Saddam : His Rise and Fall Read online

  Soon after the Baathists took power, Nadhim Kazzar assumed control of the internal security operation. Kazzar had already proved his credentials as a torturer during the bloody persecution of the communists in 1963 (see Chapter Two). The Baath leadership of Bakr and Saddam were well aware of the diabolical methods used by Kazzar to terrorize opponents of the regime, but nevertheless gave him free rein to eradicate any hint of opposition to the new regime, whether it came from within the party or outside. Hundreds if not thousands of people perished at the hands of Kazzar’s security forces, many of them tortured to death at the Palace of the End. In 1971, for example, one faction of the Iraqi Communist Party issued a list of 410 members whom it claimed had died at the palace. One former Baathist activist who was present in Baghdad at the time recalled that Kazzar was afforded special treatment by the Bakr/Saddam government. “He was highly trusted. He was the only member of the Baath who was allowed to go armed with a firearm when he visited the Presidential Palace. This was because he had so many enemies in the Baath he felt he had to protect himself against an assassination attempt.” A former engineer by training, Kazzar is remembered as a quiet man who never smiled. “In all the years I knew him I never saw him smile once.”6

  At the top of Saddam’s list for retribution after the Baathists were established in power were his long-standing foes, the communists. From November 1968 onward there were a number of confrontations between communist sympathizers and Saddam’s paramilitaries. The communists, like the Kurds, were becoming increasingly concerned at the decidedly autocratic nature of the new Bakr government, and staged several protests calling for a more democratic administration. Saddam reacted to their demands with his customary delicacy: in November 1968 two communists were killed when a group of striking factory workers in Baghdad came under fire, and another three were shot dead the following day at a rally to mark the fifty-first anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution. In each instance an accusing finger was pointed at Saddam’s paramilitaries.7 The outraged communists reacted by forming small, armed detachments with which they aimed to overthrow the regime. These guerrilla units staged a number of daring raids on businesses in Baghdad and other cities to raise money, blew up a number of official vehicles, and even sprayed Saddam’s house with machine-gun fire. Saddam responded by launching a nationwide hunt for the communist cells, which his security forces eventually succeeded in catching in February. The captured men were predictably transported to the Palace of the End for interrogation: no fewer than twenty were said to have subsequently died under torture, including two members of the Politbureau that controlled the Iraqi Communist Party. The effectiveness of Kazzar’s torture methods was illustrated by Aziz al-Haj, the head of the Politbureau, who broke down and recanted his sins against “the revolution” in a televised broadcast. Al-Haj, who had previously experienced the horrors of the Palace of the End in 1963, is said to have exclaimed upon his arrest, “I can no longer bear torture, I will cooperate.”8 Over the next two years a number of prominent communists were either murdered by Saddam’s “security officials” or died at the hands of Saddam’s torturers in the palace, and the movement’s ability to mount an effective challenge to the Baathists was gradually eroded.

  An altogether more serious threat to the Baathists was presented by the country’s large Shiite community, which, apart from being hostile to the Sunni clique that was now running the country, had close ties with the shah of Iran, the leader of the world’s most populous nation of Shiite Muslims. Ignoring protests from the United Nations over the show trials of the “Israeli ring of spies,” Saddam persisted with his witch-hunts for spies and plotters, and the show trials were prosecuted with greater vigor: in February 1969 another seven people were publicly executed for plotting against the state, followed by another fourteen in April. Most of these executions were carried out in the southern city of Basra, the capital of the Shiite community, which adjoins the border with Iran. The shah, who had reached an entente with the Israelis to keep Iraq weak and destabilized, was keen to exploit the perceived weakness of the new regime and, without any provocation from the Iraqis, his government in April 1969 abruptly declared null and void the 1937 treaty that had granted Iraq control of the all-important Shatt al-Arab waterway at the head of the Gulf. For good measure he massed his troops on the border with Iraq and sandbagged buildings in Teheran.

  The general sense of unease that the shah’s belligerence created in Baghdad came to a head in January 1970 when a triumphant Saddam was able to expose a plot by a group of Iranian-backed Iraqi officers to overthrow the Bakr government. On January 20, the day fixed for the projected coup, Mahdi Saleh al-Samurrai, a retired colonel in the Iraqi army, set off with a group of fifty men, who had earlier assembled at the main Rashid military camp on the outskirts of Baghdad, for the Presidential Palace as part of a coordinated plan to overthrow the government. According to Saddam’s account of the coup attempt, the plotters, who were led by Major General Abed al-Ghani al-Rawi, a retired officer and former protégé of the two Arif presidents, intended to form a number of “hit squads” that would assassinate key party and government officials in a number of coordinated attacks. The only action that actually took place, however, was Samurrai’s march on the Presidential Palace where, to his surprise, on arrival he was warmly greeted by Saleh Omar al-Ali, the Baathist activist who had ridden on a tank with Saddam during the 1968 coup (see Chapter Three), and Colonel Fadhil al-Nahi. Believing that Ali and Nahi were party to the coup, Samurrai gratefully accepted their invitation to enter the Presidential Palace, and the gates were duly thrown open to allow his band of adventurers to enter. Unfortunately for Samurrai and his fellow conspirators, as soon as they were inside the palace compound the gates slammed shut, leaving them trapped inside. According to the official Iraqi account of the incident, Samurrai was then shown into a large hall. As the bemused plotters weighed their options, the door was thrown open, and Saddam entered the hall, accompanied by several officers. Realizing that they had been lured into a trap, the plotters opened fire, killing two of the palace guards. But they were quickly overpowered and forced to surrender.

  Later that same day Saddam convened a Special Court to try the plotters. The court was headed by Captain Taha Yasin al-Jazrawi, a member of the RCC and a close associate of Saddam, and the other two members included Saddam’s favorite henchman, Nadhim Kazzar. In all, forty-four plotters were convicted and executed,9 including Samurrai. The executions started on January 21, and were completed by the twenty-fourth. The military officers were shot, and the civilians hanged. The officers were allegedly shot with the weapons they had received from the Iranian security services to carry out the coup.10 Fifteen others were imprisoned. Nayif, the exiled prime minister who was implicated in the affair, was sentenced to death in absentia, as was General Rawi. The Iranian ambassador was given twenty-four hours to leave the country, and the Iranian consulates in Baghdad, Karbala, and Basra were closed and Iranians living in the country deported.

  The exposure and swift dispatch of the plotters was a triumph for Saddam Hussein. It was his security forces that had uncovered the plot, and the exposure of a military coup attempt by Saddam’s civilian officials constituted a victory for the civilian Baathists over their military rivals, a point that was not lost on President Bakr. Saddam, the ever-vigilant “Mr. Deputy” was able to make the point that it was he and his formidable security forces, rather than the military, that had guaranteed the party’s safety. Saddam was able to turn exposure of the coup into a brilliant propaganda exercise, just as he had done with the “Israeli ring of spies.” Every detail of the coup uncovered by the authorities was made public: the enormous sums of money, the sophisticated electronic transmitters, the 130 tons of arms, all of which was elaborately displayed in a central exhibition hall in Baghdad, each item carefully presented behind glass partitions. It was revealed that the whole affair had been arranged through the Iranian embassy in Baghdad, and details of the correspondence between the Iranian am
bassador and General Rawi were published. Apart from the dispute with Iran over the Shatt al-Arab waterway, the other motive Saddam provided for the coup attempt was that it was part of a conspiracy to return Iraq to Anglo-American imperialist control and to weaken the country in its ongoing war with Israel.

  Large demonstrations were organized to publicize “the invincibility” of the revolution and a state funeral was held for the two Baathist soldiers killed during the skirmish at the palace. Taped confessions and photographs of huge arsenals of weapons were widely circulated; handwritten letters giving code words were made available, and the wives of the plotters denounced their husbands. It was even alleged that the conspirators had planned to flood Baghdad and other cities in the event that they could not kill off the Baathist leaders immediately. The authorities claimed to have recovered from the conspirators’ pockets lists of future ministers and other proposed government appointments, which provided Saddam and his acolytes with a wealth of ammunition to use against their enemies.11 According to the official account of how the authorities apprehended the conspirators, which was provided in the government newspaper Al-Thawra, or “the revolution,” the plot had actually been uncovered the previous year, at the same time that the government was prosecuting the Zionist plotters, and rather than round them up immediately, Saddam had placed thirty agents in their ranks. Saddam was keen to make as much political capital as possible from the affair which, apart from convincing the Iraqi people that they faced a genuine threat from foreign forces, would enable him to send a resounding signal to the shah of Iran that the Baathists were not to be intimidated by their neighbor’s growing regional power.

  The other powerful faction that needed to be neutralized by the new Baathist government was the Kurds, arguably the most problematic of all the Iraqi constituents. The Kurds are an ethnic minority distinct from the Arabs. They speak a different language and have different habits and customs. During the final years of Ottoman rule the vast majority of Kurds lived in what has today become Turkey. At the end of the First World War the victorious Allied powers denied the Kurds the statehood they believed they had been promised. The lands they had occupied for generations were divided among Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran. From the outset of Iraq’s creation successive Kurdish leaders campaigned for autonomy from Baghdad, a campaign that generated substantially more enthusiasm once the Kurds discovered that the Kurdish regions of northern Iraq around Mosul and Kirkuk contained some of the world’s most lucrative oil reserves. The discovery of the region’s oil wealth, however, only served to strengthen Baghdad’s resolve to maintain control over the region, and the “Kurdish question” was a perennial issue that demanded tactful and skillful handling by Baghdad. The Baathists, forever mindful of their narrow power base, decided to placate the Kurds on the basis that they could only deal with so many rival factions at once.

  From 1969 onward Saddam was given personal control by Bakr to bring the Kurds into line. From the outset Saddam’s efforts to deal with the Kurds were hampered by the fact that the main Kurdish leader, Mustapha Barzani, was receiving the backing of the Soviet Union. The Soviets, who remained committed to their goal of extending their influence throughout the Gulf, had taken a dim view of the new Baathist government’s persecution of the Iraqi Communist Party, and saw the Kurds as a means of putting pressure on Baghdad. Saddam’s first instinct was to confront the Kurds on the battlefield and in April 1969 he called out garrison troops and the small Iraqi air force. On August 8 the army razed the Kurdish village of Dakan, near the northern city of Mosul. But the rugged terrain of Kurdistan was not well suited to the tanks and heavy armored vehicles of the Iraqi troops. The Kurdish guerrillas, called peshmergas (“those who walk before death”) used the high mountain passes and steep valleys to their advantage. When the air force tried to bomb them, they simply dug in and hid in caves. The valleys were so narrow that the Iraqi pilots had difficulty in maneuvering. On occasion, unable to pull up in time, they crashed their jet fighters into the mountain peaks. To make matters worse for Saddam, the Iraqi communists threw in their lot with the Kurds. Potentially the Kurdish-communist threat was a deadly combination for the Baathists.

  Facing a humiliating defeat on the battleground, Saddam decided to seek a diplomatic solution. In January 1970 he made his first visit to Moscow, which during the 1960s had become Iraq’s main supplier of arms, hoping to negotiate a deal with Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin to withdraw Soviet support from the Kurds. The Russians were amenable, but stressed that if they withdrew their support, there was to be no massacre of the Iraqi Kurds. Saddam reluctantly agreed to the Soviet terms and, on his return from Moscow, triumphantly announced a new “autonomy plan” for Kurdistan. The March Manifesto, as it became known, promised the Kurds many of the political and cultural rights they had been demanding for years. The only catch for the Kurds was that Saddam was able to insist on the concession from Barzani that the autonomy agreement should not go into effect for another four years. Saddam had no intention of giving up control over the three oil-rich Kurdish provinces, but the agreement provided the Baathists with the breathing space they needed to deal with all the other threats they faced, such as the communists, the military, and Shiites, not to mention Israel and Iran.

  The gloss was somewhat taken off the deal the following year, however, when a carefully planned attempt was made on Barzani’s life, which bore all the hallmarks of Saddam’s security forces. Relations between Saddam and Barzani quickly became strained because Saddam proved reluctant to stick to the terms of the March Manifesto, and probably never had any intention of doing so when the deal was originally struck. The Iraqi army was not withdrawn from the region, as had been agreed, on “security grounds,” and Saddam created numerous obstacles to prevent Barzani from implementing his side of the agreement, such as appointing Kurdish politicians to government positions in Baghdad. The final straw for Barzani was the attempt on his life, which took place while he was entertaining eight religious leaders sent by Saddam to discuss implementation of the manifesto. As Barzani was talking two explosions rocked the room, killing two of the clerics. Barzani’s bodyguards immediately opened fire, killing five of the remaining clerics. Barzani himself escaped, and it later transpired that the clerics had been duped into carrying out the assassination attempt by Saddam’s associate, Nadhim Kazzar. Kazzar provided the clerics with tape recorders and asked them to record their conversation with Barzani. The moment they activated the machines the bombs went off. Barzani was particularly incensed because not only had he agreed to see the clerics following a meeting with Saddam, but because Saddam had implicated Barzani’s estranged son Ubaidallah in the plot, promising him that he would succeed his father if the attack were successful. Confronted with such incontrovertible evidence of Saddam’s involvement, Barzani declared, “Iraq is a police state run by Saddam Hussein who is a power-obsessed maniac.”12

  Barzani’s comment struck a chord with many Iraqis who came to know only too well how Saddam’s security forces extended their pernicious influence into every area of Iraqi society. Immediately after the 1968 revolution all government offices were purged of any non-Baathist staff members who refused to accept the new order. The military was a harder nut to crack, but Saddam found a way around the resistance of the officer corps by reverting to the Soviet system, introduced by Lenin during the First World War, of appointing political commissars to report back on their activities. The commissars reported directly to Saddam, thereby bypassing the formal chain of command. Officers of questionable loyalty were replaced by Baathists or their sympathizers. Many of those dismissed from the armed forces, which included a number of division commanders, were arrested and tortured. Saddam similarly increased his control over the lives of ordinary Iraqis. Baathist militiamen patrolled the streets, and surprise raids on private homes in the middle of the night drove home the message that no one was beyond their control. Iraq was being transformed into a totalitarian regime, “a place where men vanished, and their f
riends were too frightened to inquire what had happened to them; people arrested on trivial charges “committed suicide” in prison; former officials were mysteriously assassinated; politicians disappeared.”13

  While Saddam was busy establishing this labyrinthine network of spies, commissars, torturers, and murderers, he nevertheless found time to keep himself acquainted with the gruesome practices being applied to his luckless victims at the Palace of the End. A Shiite dissident who managed to survive the torture chambers at the Palace of the End provided a chilling description of how Saddam personally killed another Shiite detainee by the name of Dukhail. “He came into the room, picked up Dukhail and dropped him into a bath of acid. And then he watched while the body dissolved.”14 While corroboration of such stories is hard to come by, they nevertheless bear an uncanny resemblance to some of the legends that have arisen relating to Saddam’s activities at the Palace of the End in 1963. Whether true or false, from Saddam’s point of view the most important consideration was that stories such as this were in the public domain in Iraq, and were widely believed. So long as the population was persuaded to live with the fear that any Iraqi might at any moment suffer a similar fate, the position of the Baath Party would remain secure.