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My Book: Saddam, the origins the rise and the fall |
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Thursday, 03 July 2008 09:22 |
It is becoming increasingly evident that those who are interested in MY story about Saddam are becoming a very small minority; the majority of people are divided into two camps. The first camp is people who are trying very hard to forget about Saddam and his rule and what happened during the three decades of his tyranny. The others in the second camp are looking at Saddam years with great longing and nostalgia, they think that even during his most terrible days things were much better than they are now in Iraq. But, a very clever friend of mine told me sometime ago that in a democracy especially on like we have now in Iraq everyone is entitled to his own foolishness, I am still in a very serious predicament, I think both are wrong but I am unable to bring my story to more people because I am still short of a publisher who would take care of my work. I am continuing to publish online and install pieces from my book into this blog and pray. The following piece is the third part of first section of the book, the fugitive.
Saddam One: The Origins of a Tyranny
Part C: The Fugitive
SADDAM Hussein reached Syria during the last few months of 1959 with the personal help of the Ba’ath’s party’s founder and leader the pale fragile Michel Aflaq at that time the party in Syria was a fairly strong political force in fact it was destined in less than 3 years to become the government and would continue to rule the country or at least one faction of it or another to this very moment. Saddam was a fugitive under a death sentence in his own country, every sensible and logical analysis of his situation should lead to the conclusion that he should have stayed in Damascus under the protection of his party, but after a very short stay in Damascus he left to Cairo. Egypt which was at that time the political center of the whole Arab world, president Nasser was then at the peak of his power and prestige and Cairo was the magnet which attracted the dissidents and opponents of the rulers of their own countries and not only the Arabs, but also other Asian and African countries who were given refuge and protection from their own rulers. It was also the source from where collaborators and agents to some of the world’s most important intelligence agencies were recruited.
Saddam stayed in Cairo for 3 years. What happened to him during those 3 years is shrouded in a great deal of secrecy. This is the least known period of his life, in one of the books about him a 400 page work by one of his Arab chroniclers there is only one and a half pages of absolute nonsense describing what has happened to him there at that time and the plethora of other books and articles about him including those by some famous western professors and scholars and journalists are not much more informing. One of the most interesting recent books on the topic Saddam’s three years in Cairo was truncated into 26 words only. The official literature describing those years is even worse; it is full of lies, a travesty, a farce and a big charade. There were very few reliable stories from ba’athists who were with him at that time in Cairo but these were later on purged and murdered when he was at the top. The official version insists that he was very busy and grossly involved in the affairs of his country and the work of the party in Egypt, Sudan and other African states and that he used to spend the little spare time he had traveling across Egypt and visiting its many historical and archaeological sites and what is left of his precious time he would spend with his friends and other refugees from the Arab world and other countries discussing the state of affairs of their countries and the ups and downs in the fortunes of the various regimes. In those places and very specially those of Iraq and in as far as they relate to the position of the Ba’ath party which was gaining support at that time and was becoming very active and increasingly aggressive and bold in its opposition to Kassim and the Communists who were supporting him and finally they were able to overthrow him in February 1963 after few months of civil disobedience and active campaigning. Saddam was never involved in these activities he was as we have seen been at that time in Cairo, in fact he knew about the first major successes of the party from one of his comrades who has just heard about it in the news.
THE real facts about this period of his life in Cairo are totally different and are admittedly very scanty because of the aura of secrecy and intrigue which surrounds this period of his life and the lack of honest credible records covering it and dependable material to rely on, I have been able to gather few first hand ones from individuals, Ba’athists who shared those years of exile with him in Cairo. In Cairo Saddam was a loner almost always avoiding his own people his countrymen the Iraqis and specifically the other Ba’athists who were suffering a life of poverty and misery under the incarcerating eyes of Egyptian intelligence. Except on the very rare occasions when he would meet some of his most trusted friends in one of Cairo’s best known cafés to share with them a small cup of coffee or a tea. He was extremely secretive and never told anyone about his current activities or his future plans. We are told in his official history that he was attending law school but that was apparently a cover for his more important activities because he never attended the college regularly never serious about systematic education and he never graduated from it. He would disappear for long weeks without notice or informing even his supposedly most trusted friends in fact he never all his life really trusted anybody, and then he would equally suddenly appear not bothering to make any explanations or excuses for his sudden disappearance and his equally sudden reemergence. When he would face some difficulties or get in trouble with the local authorities he would go to the very highest levels of government with his complaints which were usually very quickly solved with assurances and apologies. He did not seem to lack financial support and was always very well dressed comfortable and enjoying the interesting Cairo’s night life and afford many journeys and vacations in interesting Egyptian places and outside it in spite of the meager stipends granted to the refugees by the Egyptian authorities. He was married very soon after his arrival in Cairo to his famous uncle’s daughter and was able to celebrate the event in one of Cairo’s most extravagant hotels.
THERE is a most fascinating story or about this period of his life in Cairo which was told by no less an authority than the son of Gamal Abd-ul-Nasser who claims that on one occasion he has seen this fellow at a meeting in Cairo which included his father, Saddam and ex president Bush. This story is admittedly a very hard lump to swallow, evidently very hard to believe, there is nothing to support it except the boy’s words but it could be true. About this time, the early sixties the conditions in Iraq were deteriorating rapidly and its politics were becoming increasingly polarized, the Communists who were now the only powerful group behind Kassim and his government on one side and the nationalists who were in the beginning led by the Nasserites were becoming a less significant force the leadership of these groups was concentrating more and more in the hands of the Ba’athists and becoming the real and more effective opposition on the other side, the quarrel was becoming increasingly vicious, very virulent confrontations like the ones which happened in Mosul and in Kirkuk very virulent and atrocious confrontations between the two factions which ended in the two cases with tremendous loss of life and destruction and was threatening an endless conflict and potentially very dangerous civil war events.
All of this was happening when Saddam was in Cairo very much on the sidelines and completely outside the unfolding drama but he was constantly watching the ongoing struggle and silently assessing his options and very carefully, very much interested in only the long term possibilities and from a strategic perspective and not in terms of the tactical day to day problems. His distance from what was happening on the ground gave him a much clearer vision of the events and allowed him to make much better and clearer opinions about the whole situation and the strengths and weaknesses of the various players especially those who belonged to his own party of him he was very skeptical of them, loathsome and extremely disrespectful.
TOWARDS the end of the nineteen sixties the struggle was approaching a final showdown, the Baathists were able to organize at that time a very effective a well organized campaign of civil disobedience and demonstrations and sit-downs against Kassim and his government, which finally succeeded with the help of some outside powers in toppling Kassim in a very bloody uprising which allowed them to completely gain power and establish a purely Ba’athist national government the first in the history of the party. The uprising and the events which followed it the so called the 14 of Ramadan revolution was again a very bloody affair like the one which brought Kassim and was followed by an unprecedented wave of vengeance and killings unprecedented even by the standards of the Iraqi mob and was directed essentially against the Communists and the other supporters of Kassim including many civilians and military officers. General Kassim was arrested, he was brought to face what was called a evolutionary court which held its proceedings in the television station was found guilty after a semblance of a trial was sentenced to death which was carried out on the air in one of the TV station’s studios for the whole world to see.
This unforgettable episode took place on the 8th of February 1963 Saddam was taking a shower in his flat in Cairo when it happened. He was told about it by one of his trusted friends there whom he assassinated few years later.
Dr. Najeeb Hanoudi
Berkley/Michigan
Sunday, June 29, 2008
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