Saddam : His Rise and Fall Read online

  That Saddam’s name should have been put forward for the assignment is hardly surprising. At this stage in its development, the Baath Party of Iraq was more of an ideological sounding board than a fighting machine. Most of its three hundred members were either students or professional people who wanted to create a fairer society in which the government served the interests of the people, rather than the interests of foreign powers. When it came to implementing these high ideals, however, the Baath leadership counted on likeminded individuals to do the dirty work for them. The Baath Party had supported the overthrow of the monarchy, but none of them was actually present when the royal family was butchered to death. The Baathists had supported the revolt in Mosul, but were not actively involved. Now that they had decided Qassem must be removed from power, they had the will, but not the means. It is possible that the idea of assassinating Qassem did not come from the Iraqi Baathists themselves, but from Nasser, that master manipulator who had assumed control of the Baath, even though he himself, of course, remained a committed Nasserite. Some of the participants in the assassination attempt may have traveled to Damascus for training by Nasser’s police, although no evidence has ever been produced to implicate Nasser directly in the plot.

  Saddam claims he joined the Baath Party in 1957, when he was still a pupil at Karkh High School, and there seems no reason to dispute this. What is surprising is that Saddam should have chosen to join a party that, by the standards of the day, was relatively obscure and did not, at that stage, look as if it had the makings of an organization that would become one of the dominant forces in modern Arab politics. According to one of his official biographers, Saddam joined the Baath because “he found its principles a reflection of his own nationalist ideals.” The biographer also drops a strong hint as to how the young Saddam was steered toward the Baathists. “He had considered himself a nationalist from the time his mother told him stories of how his uncle [Khairallah] Tulfah had fought against the British.”1

  Although Khairallah himself had no time for the Baath Party, and never joined it, he had befriended Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr, a fellow Tikriti who was a general in the Iraqi army with Baathist sympathies and who would become one of the key figures in the party and the first Baathist president of Iraq. Bakr liked to portray himself as a moderate, decent person, but behind this facade there was a brutal, ruthless streak, which would come to full prominence after he assumed the office of president. While Bakr’s public persona was of a law-abiding officer, he nevertheless appreciated how Saddam’s brutish force could be of use to him and, encouraged by Khairallah, he took Saddam under his wing to forge a powerful partnership that would ultimately result in the two men running the country for ten years. It was through Bakr, therefore, that Saddam was first introduced to the Baath Party. At this stage in his career, however, Saddam was a mere supporter of the party rather than a full member. Membership of the Baath was strictly controlled and limited only to those who had proved their loyalty to the party, and their commitment to its ideology. The account provided by Saddam’s biographer of how he came to be involved with the party encapsulates Saddam’s nascent nationalism.

  “His relatives had been killed by the British, and their houses burned down; his forefathers had fought bravely against the Turks. With this background, Saddam Hussein was all too aware of British imperialism and how the government in Iraq remained a prisoner of the imperialist will. He decided to become involved in political activity.”2 The same sentiments could easily have been attributed to Khairallah Tulfah.

  Saddam’s involvement in the plot to assassinate Qassem has contributed greatly to his cult status in Iraq, and in terms of capturing the full dramatic impact of the incident, there is no better account of his participation than that provided by Saddam himself.3 Saddam’s narrative traces his involvement back to the prison in Tikrit where he was held for six months from late 1958 on suspicion of murdering Saadoun al-Tikriti. Saddam’s murder of Tikriti took place shortly after Qassem seized power. As a consequence Saddam was locked up in jail with Khairallah during the orgy of violence that erupted throughout the country. Saddam claimed that he used his confinement to save his fellow Baathists from being murdered by communists in Tikrit. Some of those communists, of course, may have well been seeking to avenge Saddam’s murder of Saadoun al-Tikriti. According to Saddam’s version of events, however, he bribed some of the more sympathetic prison guards to arrest Baathist activists on trumped-up charges and have them thrown into jail for their own protection. “A number of Baathists were thus brought into the jail. For many days they remained in prison until nightfall, when they were released to carry out their activities, returning to the jail before sunrise.”

  This would have taken place during Qassem’s purge against the Baathists during late 1958 and early 1959. Saddam claimed he was released, sometime in early 1959, as a result of what he describes as “national pressure,” whereas in fact it was because of the prosecuting authorities’ inability, or unwillingness, to find sufficient evidence to charge him with Tikriti’s murder. Saddam said that he then returned to Baghdad at the request of the party, where he was asked by one of his “comrades” if he would be willing to assassinate Qassem. He accepted at once because he “considered the assignment an honor.” He then began training in the use of automatic weapons, “having already mastered the use of the revolver”—as his successful dispatch of Tikriti amply demonstrated. The plan was conceived by Fouad al-Rikabi, the Baath secretary-general who had briefly held a cabinet post in Qassem’s cabinet and who was later murdered in one of Saddam’s prisons.

  The assassins were to shoot Qassem as he took his routine afternoon drive through Al-Rashid Street, one of Baghdad’s central thoroughfares, on his way home from his office at the Ministry of Defense. Party activists had noticed that Qassem was not adequately protected, and a plan of attack was devised whereby one group of gunmen would open fire on the backseat occupants of Qassem’s car, while another group was to kill those sitting at the front. Saddam’s role in the five-man assassination team was to provide covering fire while the assassins made good their escape.

  In fact Saddam’s involvement in the assassination attempt on Qassem was very much a last-minute affair. The original four-man hit squad was made up of full members of the Baath, and was led by Abdul Karim al-Shaikhly, a teenage medical student from Baghdad who was to become one of the Baath Party’s key ideologues and one of Saddam’s closest friends. Soon after the plot was hatched, one of the gunmen announced that he did not want to take part because he had a young family, and was worried what would happen to them if he was killed or injured in the attack. It was at this point that Saddam’s name was advanced.4 Even at this relatively tender age, Saddam had acquired a reputation for ruthlessness. At six foot two inches with an impressive physique to match, he had already shown his mettle by murdering Tikriti, taking just a single shot to dispatch his victim. He had also taken great care to make sure that there were no witnesses to incriminate him.

  The date for the attack was set for October 7, 1959. To familiarize himself with the area, Saddam rented an apartment, which was then used as a base for the operation. For several days he familiarized himself with the area, making notes on the best locations to carry out the attack and mapping out the best escape routes. The operation was duly launched on the late afternoon of the seventh. Unfortunately, in the excitement of the moment, Saddam drew his machine gun from the folds of a long cloak he had borrowed from Khairallah for the mission and prematurely opened fire at Qassem’s car. Saddam’s action preempted the carefully laid plan, and before the other assassins could open fire, Qassem’s bodyguards dived into action. In the ensuing shoot-out, Qassem’s chauffeur was killed and Qassem himself was hit in the arm and shoulder. One of the assassins was killed and Saddam received an injury to his leg. Saddam’s apologists sought to give the impression that Saddam was shot by Qassem’s bodyguards, but the more mundane reality is that he was shot by one of his fellow assassins who, panic-stric
ken, had simply sprayed machine-gun fire at anything that moved, including Saddam.

  The surviving members of the assassination squad, believing Qassem to be dead and their mission accomplished, managed to make good their escape to one of the party’s hideouts in the capital. Unbeknownst to the conspirators, however, Qassem was rushed to a hospital where he was saved by emergency treatment. According to Saddam’s version of events, at the safe house the bleeding in Saddam Hussein’s left leg got much worse. “As it was obviously impossible to go to a hospital, he took a razor blade and asked one of his comrades to cut into the flesh around the bullet and dig it out, using a pair of scissors and some iodine. He felt faint for a few minutes, but then recovered.” This rather gruesome account, which has become enshrined in Iraqi legend as a central feature of Saddam’s heroism, might seem more appropriate to the American Wild West than Baghdad in the late 1950s. It was certainly at odds with the recollection of Dr. Tahsin Muallah, the doctor who was called to treat the young Saddam immediately after the failed assassination attempt. “It was nothing more than a flesh wound, really, a graze,” recalled Dr. Muallah who, like so many of Saddam’s surviving contemporaries, eventually fled into exile.

  Muallah was one of the founding members of the Baath in Iraq, a party that, at the time the assassination attempt was undertaken, still had less than a thousand members. “The Baath Party at that time was full of professional people—lawyers and doctors—who were not very good with guns,” he said. “They needed to bring someone like Saddam in off the streets to do their dirty work for them. This was, after all, the first armed action that the Baath party in Iraq had ever undertaken.”

  At the time of the attempted assassination, Muallah was working in the outpatient division of the Republican Hospital in Baghdad. The day after the failed shooting a member of the Baath leadership stopped him in the street and informed him that there were some casualties being cared for at a safe house, and asked whether he could assist. The doctor agreed to attend the injured, and was taken to a house in the El-Wiya neighborhood of Baghdad. The most seriously injured, said Muallah, was a gunman called Samir al-Najm who had been shot in the shoulder. Using a local anesthetic, the doctor removed the bullet and treated the wound. When he had finished, he was informed by one of the Baathists that there was another casualty waiting to be treated in an adjoining room. “When I went into the room I came across a pale, yellow young man.” It was Saddam and he was dressed in a dishdasheh, the traditional long white robe worn by Arab men. “He told me he had a bullet wound, but when I treated him I found that he had nothing more than a grazed shin.” Muallah treated the wound and left. A few days later the security forces raided the house and arrested the occupants and Muallah. They had been tipped off by the gunman who, until his expulsion from the party, was originally supposed to have taken part in the assassination attempt. But by that time Saddam had already made good his escape. Muallah was tried for aiding and abetting the assassins by a special military court set up by Qassem, and jailed.

  Even though the injury Saddam sustained during the botched assassination attempt was negligible, the incident later became so embellished by Saddam’s propaganda machine that most Iraqis were convinced that Saddam nearly died of his wounds. In an autobiographical film of Saddam’s early life called The Long Days, which was made by Iraq’s Ministry of Information in the 1980s, the wound was portrayed as being so serious that Saddam was unable to walk. In the film Saddam came across as a bold and heroic figure, who did not even flinch as a comrade used a pair of scissors to dig the bullet out of his leg. Saddam himself has continued to perpetuate this myth. When interviewed by an Egyptian journalist about the ordeal many years later, Saddam claimed he had been unhappy with the actor’s depiction of him because it was unrealistic. “I wanted the director to reshoot the scene because I remember the day when it happened. I did not grimace or move an inch until the bullet was out.”5

  The epic tale of Saddam’s heroics in 1959 continued with his escape from Baghdad. Because, according to his version of events, he had difficulty walking, he “came across a man on a horse and bought it from the owner for ten dinars,” the equivalent of about £20 ($30). He then rode the horse along the banks of the Tigris until he reached Tikrit. There Saddam bought some hay for his horse and some bread and dates for himself. He spent the night with a bedouin tribesman, and the following morning set off on the long journey to Syria, via Tikrit. He traveled for three days, at one point joining in an engagement party at Samarra. “A sheep had been slaughtered for the occasion, so he ate a hearty meal which made up for the diet of bread and dates, and slept in comfort and security.” This almost biblical account of his flight from Baghdad was rudely interrupted on the fourth day when Saddam was suddenly intercepted by two carloads of armed customs officials. Saddam attempted to outrun them on his horse, but was soon overtaken and surrounded by the customs officials, who pointed their machine guns at him. “Saddam reined in his horse, and dismounted, making sure that his cloak covered the bandage on his leg as this was evidence that he was a wanted man.” Saddam managed to bluff his way out of this potentially difficult encounter, first by demanding to see the officers’ commander, and then demanding that the officer explain why he was being treated in this shameful manner. The commander was apologetic, saying that they had mistaken Saddam for a smuggler. When the commander asked to see Saddam’s travel documents, Saddam replied that he did not have any as he was a bedouin, and it was well known that bedouin do not subscribe to any bureaucratic norm.

  Saddam was allowed to continue with his journey until he reached a crossing point in the Tigris that would enable him to reach Tikrit. He tried to persuade a barge owner to take him across the river, but the boatman refused because a curfew was in force. In his desperation to get across, Saddam decided to abandon his horse and swim. Placing his knife betwen his teeth, Saddam swam across the river in the middle of the night. The water was freezing, and by the time that Saddam reached the other side he was in a state of near collapse. “Whenever he felt exhaustion creeping over him, he redoubled his efforts to reach the opposite bank.” Finally he reached the other side, his teeth chattering with exhaustion. “It was like you see in the movies, only worse,” Saddam himself later recalled. “My clothes were wet, my leg was injured, and I hadn’t eaten properly for days.”6 Once out of the river Saddam stumbled to a nearby house in search of food and shelter. But when he knocked on the door, the woman mistook him for a thief. “She had no way of knowing that he was a revolutionary, not a robber.” Saddam eventually managed to reassure the family that his intentions were innocent, and they gave him refuge. In the morning he took his leave and walked the whole day until the following night he finally reached his home village of Al-Ouja, where he was greeted by a tearful brother. Having safely survived the most hazardous part of his journey, Saddam then made his way into exile in Syria with some fellow Baathists, and they reached Damascus, the Syrian capital, a few days later.

  Given the extent to which other aspects of Saddam’s involvement in the assassination plot have been exaggerated, it is unlikely that the reality of his journey into exile justifies the drama of the narrative provided by his biographers. Most of those responsible for plotting the assassination managed to escape to Damascus. Shaikhly, for example, the assassins’ leader, took a train to the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, and then made his way to Syria. The accounts of Saddam’s involvement in the attempted assassination of President Qassem, however, does reveal some interesting insights into Saddam’s personality at the time. Even though the young Saddam had already made a name for himself in nationalist circles as a street tough and killer, when it came to shooting Qassem it was generally agreed that Saddam lost his nerve and opened fire too early, thereby ruining the operation’s chances of success. Some accounts even blamed Saddam directly for the death of one of the assassins, Abdel Wahab Ghoreiri, whose body, despite Saddam’s claims that he provided covering fire for the wounded to be carried to safety, was reco
vered by the security forces, enabling them to identify quickly those responsible for the plot. Saddam himself allowed one of his biographers to concede that the operation was not exactly a stunning success, saying that the whole organization of the plot was “elementary.”7 As, in later life, Saddam was to master fully every aspect of the art of assassination, both personal and political, it can only be assumed that the whole experience provided him with a salutary lesson.

  The importance of maintaining the myth of his heroic escape in 1959 was underlined many years later when, in 1998, Saddam made a surprise visit to two remote villages in northern Iraq. It was one of the first times that Saddam had been seen in public since his defeat in the Gulf War in 1991, and he made the unannounced visit in an attempt to rally support. Apart from firing a rifle in the air to signal his appreciation of the warm reception he received from the startled villagers, Saddam recounted his exploits to the residents of Albu Dor, a village on the Tigris through which he had traveled during his escape. “It was like you see in the films, but worse,” he said. “My clothes were wet, my leg was injured and I hadn’t eaten properly for four days. How can I describe it?” he asked rhetorically. “It is hard to describe how I got out of the water.”8

  For the next three and a half years, Saddam was an exile, first in Damascus, and later in Cairo, then the undisputed capital of Arab nationalism. Damascus, the spiritual home of Baathism, was the obvious hideout for the coup plotters after their flight from Baghdad. For a young man barely in his twenties, Saddam, who was not even supposed to have taken part in the shooting, suddenly found himself thrust into the milieu of the most original and dynamic political theorists of their day. The doyen of the Syrian Baath Party was Michel Afleq, one of the founding fathers of the Baath in 1944, who through his unstinting pursuit of the pan-Arab cause had achieved an almost deitylike status in the minds of many contemporary Arabs. Unlike the Iraqi Baathists, who were still very much on the political fringe in Baghdad, the Syrian Baathists were a significant force and, through their association with Nasser, had already formed the first pan-Arab federation.