Saddam : His Rise and Fall (33 page)

From the start of the war Saddam had tried hard to insulate the Iraqi population from the reality of what was taking place at the front. The Iraqi population was fed on a constant, and somewhat repetitive, diet of pro-Saddam propaganda. From the moment they glanced at the morning paper, through their journey to work, to the family evening gathered in front of the television, the Iraqi people was inescapably exposed to the towering presence of the “Struggler President.” They saw him posing with a rocket launcher on the front lines or paternally embracing young children; as a statesman meeting heads of state and as a military leader discussing war plans. Saddam was depicted as an efficient bureaucrat in a trendy suit and as an ordinary peasant,
helping farmers with their harvest, scythe in hand. His portraits pervaded the country to such an extent that a popular joke put Iraq's population at 26 million: 13 million Iraqis and 13 million pictures of Saddam.
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In addition to maintaining a constant stream of propaganda in the state-owned media in praise of the country's armed forces and leader, Saddam used the oil wealth to ensure living standards were maintained at a high level. At the outbreak of hostilities Saddam was widely quoted as having said that Iraq had two years' supplies of all key commodities.
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Instead of concentrating most of Iraq's resources on the military effort and, like Iran, stressing the virtue of sacrifice, the Iraqi president sought to prove to his people that he could wage war and maintain a business-as-usual atmosphere at the same time. Ambitious development plans that had commenced prior to the war went ahead, and public spending rose from $21 billion in 1980 to $29.5 billion in 1982. The lion's share of this expanded budget was spent on civilian imports to prevent commodity shortages. This guns-and-butter policy meant that most Iraqis were relatively immune from the ferocious war being waged on the battlefield. Instead the country was buzzing, much to the delight of foreign contractors. Construction projects of all sorts, begun prior to the war, continued apace with the result that Baghdad was being transformed at a feverish pace from a medieval into a modern city. Daily life in the capital was largely unaffected by the war. The blackouts imposed at the start of the fighting were soon lifted once it became clear that the dwindling American-built Iranian air force, starved of spare parts by the U.S. embargo, was unable to extend the war to the Iraqi hinterland. Most foodstuffs were readily available, and the black color of mourning was not too visible in the streets of Baghdad.

Apart from the protective shield Saddam had thrown around the civilian population, he took great care to look after those directly involved in the fighting or affected by the war. With the Iraqi authorities forced to admit that casualties were running at the rate of 1,200 a month, Saddam saw to it that all the participants were handsomely rewarded. The already high standard of living of the officer corps was further improved, and members of the armed forces were given priority for car and house purchases. Officers who had displayed any measure of heroism were presented with Rolex watches, which naturally had Saddam's face on the dial. Bereaved families, for their part, were compensated with a free car, a free plot of land, and an interest-free loan to build a house. To ensure the Baathists were clearly identified with the war effort, Saddam ordered all leading party officials to dispense with their tailor-made suits and
wear olive green battle fatigues, which soon became one of the distinguishing features of televised meetings of the Baath.

Another example of Saddam's attempts to maintain a facade of normality was his insistence on keeping to his plan to host the Non-Aligned Nations Conference in Baghdad in the autumn of 1982. Saddam's interest in the Non-Aligned Movement, formed in the 1950s to represent the interests of developing countries that sought to be independent of the superpowers, dated back to 1978 when he had attended the quadrennial conference in Havana, Cuba. Despite his hatred of communism, Saddam is said to have befriended Fidel Castro and to have developed a taste for fine Havana cigars, which were henceforth exported to Baghdad on a regular basis. In his desire to prevent Iraq being subjected to either superpower's sphere of influence, it was natural for Saddam to turn his attentions toward the Non-Aligned Movement. In arranging for the movement's 1982 conference to be held in Baghdad, Saddam was hoping that he might prevail upon its membership to elect him as Castro's replacement when his term ended as head of the Non-Aligned Movement. Much of the frenetic construction work taking place in Baghdad in the early 1980s was the building of new hotels and conference centers for the planned conference. Millions, if not billions, of dollars were spent on various construction projects, and existing buildings and facilities underwent substantial renovation.

By mid-1982, however, as Iran began its determined drive into Iraq, the butter-and-guns policy, the main buttress of Iraqi national morale, could no longer be maintained. Iran's success in attacking and destroying many of Iraq's oil installations around Basra was one reason the country's financial reserves could no longer finance both the war and a prosperous domestic economy. Another was the decision by Baghdad's rival Baathist colleagues in Damascus to order the closure of the Iraqi pipeline to Banias on the Mediterranean, which passed through Syria. President Asad had been itching for an opportunity to avenge Saddam's purge and execution of pro-Syrian Baathists when he assumed the presidency in 1979, and for the duration of the Iran-Iraq War, Damascus proved to be one of Teheran's staunchest allies. With Iraqi foreign reserves plunging from $35 billion before the war to just $3 billion at the end of 1983, Saddam was forced to reduce radically all spending on nonessential goods. As a consequence civilian imports to Iraq dropped from a peak of $21.5 billion in 1982 to $12.2 billion in 1983, and $10–11 billion between 1984 and 1987. Saddam was even forced to cancel
plans to hold the Non-Aligned Movement conference in Baghdad; the meeting was moved to New Delhi and in Saddam's absence India's Indira Gandhi assumed the leadership of the nonaligned world for the next four years.

The reversal in Iraq's war fortunes and the dramatic economic downturn combined for the first time to raise serious doubts about Saddam's leadership qualities. The setbacks the Iraqis suffered following the Iranian counteroffensives meant Saddam was being held directly responsible for the failures of the armed forces. He was also blamed for exercising poor political judgment in declaring war on Iran in the first place. His insistence on taking personal command of the military meant that he had no alternative other than to accept responsibility for the military setbacks. From the outset of hostilities Saddam had ordered that military command be subjected to Baath Party control. In the early weeks of the conflict Saddam had personally overseen operations from a bunker located beneath the Presidential Palace in Baghdad. Every order had to be referred back to Baghdad and Saddam insisted on being involved in every military decision, from a platoon-level action to the bombing of major targets. Even Adnan Khairallah, his cousin and brother-in-law who was the army chief of staff, had to defer to Field Marshal Saddam on the smallest of issues.

As the conflict developed, Saddam transformed the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) into his personal headquarters, thus enabling him to maintain tight control over all war operations. The result was a lack of flexibility and initiative on the part of Iraq's field commanders, who were severely handicapped in their ability to respond quickly and effectively to whatever new tactics the Iranians might deploy. Saddam's insistence, for political reasons, that his military commanders keep Iraqi casualties to a minimum was but one example of how his amateurish interference hindered his commanders' effectiveness. Far from reducing casualties, Saddam's interventions, which were often diametrically opposed to the view of the professional soldiers, had devastating consequences. Unable to exploit their initial successes in southern Iran, the Iraqis were forced to commit their troops in worsening operational conditions as Iran strengthened its defenses, causing thousands of unnecessary Iraqi deaths. When he was in the wrong, Saddam's hold over the military was so complete that the most experienced battalion and brigade commanders were unwilling to make independent decisions for fear of upsetting their commander in chief. Instead they referred decisions back to division or corps headquarters, which in turn approached the highest command in Baghdad. It should also be remembered that the political commissars who had been appointed by the Baath to keep a
watchful eye on the military high command were present throughout, sending back their reports to the RCC on the performance of individual officers.

Saddam was well aware that his popularity was skin-deep among the majority of the Iraqi population and, true to character, he took care that the necessary preemptive measures were in place to keep him in power. The nation's security apparatus now employed an estimated 208,000 people—twice the present size of the British army—which amounted to about 15 percent of all government employees.
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The special presidential security service, Amn al-Khass, remained under the watchful, and vengeful, eye of Saddam's half brother, Barzan al-Tikriti. Despite the burdens of war, Saddam's executioners hardly missed a beat; in 1981 and 1982, it is estimated, more than 3,000 civilians were executed in addition to those executed for purely political crimes.

The atmosphere of mounting suspicion that permeated the inner sanctum of the Baathist government is reflected in the infamous incident of March 1982 when Saddam shot dead one of his own ministers during the weekly cabinet meeting. While the government later claimed that the minister had been shot for profiteering—a crime punishable by death—the real reason for Saddam's precipitate action was that Riyadh Ibrahim Hussein, the minister of health, had had the temerity to suggest that Saddam stand down in favor of former president Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr, to enable a cease-fire to be negotiated in the Iran-Iraq War. By this stage in the hostilities the war had become a titanic struggle between the overinflated egos of Saddam and Khomeini, and by removing Saddam from the front line, the Iraqis might have been in a better position to sue for peace. When the minister made the suggestion, Saddam showed no outward sign of irritation. He merely interrupted the cabinet meeting and asked the minister to escort him outside. “Let us go to the other room and discuss the matter further,” said Saddam. The minister agreed and the two left the room. A moment later a shot was heard and Saddam returned alone to the cabinet as though nothing had happened.
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When the Iraqi news agency reported the execution of the health minister, it stated that he had been punished for importing medicine that had killed innocent Iraqis, and that he was therefore a “traitor.” When the dead man's wife asked for the return of her husband's body, it was delivered to her chopped into pieces. Soon after this incident Saddam sent a team of doctors working for his security forces to make sure that his ailing predecessor, former president Bakr, did not cause him any further problems in the future (see Chapter Seven).

Saddam's insistence on maintaining direct control of the military campaign meant that he personally had to deal with the first rumblings of discontent within the armed forces. The war had never been particularly popular from the outset, especially as Iraq's Sandhurst-educated officer corps were deeply skeptical about launching an offensive that lacked clearly defined goals. There had been intermittent reports of officers being executed for openly disagreeing with Saddam's war aims, and matters came to a head in the summer of 1982 when a group of officers attempted to articulate what they regarded as constructive criticism of how the war effort might be better directed. Saddam, still nurturing his inferiority complex about the military establishment, did not see it that way, and about three hundred high-ranking officers were executed, together with a small number of party officials who had supported the officers' point of view. Saddam showed no mercy to those officers he suspected of not doing their duty at the front. In one incident it was reported that Saddam personally executed an officer who had ordered a tactical retreat. The officer was brought before Saddam, who calmly drew his pistol and shot the man in the head.
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The Baathists had to contend with a rising number of deserters, although the security forces were easily able to deal with this particular problem. At first deserters who were unfortunate enough to be caught were returned to their homes, where they were executed. Later they were taken to the Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad, which was quickly earning itself a reputation as Saddam's Lubianka. According to one prisoner who survived the horrors of the prison, which had replaced the Palace of the End as the Baathists' main interrogation center, “the section of the Abu Ghraib reserved for those under sentence of death is a hall surrounded by rooms measuring four metres by four metres into each of which fifteen to twenty prisoners are packed. They have to use their rooms as toilets and rubbish dumps. The sun never finds its way into these rooms. A very small proportion of these prisoners are common criminals but the majority are from the military, men who have opposed the Iran-Iraq war.”
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Other inmates described a department of the prison dealing with “special sentences,” a category including all opposition members, but particularly those from the Dawa and the Communist Party. Many of these people were kept in basement dungeons, and allowed out for exercise only once a month.

In an attempt to dilute responsibility for Iraq's failure to achieve its war aims, in June Saddam undertook a series of measures designed to ensure that the ruling echelon of the Baath accepted its fair share of the blame and to
remove those for whom he had no further use. Saddam started by convening meetings of the RCC, whose members were invited to make their own plea to the Iranians to accept a cease-fire. This was duly rejected by the Iranians, thereby showing that removing Saddam would not end the war. At the next meeting Saddam staged a minipurge of the RCC, and eight of the sixteen members were removed. The most symbolic change was the removal of General Saadoun Ghaydan, the last survivor from the officers who had brought the Baath to power in 1968. Another indication of Saddam's murderous mood during the summer of 1982 concerns an incident that is alleged to have occurred during a meeting of the National Assembly. As Saddam addressed the assembly he noticed a man in the audience passing a note to another man. Without thinking twice the president drew his pistol and killed both of them. Saddam assumed that they were plotting his assassination, and when the piece of paper was examined, the president was proved correct. Whether this story is true or apocryphal, it certainly enjoyed wide circulation in the coffee shops of Baghdad and reinforced the view that the Iraqi president was not a man to be trifled with.