bolstered army met with the immovable obstacle of Khomeini’s unshakable faith, the soldiers on both sides must have felt like the hapless protagonists in The Charge of the Light Brigade. The conflict degenerated into a vicious war of attrition, with the battles at times looking more of World War 1 vintage, complete with trench combat, human-wave mine clearing, and the use of chemical agents by the Iraqi army, than a war being fought in late 20^th Century. The war dragged on for eight years, at great human and material cost on both sides, until a final ceasefire in 1988, with Iraq claiming a pyrrhic victory.

The conflict left Saddam with a 1-million-man battle-hardened army and a formidable arsenal, including chemical and biological weapons stock. But it also left him broke to the tune of something around $100 billion dollars, about half of which was owed to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia . Given that the war was fought against a common enemy, Saddam expected his Arab brothers to, at the very least, forgive his debts. He was also furious with the west when he discovered that after the war they had more or less lost interest in his affairs, leaving Iraq to fend for itself with its petro-dollars.

The trouble was that the price of crude oil kept falling on the international market as the west kept up the pressure on Kuwait and Saudi Arabia – OPEC’s major producers and darlings of the west – to increase their production. Saddam was particularly irked by Kuwait ’s un-brotherly attitude which he felt was uncalled for given its very small population and modest development needs. And, after all, Kuwait itself was in fact, if not in reality, a province of Iraq .

Iraq ’s claim on Kuwait had historical basis dating back to the Ottoman period. In 1871, the ruler of Kuwait was appointed an assistant Governor by the Ottoman Governor, Midhat Pasha, an investiture which meant that Kuwait became a district of Basra, then an Ottoman province. But by this time the Ottoman Empire was itself in terminal decline, finally becoming dismembered after World War 1 in which the Ottomans had the misfortune of fighting on the loosing side, and was eventually supplanted by modern day Turkey . The long and short of it was that Iraq lost the legal claim on Kuwait in the various treaties signed before and after World War 1 between Kuwait and Britain in 1899, and Britain and Turkey, in the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.

But this inconvenient legal fact did not appear to have deterred Saddam from renewing his claim on Kuwait . To be fair, Saddam was on surer legal grounds over the more specific border claims which triggered the new rounds of disputes: the ownership of the islands of Warbah and Bubiyan, ceded to Kuwait under an unratified British-Ottoman Convention of 1913, before which both were part of the province of Basra . Now that post Iraq-Iran war realities have made the disputed islands of even more strategic importance, Saddam pushed for their return to Iraq . Frustrated by the lack of progress in the dispute, and by now besieged by western criticisms over human rights abuses in the country and the “discoveries”, at many international airports, of various weapon systems or parts thereof destined for Iraq, Saddam cracked under the pressure and launched his invasion of Kuwait. It was the rash act of a very desperate man.

Now George Herbert Walker Bush – Bush Senior – and his troika of Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and the swashbuckling Norman Schwarzkopf, waltzed into the arena to take on Saddam in what the Iraqi leader hyperbolically called “the Mother of all Wars.” Bush assembled a multinational force under the overall command of Schwarzkopf which drove out the Iraqi forces from Kuwait . The U.N subsequently clamped punitive sanctions on Iraq , lasting for over a decade and bringing untold hardship to millions of innocent Iraqis. Saddam would survive the onslaught, but his respite was to prove temporary; for George Walker Bush – Bush Junior – was to come along and finish the work which his father had started.

For all his notable and at times daringly heroic exploits, Saddam alas came to an ignoble end. Furtively scurrying from one foxhole to another, he was eventually cornered in one of them after being betrayed by a supposedly trusted bodyguard. Gone were all the paraphernalia of office and the enigmatic demeanour that were always associated with the man. His courage also appeared to have deserted him, because even though a rifle was said to have been resting within his reach, Saddam disappointingly offered no resistance.

Many of his admirers must have wished that he went down in a blaze of gunfire like his two sons, Uday and Qusay, whose deaths in a fierce fight with the U.S. soldiers had assured them of a place in local folklore. Their idol, however, will now have to take his chances with the new Iraqi legal system which has just reinstated the death penalty. The bitter irony for them is that having cheated death in the hands of the U.S. marines, Saddam may yet meet his end courtesy of the verdict of America ’s Iraqi clones, in what for the world is shaping up to be “the mother of all show trials.”

Engr S. U. Abdullahi

NNDC Qtrs., Kundila

Kano