Saddam : His Rise and Fall Read online

  Apart from terrorizing the various factions confronting the Baathists, Saddam concentrated his energies on eliminating anyone who might be considered a potential rival, together with anyone who knew him well enough to have information that might be considered harmful to his future career prospects. As discussed earlier, the motive for the murder of Nasser al-Hani, the former foreign minister, in November 1968, was widely attributed to the fact that he may have been able to shed unwelcome light on Saddam’s dealings with the CIA. The official explanation for Hani’s death was that he had been killed by criminals. A similar explanation was provided four months later following the murder of Colonel Abed al-Karim Mustafa Nasrat, a former special forces commander who had spearheaded the attack on the Ministry of Defense during the 1963 coup that overthrew General Qassem. His offense was that he had remained sympathetic to the Syrian Baath, another of Saddam’s pet hates. To allay public suspicions, Saddam’s security officers produced a public “confession” from a petty criminal who admitted to stabbing Nasrat to death in his home during a robbery. Saddam was also implicated in the death of Fouad al-Rikabi, the former secretary-general of the Iraqi Baath, who had been personally responsible for giving Saddam his first Baath assignment, the failed assassination attempt on General Qassem in 1958. Rikabi had been forced out of the party shortly afterward by the Baathist ideologue Michel Afleq and had become a Nasserite. After the 1968 revolution the Baathists jailed him for one and a half years on a trumped-up charge. A few days before he was due to be released, “the authorities brought in a hooligan with a knife. Rikabi was stabbed in the chest and then dragged to the hospital. They left him unattended until he died.”15

  There was a chilling degree of professionalism about the way in which Saddam systematically set about dispensing with his rivals. Samir al-Khalil, whose book Republic of Fear provides a fascinating examination of the repressive state security structures that were created by the early Baathists, sets out a detailed list of more than thirty high-ranking officers, senior Baathists, and politicians of ministerial rank or higher who were purged after the July Revolution of 1968, most of them on Saddam’s orders.16 The show trial remained Saddam’s preferred method of humiliation, so long as he could be sure of securing a conviction, which was usually possible through the good offices of either the Palace of the End torturers or the willingness of the court officials to accommodate their Baathist masters. Thus Rashid Muslih, a former minister of the interior, publicly admitted at his televised trial that he had spied for the CIA, and was duly executed. Abed al-Rahman al-Bazzaz, who had served as prime minister under the second President Arif and had been generally well-disposed to the Baath, was put on trial in the summer of 1969, together with Abed al-Aziz al-Uqayli, a former minister of defense. Both these men denied the Baathists the pleasure of hearing public confessions, but received lengthy prison sentences nevertheless.

  Saddam’s sadistic streak was demonstrated by his treatment of Tahir Yahya, who had been Iraq’s prime minister when the Baathists took power in 1968. Yahya had served Iraq as a military officer his entire adult life, and had at one time even been a prominent member of the Baath Party and one of Saddam’s superiors. After seizing power Saddam had Yahya, a well-educated man whose sophistication he resented, confined to prison. On his orders Yahya was assigned to push a wheelbarrow from cell to cell, collecting the prisoners’ slop buckets. He would call out, “Rubbish! Rubbish!” The former prime minister’s humiliation was a source of great delight for Saddam until the day Yahya finally died in prison. He would tell the story to his friends, chuckling to himself over the words “Rubbish! Rubbish!”17

  While the show trials proved to be a useful tool for persuading Iraqis that their country was riven with plots and conspiracies, Saddam needed all his cunning to dispense with more formidable rivals, such as General Hardan al-Tikriti, the gruff former air force commander who had persuaded President Arif to surrender during the bloodless coup of 1968, and Salih Mahdi Ammash, a veteran Baathist apparatchik and close ally of President Bakr. After the revolution Tikriti, a ruthless, arrogant man who posed a genuine threat to Saddam, gloried in the titles of chief of staff, deputy minister of defense, and deputy prime minister, while Ammash had become minister of the interior and deputy prime minister.

  Tikriti, who ran the military as his personal fiefdom, believed that he was immune to Saddam’s intrigues because, as the architect and hero of the 1968 revolution, he had become a close confidant of Bakr’s, who trusted him implicitly. In this he underestimated Saddam’s inherent suspicion of the military establishment, which he constantly feared would attempt to usurp the civilian Baathist government. Saddam reasoned that if he could remove Tikriti, he would negate the threat posed by the military.

  Despite his high standing in the government and the army, the only chink in Tikriti’s armor was that, while he supported the Baath, he was not regarded as a committed ideologue, as were Bakr and Saddam. Tikriti was nevertheless an astute operator and recognized the threat posed by Saddam, and lobbied hard behind the scenes to persuade Bakr to get rid of him. At one point in 1969 Saddam so enraged Tikriti during a row at the Republican Palace that the former general was actually able to persuade Bakr to send Saddam into exile. Saddam was put on a plane and sent to Beirut, where he remained for a week until Tikriti’s temper cooled. It was a humiliation Saddam would not forget.

  Ammash, on the other hand, was a dedicated Baathist, a short, stocky former army officer who, unlike Saddam, had dutifully risen through the ranks of the Baath. A cultivated man who liked poetry and had written three history books, he was put in charge after the revolution of the administrative side of the government, chairing meetings on various aspects of government policy, such as planning and reconstruction. Apart from being a close associate of Abdul Karim al-Shaikhly, the new foreign minister, Ammash was an accomplished plotter and it was for this reason that Saddam came to regard him as a threat that had to be eliminated.

  Although Saddam had great influence over the highly secretive security apparatus, he was still regarded as a lowly functionary by senior figures in the Baath government such as Tikriti, Ammash, and Shaikhly, who, while generally supportive of the purges being carried out against the government’s enemies, were unaware of the formidable power base Saddam was quietly acquiring for himself. At this point in his career Saddam did not enjoy any of the trappings of power. His office was still a small room located next to Bakr’s in the Presidential Palace; he had no secretary or receptionist. To the other ministers he was regarded more as Bakr’s errand boy than a figure of authority in his own right. He was often to be seen at the various government ministries, hanging around the reception area, waiting for the minister to find a spare moment in which to see him.

  Saddam was neverthless successful in gradually undermining the reputations of his superiors. In this he was aided on two counts: he could draw on the resources of the security forces; and he had the ear of Bakr. One indication of the all-pervasive nature of Saddam’s security apparatus, even during these early days of the Baath regime, has been provided by a former Baathist official who was the recipient of a chilling demonstration of the Baath Party’s institutionalized paranoia. As a senior member of Bakr’s government, the official received an invitation to attend a cocktail party at the British embassy that was being hosted by the commercial attaché. The invitation had been vetted by the Iraqi Foreign Ministry, and the official duly attended the function at which he attempted to reassure Britain’s diplomatic representatives that the Baath was committed to modernizing the Iraqi economy. A few days after the function the official received another invitation for drinks, this time with Saadoun Shakir, who had been appointed head of the Amn al-Amm, or State Internal Security, one of Saddam’s key security agencies. The two men met for dinner at one of the main hunting clubs in Baghdad. After thirty minutes or so of general conversation Shakir, who was one of Saddam’s most trusted lieutenants, suddenly produced a pile of photographs, and asked the official to ex
amine them. The photographs, which had been taken by a photographer working for the Iraqi News Agency, showed the official conversing with British diplomats at the embassy party he had attended several days previously. “Do you recognize these?” asked Shakir. The official replied in the affirmative. “Then you should take more care,” Shakir continued. “We would prefer it if you did not go to any more functions of this nature. They will only arouse our suspicions.” The official got the message, and resolved never to attend another reception at a foreign embassy.18

  Under Saddam’s guidance, the Baathists established an all-pervasive network to monitor the activities of all government officials. In the same way that commissars had been appointed to oversee the activities of the armed forces, so civilian commissars were appointed to government offices to report on the activities of ministers and civil servants. The civilian commissars were generally university graduates who were trusted members of the Baath. They reported back both on the performance of ministers and their professional and social contacts. Apart from the commissars, whose positions were clearly identified, the activities of government officials were closely monitored by a secondary layer of informers who worked as secretaries or messengers. All telephone and postal communication was intercepted and analyzed, so that all government officials had to become accustomed to working in a Kafkaesque environment where there was no alternative other than to follow Baath Party doctrine. “From the moment they came to power the Baathists were obsessed with buying bugging devices of every shape and form,” recalled one former senior official. “They were buying all the latest, high-technology equipment from countries such as Germany. They were convinced that everyone was trying to plot against them if they got the chance. We quickly learned that we were being watched every time we went somewhere and that we were being bugged every time we picked up the telephone.”19

  With the formidable resources of the state’s security apparatus at his disposal, Saddam was able to plot against his political rivals, and concentrated his energies on undermining their reputations. In particular he seems to have been successful in persuading President Bakr that the ambition of both Tikriti and Ammash could ultimately pose a threat to his own position. Bakr certainly seems to have taken this on board for, in November 1969, a reorganization of the Baath was announced, at which Saddam’s position as deputy chairman of the RCC was officially confirmed, even though he had been carrying out the deputy’s functions since the start of the year. Simultaneously the two positions of deputy prime minister were abolished, thereby depriving Tikriti and Ammash of the privilege of chairing cabinet meetings in Bakr’s absence (among his many titles, President Bakr was also prime minister). In April 1970 they were made vice presidents, but relieved of their other positions; two of their main rivals in the military replaced them in their cabinet posts, Hammad Shihab as minister of defense and Saadoun Ghaydan as minister of the interior. It was simply a matter of time before Saddam applied the coup de grace.

  For Tikriti this came in October 1970. He was stripped of all his positions on the spurious pretext that he had failed to help the Palestinians during the Black September uprising against King Hussein of Jordan, even though it was official Iraqi policy, personally endorsed by Bakr and Saddam, not to get involved. Tikriti heard the news while in Madrid on an Iraqi mission that Saddam had devised to get him out of the country. Saddam even drove Tikriti to the airport, kissing him on both cheeks before he boarded his flight. The next day the government-owned Baghdad press carried front-page pictures of Saddam and Tikriti embracing at the airport. But no sooner had Tikriti arrived than he was informed that he had been stripped of his government position and was to be made Iraq’s ambassador to Morocco. Saddam had arranged to have the photograph published so that when news of the popular Tikriti’s demotion was announced, his supporters would be unlikely to hold Saddam directly responsible. When Tikriti heard the news he was outraged, and ignoring an order to take up the post, flew back to Baghdad to face down Saddam. Upon arrival, however, he was seized by Saddam’s security agents and bundled onto a waiting plane and flown to exile in Algeria. The irony of Tikriti’s fate could be attributed to Saddam’s perverse sense of humor. The man who had led the tanks into the Presidential Palace on July 17, 1968, to depose President Arif would now share the same fate as his fellow conspirator and the Baath Party’s first prime minister, Abdul Razzak Nayif—escorted to the Baghdad airport by Saddam and forced into exile in Algeria. And like Nayif, who was murdered in London in 1978, Saddam’s gunmen would eventually catch up with Tikriti; he was gunned down in Kuwait in March 1971, where he had moved to be closer to his children, who were still at school in Baghdad.

  Tikriti’s murder was a textbook Baathist assassination, inspired by fears that his presence in Kuwait might make him a rallying point for disgruntled Iraqi officers. On the morning of March 20, Tikriti, accompanied by the Iraqi ambassador to Kuwait, set off for an appointment at the government hospital. As the car arrived at the hospital four armed men ambushed the car. As one of the assassins forced open the car door, another, standing behind him, fired five shots at Tikriti at point-blank range, killing him instantly. They then made good their escape. The Baathists had clearly improved their assassination techniques from those early days when a nervous Saddam Hussein had ruined the plot to murder General Qassem by firing his weapon too early.

  By contrast to the dramas that attended Tikriti’s bloody exit from the Baathist stage, the removal of Ammash was a more civil affair. After Tikriti’s fall, Ammash was fully aware that his own position was untenable. He made a series of scathing comments about his Baath Party colleagues, which only served to isolate him further. The end came in September 1971 when he was stripped of his government positions and sent into exile as Iraq’s ambassador to the USSR. Unlike Tikriti, Ammash accepted his demotion with grace—no doubt he was fully briefed on the circumstances concerning Tikriti’s murder—and made the most of his new posting in Moscow. Indeed, he made such a success of his diplomatic career that three years later he moved to be ambassador to Paris, and served one last posting in Finland where he died. Despite his continued service to the country, many Iraqis believed that Ammash was poisoned, while on a visit to Baghdad after Saddam had become president, with thallium, a heavy metal used in commercial rat poison and one of the Iraqi security forces favored methods of dispensing with its opponents.20

  The removal of Tikriti and Ammash, who had both enjoyed distinguished careers in the Iraqi armed forces, represented the triumph of Saddam and the civilian wing of the Baath Party over the military echelon. Henceforward the Iraqi military establishment would be firmly under the control of the government, and the prospect of the military mounting a successful coup, as it had done on several occasions since the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958, became more and more remote. After the departures of Tikriti and Ammash, several leading military officers who were suspected of being supporters or friends of the deposed men were themselves removed, or arrested. With the rest of the officer corps constantly under surveillance by Saddam’s commissars and security services, Saddam felt sufficiently confident of his control over the military that he was moved to declare that “with our party methods, there is no chance for anyone who disagrees with us to jump on a couple of tanks and overthrow the government.”21 As someone who had done just that in July 1968, Saddam knew precisely what he was talking about.

  With the military safely in his pocket, it was time for Saddam to turn his attention to senior civilian officials in the Baath Party who might present an obstacle to his vaulting ambition. Even while he was engaged in suppressing the communists, laying traps for the Shiites, destabilizing the Kurds, and persecuting the armed forces, Saddam still found time for the odd purge of the party’s nonmilitary hierarchy. In March 1970, Abdullah Sallum al-Samurrai, the minister of culture and information and one of Saddam’s associates since the late 1950s, was removed from office and made ambassador to India. Several other members of the RCC, even those who were Tikr
itis and claimed kinship with President Bakr, were purged during the summer of 1970. But by far the most important, and most significant, scalp claimed by Saddam was that of Abdul Karim al-Shaikhly, his long-standing comrade-in-arms and the country’s foreign minister.

  Shaikhly, it will be recalled, participated with Saddam in the abortive assassination attempt on Qassem in 1959. Like Saddam, he fled to Damascus, and later moved to Cairo where he continued working for the Baathist cause. In Cairo he organized, and was guest of honor at, Saddam’s party to celebrate his engagement to Sajida Tulfah. He returned to Iraq in 1963 and helped Saddam to establish the party’s new security apparatus. After the Baath’s expulsion from government in late 1963, he again linked up with Saddam and helped to draw up plans for the assassination of the first President Arif. On one occasion in 1964 he even saved Saddam from arrest when they were sitting in his apartment in Baghdad. “It was just one o’clock in the morning. Saddam rose to his feet and was about to leave. ‘Where are you going?’ Shaikhly asked. ‘To sleep in the hideout where the arms are hidden,’ replied Saddam. ‘The police patrols are very active these days,’ said Shaikhly. ‘You had better spend the rest of the night here.’ That night the arms cache was raided and, had it not been for Shaikhly’s advice, Saddam would have been caught red-handed.”22 When the pair was finally detained during Arif’s crackdown on the Baathists in 1964, he was the only party member jailed with Saddam himself. Shaikhly was at Saddam’s side when the two men escaped from jail in 1966, and Shaikhly was heavily involved in preparing the party for government, and deposing the second President Arif. At times Saddam felt so close to Shaikhly that he referred to him in public as “my twin.” In short, if anyone should expect a display of loyalty from Saddam, with, perhaps, the exception of his uncle, Khairallah Tulfah, it was Abdul Karim al-Shaikhly.