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Saddam Part Two: The Republic of Terror |
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Friday, 31 October 2008 20:49 |
Part C: The Reign of the Beasts
On the fourth of this month the prolonged and very expensive process of electing the American president should have come to an end and the Americans have made up their mind as to who is going to be their next president. The next president is going to face the day he walks into the oval office after his inauguration on the 20th of next January truly incredible challenges. The president is going to have to make during the first weeks of his presidency some extremely fateful decisions on national security and how to deal with the threats posed by fundamentalists and religious fanatics like the ones who are conducting the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. On the country’s economic situation, on its educational system and on how it is going to deal with the problems related to an aging population. The next president is going to have a hell of a job, pray for him. I am going now to install on this website another piece from my book on Saddam which is the third part from the second section [The republic of terror], today’s piece is entitled the reign of the beasts.
IN 1939 as world war two began Albert Camus wrote; The reign of the beasts has begun. In Iraq the reign of the beasts began in 1979 and they sucked all the happiness from the place and they pervaded it with death and destruction.
IN January 1979 the Shah of Iran was toppled from the peacock throne by an Islamic revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Khomeini came to power on the crest of a dizzyingly popular wave of Islamic fervor and strength, Khomeini was old and tired after a very long struggle against the Shah and his rule which extended over several decades. He has grown very bitter and rigid but he has triumphed and was now the ultimate religious and secular authority and the final arbiter in that vast and extremely important country regionally and internationally. He has spent more than a dozen years in exile in Iraq in the Shiite city, al Najaf he has been expelled from there as part of Saddam’s deal with the Shah in 1975, and was forced to shift his activities to France. France was a better place for him from were to lead his opposition to the Shah and direct his followers, but he never forgot Saddam’s insult, Saddam and the Ba’athists were a good target for his wrath now that the despised Shah has been finished. Saddam and his Ba’athists were to his mind infidels and slaves of the great Satan and very soon after his triumphant return to Tehran Iran’s relations with Iraq began to deteriorate, long standing old misunderstandings about border demarcations and the sovereignty over the Shatt al-Arab began to surface and trigger increasingly serious disagreements between the two neighbors.
SADDAM has been very actively preparing his armed forces and his country in general for the last five years to revenge his humiliation at the hands of the Shah in 1975, but the Shah has gone now and he was faced with a different threat, a more aggressive and determined regime under an embittered, stubborn old man who was determined to export his revolution. Saddam underestimated the power and intransigence of the old man and he despised him. Saddam started to call the old man in response to Khomeini’s calling him infidel the charlatan, collision was inevitable and the war between them started almost immediately but it started with minor skirmishes which very rapidly developed into one of recent history’s most brutal and vicious destructive and expensive conflicts. One of the most significant incidents was an attempt on the life of the Iraqi foreign minister to one of Baghdad’s universities resulted in the death of two of his bodyguards, but the minister himself escaped, and during the funeral of the two dead victims of the incident two days before a couple of hand grenades were thrown on the procession which resulted in more casualties. These two incidents were blamed on the Iranians and Saddam himself during a hospital visit to some of the injured vowed to revenge them in a very strong language. These skirmishes went on for the whole of the summer of 1979 by that time Saddam was very well prepared psychologically and militarily to engage in something more serious. He had the backing of the whole of the gulf states who were feeling very unsecured and greatly worried by the increasing vehemence of Khomeini’s threats and the tacit support of the Americans, but he had a small problem his own president al-Bakr in spite of some very strong prodding by the Saudis was still very reluctant to engage in such an adventure, there was a slightly more worrying problem, a solid body of high ranking party and government officials including members of the ruling body the, revolutionary command council [RCC] itself were also opposed to the war but all these nuisances were to be taken care of by him and very shortly. The divisions over the impending war came very much to the surface during the RCC meetings which preceded the actual flare up of the hostilities, but Saddam was not in a hurry, al-Bakr was not budging so he was shooed to a house nearby to die a bit later from the effects of Thallium. the whole charade was explained to the masses as a resignation because of ill health and that the ailing president was very happy to hand over power to the young and very faithful comrade and friend the vice chairman. But there was the problem of the others who also opposed the war and he wanted nothing less than an absolute backing for his adventure, the announcement of the resignation of the al-Bakr and the election of Saddam was made on the tenth anniversary of the 17th July revolution with a great deal of celebrations and fanfare, few days later he announced that he has unveiled a conspiracy against him and thus was started one of the most brutal and murderous campaigns in the whole history of the secret societies.
ON the 20th of July he convened an extraordinary conference of the party in an unremarkable hall near the presidential palace which was to be the setting for a most ugly piece of business strongly reminiscent of Stalin’s show trials. On his orders the proceedings were videotaped. It was his intention to ensure that every Ba’athists everywhere should know the power which is now ruling the country, copies were sent to thousands all over the world, it is badly shot in black and white and the sound is of a very poor quality but nothing can hide the dramatic nature of what was taking place. The proceedings were opened by one of his thug who announces the discovery of the plot and declares that all the conspirators were in the hall. Then a man who has until very recently been in charge of the presidential office and the secretary general of the RCC but who has recently voiced some misgivings about the wisdom of the coming war came into the hall walking very slowly and speaking with apparent difficulty, he makes a lengthy confession in which he condemns himself and accuses four other members of the leadership of participating in the plot which he blames on the president of Syria, the man has been put under arrest soon after the RCC meeting when he was so stupid to oppose the adventure Saddam was now committed to undertake. Throughout all these events he was sitting alone at a table on a slightly raised platform slumped in his chair smoking one of his favorite eight inch Havana cigars the smoke wreathing around the table as he listen. The delegates are disturbed, nervous and shifting trying to decide how to react, then the leader stands up and start to read from a list of names in his hands, a name is read and the figure who has been mentioned is seen taken away from the hall by one of the security men who were encircling the delegates, another name is called and another doomed creature is taken a way and so on and it continues for sometime by the end of it Saddam has worked through a list of 60 names, there is a box of tissue near him when he reads some of the names he finds it difficult to stop a very strong stream of tears from his eyes!! That same day a special court found 55 of the named men guilty and sentenced them to death by democratic execution a devise of Saddam’s creation which means that senior members of the party has to take part in the firing squads which ensures a no going back; responsibility is spread.
THE massacre was continued around the country and hundreds more were democratically executed individuals who were imagined to represent trouble or possible danger to his authority including a man who has first enlisted him in the Ba’ath party 20 years ago and who was now languishing in prison for another reason, this fellow was brought out of his prison and executed democratically also, it was an opportunity to finally get rid of him no body knows why. It was ugly and barbaric but it was the beginning and it earned him his newest appellation; The Butcher of Baghdad.
SADDAM emerged from this purge as the unchallenged leader of the party and government, those who remained around him were no more than slaves and servants, a semi educated rabble who were now elevated to very high positions who owed these positions and the privileges and importance it carries to his person all institutions and state establishments or whatever has remained of them lost their meaning and influence. Saddam was now free to proceed with his plans and schemes which ultimately drowned the country and all its people in a hell which lasted a quarter of a century, and he started his revenge and fury on the Iranians and their leader under the pretext of defending the eastern frontier of the Arab world against the charlatan, who was now threatening its very existence and the survival of its existing regimes in his effort to so zealously advocating the exporting of his revolution. And thus he started one of the 20th century’s most bloody and destructive conflicts which lasted for 8 years at the end of which hundreds of thousands of young men had died on both sides of the war, many cities laying in ruin with the loss of billions dollars and when the end came he had achieved nothing, the problems with the Iranians were more serious now, the Iranians were not much better.
ON the 22nd of September 1980 Saddam unleashed his army which he has been preparing for the last five years, he has been spending huge amounts of many on building roads and other elements of the military infrastructure near and around the Iranian borders, amassing huge amounts of food and medical supplies, his armed forces have grown into a massive ground force with large amounts of heavy military hardware and hundreds of the most recent Russian military aircraft. He has calculated on the advice of some of the generals of the old Shah’s regime that the Iranian army has been reduced into a very weakened state as a result of the systematic destruction of its powers by the mullahs, the Iranian army and especially its air force was looked at by the new leaders as tools in the hands of the late shah in his oppression of his people, all of this was true, the Iranian armed forces were reduced into a very poor fighting force. But Saddam has made a very bad miscalculation on top of this he has assumed that whence his soldiers were inside Iran the population especially those near the border of Iraq would rally to his side and would rise in an active opposition to their government and help his forces topple the central authority or at least help in organizing some sort of a political authority separate from the centre and under his rule. All that of course proved in reality and as the events unfolded to be no more than wishful thinking and foolish dreaming.
HE was dreaming of defeating the Islamic Republic in a four or five days Blitzkrieg by the end of which Khomeini would be brought to his knees, and would thus achieve a three fold objective the isolation of the clerical central authority. The finishing of the Iranian armed forces which we have already seen were in a state of near collapse and to provoke civil unrest in the lands bordering Iraq to facilitate their occupation before bringing some stooge to govern the liberated areas of Iran in his name. So on the 22nd September, he launched his blitzkrieg with massive aerial bombardment of nine of the most important air bases those near the border and Tehran’s international airport with a three pronged ground thrust into Iranian territory, the first strategic objectives were in the middle sector were there were some old disputes about and in the south which was the heart of the Iranian oil industry which contained the huge oil refinery at Abadan which was set on fire from the first day, there were also some naval activities which were a complete failure because of the still a superior Iranian navy a superiority which they would maintain all during always during the war years. The blitzkrieg failed and the dreamt of successes never materialized. The Iranians did not revolt against their rulers and those Arabs of the border did not rise to welcome him, his tanks and heavy equipment were marred into thick mud and the massive air raids could not achieve any significant results one of them the one at Dezful was to resist incredibly heavy bombardment and would continue to defy him to the end, the war has stalemated, Saddam has failed to foresee the spirited resistance his forces had to deal with which stemmed from a combination of a very deep religious sentiment aroused inside Iran by the clergy. The serious defense the Iranian army was still able to show in spite of everything and the continuing allegiance of the other ethnic groups to the central authority.
THE Iraqi thrust ran out of steam very quickly and the front stabilized, the Iranians used for the first a weapon which would become very important in the stalemated war and a significant factor in their strategy, water. In the southern sector the Iraqi tanks trucks heavy armor and vehicles became bogged down in the thick mud that was quickly created by a torrent of water by which the Iranians were able to stall the advance and finally repel it, with the Iraqi army halted along almost a 200 mile sector in the south and around Abadan Saddam was still refusing to admit that even the most limited aims of his strategy had not been achieved, he started now to claim that the new stable front has always been what he had started the war for not realizing that he was now the vulnerable party and not the Iranians. His minister of information like his successor who would entertain the world during the last days of their master with his clowning and theatrics was declaring that they have reached Iraq’s real border with Iran and would not pull back even if it had to stay there for ten years, but of course all of that was pure nonsense because with December the rains have put a complete stop to any serious fighting for more than five months which gave the Iranians the needed time to reorganize and re equip and build up their forces. Inside Iraq the people were exposed by the official media to a barrage of phony stories of major victories and the fabrication of many heroic adventures by the faithful army of the great leader which was being in fact led even at the tactical level by Saddam himself.
THE stalemate lasted for the whole 1981, the more serious considerations were now focused on the vital question of weather Iraq would run out of men or would Iran run out of money first, even during the quiet periods, Iraq was losing a bout 200 to 300 men a month. A considerable number in a country of less than 20 million at the same time Iran’s income from its vital source of cash the oil were being increasingly depleted under the heavy aerial bombardment of its instillations by the Iraqis. But the whole exercise has degenerated into a duel between two very stubborn and self centered and non compromising couple the lives of their people the future of their countries of not a very serious concern with the whole world standing aside watching the slaughter some of them even enjoying the spectacle. A very famous American politician said very benignly when asked on a television interview why they are doing nothing about this conflict; these are two outlaws slugging each other. But there was in the beginning some half hearted attempts at finding a solution to the conflict, mediators form the Arab and Islamic worlds failed, a committee of few presidents from the non aligned movement was shuttling between the two capitals for few weeks but achieved nothing and had to pack and leave. Another one from the Islamic conference was even less successful, meetings and all night conferences at the UN which ended with several security council resolutions which were very unceremoniously neglected by both sides lacking teeth and having been issued without the force of the biting chapter seven, Saddam who has now witnessed the failure of his adventure was slightly more prone to persuasion with the potential risks to his regime becoming more serious. Khomeini on the other hand has perceived his improved position was adamant and refused every attempt at a solution or a compromise insisting on the punishment of the aggressor and the removal of the corrupt infidel the butcher of Baghdad he was always reciting the grievances and harsh treatment his fellow Shiites and he himself has endured under the atheist, tyrannical and corrupt Saddam and his regime.
A VERY good example was the plight of the thousands of Iraqi Shiites who were accused of being of an Iranian ancestry who were taken away from their homes with very few belongings and thrown unceremoniously on the Iranian border, some were later able to find their way into the inside of the country and very few more fortunate ones were able to reach some countries in the west but the majority were doomed to a very bleak future of exile and misery in spite of having lived all their lives in Iraq. This was part of a very ugly plan to intimidate the people and silence their objections to the futile war and the great casualties and destruction it was bringing in its wake. Another of Khomeini’s grievances was that Saddam was providing sanctuary and safe havens to bunches of renegades from the old regime of the shah including some military which were advising Saddam when planning some of his battles which was in fact a curse on Saddam because these generals living in exile were completely removed of their base and totally ignorant of the new realities in their own country their advice was always flawed and resulted very often in some very serious consequences and failures.
AS the months followed each other with no end in sight, with the coffins arriving in increasing numbers and with the daily lives of the people becoming less and less tolerable there were increasing signs of agitation and unrest amongst the Iraqis which was posing a potential threat to the dictatorship to which Saddam responded in a typical fashion. By now he has succeeded in controlling the country through a very “efficient” intelligence network very elaborate and complex, but even that was not enough now. There was a further building up of the security apparatus to a dozen different arms which employs as many as half a million people to absolutely guarantee that that discontent did not spill into action. The various intelligence arms were now employed not only as watchers of the people and detectors of plots and to prevent coups but more and more as repressive instruments instructed and trained to keep a restive population under control and to do so it had not only to find dissidents and plotters the subversives and the discontented it also had to mete out punishment to wreak vengeance when necessary and to always bring home to the citizens that there was a high price to pay for any action against the regime, the result was a real monster a police state par excellence. With an elaborate system of watchers and informers in every village in every factory school or hospital or a religious place each one of these had its compliment of watchers, the watchers know that their were watchers watching them but were never allowed to know the identity of those carrying out the tasks. Individuals were never allowed to talk to foreigners, and if such a thing happens through chance or accident a police car would be at the house very soon to interrogate the culprit and this would guarantee that the unfortunate creature would be on a watch list for the rest of his life.
IN the armed services internal security was becoming a very serious problem because of the increasing numbers of soldiers who were deserting the front. In addition to the political commissars and the firing squads behind the front soldiers of all ranks were encouraged to report “disloyal” remarks made by colleagues and commanders. Criticism of the leadership and high commanders or doubts about the conduct of the war were punishable by death.
FEAR was omnipresent and it pervaded every aspect of society, Saddam Hussein knew that the continuity of his rule required that everyone was to see the consequences of making mistakes, dissent is stifled torture was routine and opponents were removed and very frequently he shared in mass executions the ones that followed his assumption of the presidency, and rather than attempting to conceal his atrocities he made sure that everyone knew about them, and often see them for themselves. Thus the authorities often returned the bodies of the victims of torture or those recently executed with the marks of beatings and cuttings for everyone to see, the bodies would be dumped in the streets so a much bigger audience would be guaranteed, he has established a list of crimes unknown even in the jungle, a whisper against the leader is punishable by death and the numbers of executions were steadily rising for crimes that ranged from accusations of espionage and conspiracy against the state, against members of certain parties and treacheries of bath party members and deserters, the sole evidence in such cases would be a “freely” signed statement by the accused which was always accepted by the abiding courts as very satisfactory evidence. There was no appeal and those condemned were usually imprisoned in some very notorious places under extremely inhumane conditions, the executioners were so busy they often lived permanently there their services were constantly needed. This situation was summed up by a group of Iraqi intellectuals in exile which included the Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani in a memorandum to the UN they wrote and I quote:
"The dictatorship of Saddam Hussein is one of the harshest most ruthless and most unscrupulous regimes in the world. It is a totalitarian one party system based on the personality cult of Saddam Hussein. This man and his family and relatives have full control of the army the people’s army police and the security services. All news media are under the strict control of the regime and there is no opportunity for freedom of expression. Political organization is limited to the Ba’ ath party and a number of insignificant obsequious organizations, trade unions do not exist. Membership of any opposition party is punishable by death. Any criticism of the president is also punishable by death. Torture is the norm. The security system is all-powerful and enjoys unlimited powers."
THE Kurds and the Shiites were always targeted by Saddam and his regime and were very often victims of his atrocities because of the serious threats they posed to his survival, very special treatments were reserved for them.
WHEN the Iranians counterattacked in 1982 they opened a front in Kurdistan seeing an opportunity to be rid of Saddam the Kurds joined the Iranians in fighting the Iraqi army which continued on and off until 1987 when Saddam appointed his famous Ali Hassan al-Majid as governor of northern Iraq. Al-Majid was a sadist, a murderer and a thug he owed every thing to Saddam who has elevated him from of a policeman to that of a Lt. General with an honorary degree from the war college he would soon become very famous as chemical Ali. Chemical Ali is one the world’s most notorious and barbaric criminals the crimes of Eichman and Himmler and Beria and Pol Pot are no more than pin pricks compared to his. Ali was not given any specific orders but he knew what was expected of him and in less than six weeks was able to subdue the Kurds and get back the control of the area. He had employed chemical weapons to wipe out whole towns in the area where Jalal Talabani’s headquarters were located. The following year with the Iranians threatening key Iraqi towns chemical Ali unleashed the al-Anfal campaign. Al-Anfal is a twisted reference to a verse in the Quran, al-Anfal was a campaign of biblical brutality, Iraqi forces began clearing areas of Kurdish residents with massive bombardments of chemical weapons and high explosives followed by army sweeps that killed anyone left alive and razed to the ground anything that was left standing. On March 16, 1988 al-Majid conducted his most famous attack swamping the Kurdish town of Halabja with several varieties of chemical weapons killing at least 5000 Kurdish civilians.
THERE is a great deal of talk nowadays about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destructions, let me remind those in doubt of Halabja. Halabja is a relatively small town in Iraqi Kurdistan had a population of about 40.000; it is situated in one of the most fertile valleys in northern Iraq. Halabja was attacked on that fateful day of august by waves of Iraqi warplanes showering it by a mixture of mustard gas, tabun, sarin, and VX which resulted in the IMMEDIATE death of at least 5,000 men women and children and left another 15,000 injured. Saddam has always denied his responsibility in this atrocity, but his lies has been roundly refuted by many independent organizations and experts, reporters from local and international media organizations confirmed the crime and witnessed the horrifying piles of dead bodies in the streets and in houses immediately after the massacre. Today after these years a large part of the town remains in ruins, the basic health, education and the other essential services are still in a very bad state. congenital abnormalities are at least four times more common than in non exposed areas, other health problems blindness, cancer and many others continue to overwhelm the community, dealing with them is proving very disappointing because there is no known treatment for multiple exposures and all the efforts by local and foreign organizations have been constantly hampered and frustrated by Saddam.
THE attack on Halabja was not the only incident when these terrible agents of death were employed against the Kurds, independent studies by international specialists indicate that almost 10% of the Kurdish population [about 5 millions] have been exposed to one chemical agent or another between April 1987 and August 1988, the world knows very little about these, the world was stunned by Halabja because of the scale and the immensity of the catastrophe but the world did very little to help the massacred place, but they should at least remember the tragedy and remember Saddam’s fascination with the weapons of mass destruction which he was never prepared to part with it and was continuing to work on it to his last day.
WHEN the campaign finally came to a halt more than 200,000 Kurds were dead roughly a million and a half had been forcibly resettled huge swathes of Kurdistan had been scorched by chemical warfare and four thousand villages had been razed. The Kurds will be receiving in few years’ time greater doses of chemical Ali’s brutalities to which we will come a bit later.
THE conflict after the initial Iraqi onslaught has stalemated, it has settled into a war of attrition, but this period has been very effectively utilized by the Iranians they have improved their forces and by September 1981 they were able to mount counter offensives and the next two years were to witness some of the bloodiest battles theatres of war had ever seen since time memorable. The Iranians were out to oust the invaders, they were using fairly unconventional rules of warfare, they frequently attacked at night and in bad weather using massive waves of children and old men as attackers and detonators of huge minefields, they were accepting appalling casualties, the Iraqi troops were manning a 700 miles front were obliged to fight a stolidly conventional campaign on foreign soil advised by Russians instructors and suppliers who were following old rigid obsolete textbook theories. The Iranian counteroffensive continued with some staggering successes, more than 3000 square miles of Iranian territory were recovered, in one battle. In June 1982 Saddam was in a fix and announced a unilateral withdrawal to the international border, but Khomeini instantly retorted that he does not consider the war over it would go on until Saddam was punished out of office, and was demanding a 150 billion us dollars in reparations. Saddam was now in real trouble and announced that he was now prepared to accept the frontier as it was drawn in the 1975 Algiers agreement which he had only very recently torn that was still not good enough to the Ayatollah and the war continued.
THE defeat of Saddam’s army in the face of the tenacious Iranian offensive has left him floundering for all his brave words and rhetoric, but everyone realized that he was defeated and was fearing for his future but he was not in an immediate danger. The war must go on and his services were still very much needed. And so the tide suddenly turned, the Egyptians dramatically increased the flow of their arms and spares taking items from their own reserves and sometimes cannibalizing some of their equipment to find desperately needed spare part. Jordan followed suit by setting itself as the source of middle men needed in the black market deals, a lot of these merchants became very rich in the process. The king himself has already nailed himself to the colors as soon as the war started for the huge economic benefits he was reaping the moment the war has started, the brothers in the gulf were proving their solidarity by freely subsidizing huge purchases of arms and ammunitions and paying them in hard cash the Germans were greatly useful in the field of chemical weapons. The most crucial help was coming from no less a quarter than the US, who were now providing the Iraqis with extremely vital intelligence about the movements of the Iranian military and data from satellite photography which were delivered by one very high ranking Arab. Llater on the CIA established a direct top secret Washington-Baghdad link to provide Saddam with better and faster intelligence which allowed him to attack Iranian targets which were thought to be immune from Iraqi raids because of distance.
SO the conflict went on for six more years, which in spite of some truly incredible battles like the one when the Iranians tried to take Basra during which they employed huge forces but were still not able to achieve any decisive victory because the Iraqis have resorted to chemical warfare to stop the attack. And so it went on, there was a continuing rise and fall of the fortunes of both sides but someone must have been making sure no one should win. And suddenly it was over. Iran has always refused all efforts at mediation and rejecting and very disrespectfully all UN resolutions and missions and all Muslim and Arab efforts at settling the war, but Iran very unexpectedly and to the utter surprise of the whole world and the imam accepted the most recent security council resolution demanding an immediate cessation of the hostilities on the 20th of July 1988, which was broadcasted to the Iranian people from Tehran’s radio, but he was still unable to bring himself to give the news in person the announcer read the imam’s message. Happy are those who have lost their lives in this cannon of light unhappy I am that that I still survive and have drunk the poisoned chalice and so it was over.
IT has lasted eight years, cost half a million lives destroyed whole cities devastated great swathes of land in both countries yet it has settled nothing. But it has awakened the world to the horrors of chemical warfare it was hoped that would encourage the international community to start to do something about them and the other weapons of mass destruction. It very unfortunately seems that the hoped for on the imposition of a workable plan to ban on producing them their use is still a dream, they are in fact proliferating, more varieties are coming, and an increasing number of rogues are still producing them.
THE end was celebrated in Iraq as a great victory. Saddam claimed that he has won the war which was a lie but the end allowed him to stay in place to continue his program he has survived a bad miscalculation and was now ready to go on with his intrigues and conspiracies he was beginning to play the role he has assigned himself, the role of the old Shah as the bully boy capitalizing on his questionable victory, but he was to have a huge surprise very soon.
Najeeb Hanoudi
Friday, October 31, 2008
Berkley, Michigan
Email:
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