Saddam Two: The Republic of Terror

Part One: The Trained Plotter

WHEN the Ba’athists succeeded on the 8th of February in overthrowing the Kassim government Saddam was in Cairo.  Saddam had absolutely no knowledge of it, he had no role whatsoever in the preparations which preceded it, he actually heard about it from one of his exiled Cairo friends when he was taking a shower in his flat, he was completely outside the drama. He had absolutely no faith in its leaders and was very contemptuous of them.  They were advocating democracy and freedom and collective leadership all of which they forgot when they assumed power, but he himself was preaching the same philosophy which were only a cover to his real aims and that these ideals were nothing but part of a very well prepared scheme in his struggle to achieve his goal which was from the beginning nothing less than total control and absolute hegemony under the pretext for the need to have a wise and a firm leader which in another word was a dictatorship something he was able to achieve only a few years after his return from exile, and to be able to remain in control for more than 30 years.

THE city to which Saddam has returned after three years in Cairo in the aftermath of the overthrow of Kassim was in the throes of a terrible blood bath, the Communists were locked in a life and death battle with the Ba’athists but they have lost and knew what was in store for them.  They have tasted the brutality and blood hunger of their adversaries so they have decided to take a last stand and fight it was a suicidal decision but they had no other alternatives so on the 1st morning of the revolution they issued a strong desperate statement calling on their followers and the remnants of the overthrown government to confront the usurpers but it was all hopeless and very pathetic there was no government its institutions has collapsed.  The Communists knew they would have no mercy in the face of the greater power and now the government of the land so those of them who dared challenge the new authority were literally slaughtered in the streets of Baghdad, the frenzy and hysteria and the murders were greatly reminiscent of what happened 5 years ago during the early days of the 14th July revolution but this one was even worse the Ba’athists have established a militia which went on a rampage of murdering and destroying like the Mongols who ransacked Baghdad in the year 1258.

THE party which came to power in 1963 was a divided party, it was exhausted its leadership was made up of a diverse group of semi educated individuals with different social and ethnic backgrounds and with absolutely no knowledge or experience in the running of a government.  This meant that the necessary decisions needed for running the affairs of the party or government this meant in reality that the needed decisions for the running of the party affairs and those of the country were more or less impossible, and to make things even worse the exposure of these individuals to government business with its potential rewards in power and money and influence was not at all helping in bridging the gap between these quarrelling  factions.  A good example here is the 20 million us dollars, which was donated by the Kuwaitis to stop their claims over the sovereignty of that country which have been recently raised during the Kassim regime who has threatened a military attack but was stopped by the British and in the process the Kuwaitis tried to bribe him with $20 million which he refused.  These heroes were only very willing to accept, but they had very nice quarrel when they were dividing it between themselves.

ONCE again these developments and the deteriorating situation was being very carefully watched by our man, the Nasserites were greatly eclipsed by the Ba’athists in the Iraqi political landscape the Communists have been almost totally eliminated they were eclipsed by the current Ba’athist government and by the forces which were supporting Saddam from behind the scene basically the international leadership under Aflaq, these two powers had one objective the removal of the current Ba’athist authority but for two very different reasons, the Nasserites were interested in regaining their lost influence and Saddam and his backers had much longer term plans and these plans would be achieved only by destroying the current leadership, the Nasserites had very useful tool in the person of the man who was the second in command during the early days of the Kassim regime colonel Aref and in spite of Saddam’s loathing of the colonel and his disenchantment with Nasser in spite of the special treatment he was afforded by the Egyptians during his years in Cairo he helped the rash colonel in his continuing efforts in undermining the efficacy and prestige and authority of his own party and its rule encouraging the splits and contradictions through his accomplices and relatives and the blessing of the international leader because of his low position in the party hierarchy he was never perceived as a serious threat to the leadership he was very useful in some mean and dirty jobs but never a real challenge, another example of their stupidity and ignorance which never alerted them to the serious threats which were posed by Saddam they never estimated the seriousness Saddam and his scheming lot were posing to their authority and their personal survival.

SO towards the end of 1963 the Ba’athist rule in Iraq has degenerated into a very serious low, a hopeless state, its authority so weakened and popular support at an extremely low ebb, colonel Aref was with the support of a very small military force was able to dislodge the Ba’athists and proclaim himself president to start a five years rule with him and later on his brother on its top to in its turn be toppled by Saddam himself and his Tikriti clan once more in the name of the Ba’ath and its slogans of unity freedom and socialism but now it would be a different ba’ath totally in his own hands the firm and wise navigator but I am once more talking about events which are coming later.

SADDAM was in a great hurry to rebuild the party by himself now, it has become completely dismantled but now it was to be built according to a completely different set of principles, it was to be built on a totally different master plan it was to built around his person and a small clique of relatives and clans men from Tikrit and few very trusted friends from the his exile days in Cairo. The job was not easy, the Aref government was very suspicious of his activities he was under very strict observation and was frequently interrogated and detained but that didn’t seem to affect his work, he was always to get out of prison were he was often behaving in the prison like the enforcer of the law rather than the victim of it to resume his work, one of his prominent associates in this party building was a colorless  ex army officer who has started life as a primary school teacher in Tikrit in the early forties who in a hurried attempt by the government of the day to create an army was creating officers from such creatures after a very short training and without enough enquiry into their personal qualities or backgrounds, one such sample was a stupid very little educated but very rough and crude un experienced rabble but with a very primitive tribal mentality, this fellow in spite of all these credentials was a very useful tool in the hands of Saddam and fitted very nicely in his devilish schemes he was a distant relative of his mother and more importantly he has served as the prime minister during the first Ba’athist government a fact which makes one sometimes wonder about the sanity of our times.

IN addition to his party building Saddam was now equally energetic at undermining the Aref regime it was becoming a very nice habit and in the end proved very beneficial, the Aref regime was absolutely baseless with practically no popular support, his only real support was coming from Egypt because of his total allegiance to Nasser, Aref was compulsive, hysterical and absolutely ignorant of the amazingly complex politics of the middle east and that of his own country in particular, so history was repeating itself again, events were taking place in Iraq now the way they did few years ago, the highest authority was a dictatorship under an ignoramus, the government was run by ministers with very poor qualifications and no previous experience in managing the affairs of a state as complex and diverse as Iraq.  The minister of foreign affairs was a young army officer who spoke no foreign language and the real governing of the country was done from the Egyptian embassy, its serious problems were dealt with by one of Nasser’s trusted intelligence officers which allowed the president to concentrate on Saddam and his dangerous activities, Aref was very suspicious of the new Bba’ath and was chasing its newly recruited members with a great zeal and energy and was becoming a serious threat to Saddam’s schemes but this problem was solved very efficiently, he died on the 13th April 1966 in a helicopter crash during a visit to the south of the country, the crash of the helicopter was engineered by Saddam.

THE murdered president was succeeded by his brother who was at the time the chief of staff of the armed forces with the rank of a lieutenant general but this fellow was not worth even a corporal’s job a thin very unimpressive soul very simple minded with absolutely no interest or knowledge about politics, but the man himself  did not seek the, in fact it was  practically forced on him as a compromise which he accepted very reluctantly.  The pressure on Saddam dropped after the death of the first Aref appreciably, he was now able to go ahead with his plans more serenely, and then history interfered again, during the early sixties the Arab-Israeli conflict was approaching another decisive moment. Nasser was at the peak of his powers and popularity, he has been spending huge amounts of money on the military including very expensive hardware from the soviet block, he was preparing for the ultimate showdown when he would be finally throwing the Jews in the sea, he has already challenged the Israelis over the use of some vital water straits and other diplomatic moves which were hailed by the Arabs as well planed moves in a serious and very well planned maneuvers to draw the Israelis into a duel  at a time and a place of his choosing with promises of a very active collaboration and military support from the Syrians and Jordanians and the promise of a great deal of financial and moral support from the other Arabs, but the Israelis were not stupid, they were watching his preparations and those of his partners very carefully and they denied him the opportunity.  They pre-empted the whole plan, during the early hours of the 5th June 1967 waves of aircrafts suddenly attacked, in the course of few hours the Egyptian air force on which Nasser has spent so much time and money was finished within a very short time, hundreds of the latest Russian fighters were burning  on the grounds of practically all Egyptian airfields, this was followed by a swift advance across the borders of the three main combatants a war which lasted six days by the end of which Israel was few times bigger than when it started with huge chunks of very strategic pieces of lands in the hands of the Israeli defense force including all of the Sinai peninsula , the Golan heights and East Jerusalem.  The defeat was absolutely total and humiliating the loss of the lands and the military failure were stunning, but the governments were only worried about the little loss of their prestige and called the tragedy a disappointment, a loss of a battle but not of the war, but the average Arab was devastated, the people were jolted and were not deceived by the rhetoric and the bombast of their leaders, this was followed by waves of demonstrations and angry protests all over the Arab world a wave which was utilized by Saddam once more in the service of his plans he was not worried by the defeat in fact it presented him with a golden opportunity in his efforts to undermine the Aref regime at home which was again from a combination of internal and external factors showing increasing signs of weakness and uselessness so a very clever plan was put in effect, a nicely bloodlessly arranged transfer of power from the reluctant second Aref to Saddam, a small number of officers in some of the most vital posts in the Aref government including the commander of the presidential guard the commander of the tanks unit guarding the place and the chief of military intelligence  and few others in similarly important posts were convinced to come into the arrangements with promises of very influential positions and big rewards in the coming administration , so on the 17th of July 1968 and with a small number of his faithful including his brothers and Al-Bakr a truck which was carrying them all moved unopposed into the presidential palace and accepted the surrender of the president without the firing of a single shot, the president now the ex president was put on the first plane leaving Baghdad and sent to turkey, this charade was hailed as a great revolution an event which would be celebrated from then on as one of the most important in the lives of the Iraqi people, it was called the 17 – 30 revolution.  The 30th part is impossible to comprehend, the non Ba’athists officers who were brought into the plot were given some very important posts, the security chief was made prime minister, the tanks commander was made minister of interior, one accomplice was made air force commander, but these were arrangements which Saddam never meant to honor he started to call these people intruders on his pure revolution and parasites, the new prime minister was forced under the threat of a gun to leave the country were he finally found refuge in England were he was assassinated a little bit later in London when he was leaving a hotel near Hyde Park.  All the others were also met their death at his hands inside and outside the country which left him with a baath party very "pure" and totally in his own hands, but the charade was to continue the highest political authority of his regime was placed in the hands of a revolutionary command made up of party officials and civilians with the colorless hopeless Al Bakr at its head as chairman with himself as the vice chairman.  Everything was a farce and a big charade all was theatre no one had any serious authority or power in the new regime all power and from the first day was in the hands of Saddam Hussein.

Najeeb Hanoudi

Friday August 15, 2008

Berkley/Michigan

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