Saddam : His Rise and Fall (28 page)

The video Saddam later released on the denunciation of his colleagues contains footage of the executions being carried out. The camera shows the condemned men kneeling with blindfolds over their eyes, their wrists tied behind their backs. The camera then closes in showing a hand holding a gun, which fires a shot into the temple. The victims jerk and then crumple over, blood oozing from their heads in the dust. In some cases the shootings prove inaccurate, leaving the victims still alive. Because some of the executioners were not professional gunmen, they had either missed the intended target, or had lost their nerve at the last minute. In these instances the camera shows a professional executioner applying the coup de grâce with a pistol shot to the head. It was later reported that the execution of Hamdani was one of those that was botched, and he was left writhing on the ground after the first bullet failed to do its job. Barzan al-Tikriti, Saddam's half brother who had been responsible for Hamdani's denunciation in the first place, finished him off by firing two bullets into his head.
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The idea of inviting the Baath leadership to participate in the “democratic executions” was a clever ploy by Saddam, turning the killings into a glorified tribal bonding session. In a country where blood feuds run deep, even over so-called judicial killings, Saddam had implicated the surviving Baath hierarchy in “cleansing” the party and thereby forced them to give him their undivided loyalty. For example, by making Naim Haddad, one of the leading Shiites in the new government, pass judgment over two other prominent Shiites in the Baath, Mohammed Ayesh and Hamdani, Saddam had guaranteed Haddad's ostracism from his own community and increased his dependence on the new president. This was to be a tactic that would become a distinctive feature of Saddam's rule; by forcing officers and officials to participate in bar
baric acts, he was irredeemably tarnishing their reputations and linking their fate to that of the regime.

Having dispensed with the last of his rivals, Saddam set about turning the proceedings into a propaganda coup for himself. Copies of the video recording of the special conference were circulated to Baath members throughout the country. Details of the “plot” itself were not made public until the morning of the executions when an official announcement was broadcast on state radio. The executions, it was reported, in which hundreds of delegates, the president, and the entire RCC had participated, had been an “unprecedented event in the history of the party.” The executions had been carried out “amid cheers for the long life of the Party and the Revolution, and the Leader, President, Struggler, Saddam Hussein.”
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Having spent the morning participating in the executions, a relaxed Saddam appeared later the same day to address the nation about the discovery of the conspiracy. All the old Baathist paranoia was in evidence when Saddam spoke. Not only was exposure of the “plot” a great achievement for the Baath revolution; it was also a humiliating defeat for the “foreign forces” that had backed it. “We pity the traitors and conspirators outside Iraq,” he told the huge crowd that had gathered in the gardens of the Presidential Palace, “who laboured for more than five years and all they could win over were these 55 individuals.”
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Just like the Soviets after the 1917 revolution, Saddam was deliberately seeking to rally the nation behind his leadership by stoking the fires of xenophobia.

In Damascus President Asad, a formidable Baathist figure in his own right, was deeply disturbed to see the new entente between Syria and Iraq sacrificed on the altar of Saddam's irresistible ambition. After Saddam made his speech accusing Asad of masterminding the plot against the Iraqi Baath, Asad protested furiously, and demanded to see the evidence. He sent his foreign minister, Abdul Halim Khaddam, and his chief of staff to Baghdad to assure Saddam that if Iraq had any proof of Syrian wrongdoing, those responsible would be punished. All they brought back was a rambling tape recording of Mashhadi's confession. Saddam turned down Asad's suggestion that Iraq's allegations be examined by an Arab League committee. It is unlikely that Syria was entirely innocent of Saddam's allegations, and certainly Asad would have preferred to have an amenable figure such as Bakr in charge of the neighboring Baathist regime rather than Saddam. But once Saddam had emerged triumphant from his Baghdad power play, the more statesmanlike option would have been for the new Iraqi leader to put the past behind him and
exploit Syria's willingness to improve relations. Saddam's insistence on snubbing Damascus, however, destroyed the entente and was mainly responsible for Asad forming an alliance with Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, an alliance that would cause Saddam much heartache in the years to come.

 

The purge of the Revolutionary Command Council that accompanied Saddam's accession to the presidency in July 1979 was merely the start of a nationwide purge of party members and the military. From the outset of his rule Saddam was determined to ensure that the party and the armed forces posed him no threat. Although there are no precise figures, it is estimated that hundreds of party workers and military officers were purged from their positions; some of them were tortured and executed, and many received long prison sentences. Given that Saddam's security forces had already carried out an extensive purge of the Baath Party and the military during the early 1970s, it was quite an achievement that he was able to find any victims worth purging. The fundamental difference between the purges of 1969 and those of 1979 is that the earlier round of purges were directed at enemies of the Baath, while the 1979 purges were solely directed at anyone suspected of opposing Saddam Hussein.

Saddam's rise to supreme power provided him with the opportunity to settle several old scores. This was the moment that he chose to send his gunmen to murder his old friend and associate Abdul Karim al-Shaikhly, who had been out of active politics since 1971 when he was sent to the United Nations. Even in New York, Shaikhly did not take heed of the lessons he should have learned while indulging in his playboy lifestyle in Baghdad in the early 1970s. He should have known that everything he said, either in public or private, was being recorded and fed back to Saddam by his security agents, even in distant New York. But Shaikhly remained a model of indiscretion and never hesitated to speak his mind about what he thought the Baath had become under Saddam. Perhaps he felt that the close personal friendship he had once enjoyed with Saddam would protect him. Eventually, in late 1978, Saddam's patience snapped, and Shaikhly was ordered to return to Baghdad. Even this ominous summons did not unduly ruffle Shaikhly's composure, and he complied with the request. On arrival he was arrested and thrown into jail. Because he still enjoyed a strong following in the party and the country, the government decided that, rather than subject him to a show trial by a special military court, they would give him as normal a trial as possible. The judge complied with the
request and when the trial eventually got under way the Iraqi public were treated to the unique spectacle of a defendant actually providing the court with a credible defense. After ten days, with Shaikhly calling a succession of witnesses to give evidence on his behalf, the trial was going nowhere, and Shaikhly faced the distinct possibility of being acquitted. At this point the government authorities intervened and, in a secret note to the judge, they ordered the court to resolve the case forthwith. Shaikhly was duly convicted of illegally criticizing the government and jailed for six years. But a year later, after Saddam became president, he was released. Thinking that his problems with Saddam were in the past, he attempted to adjust to normal civilian life. A few weeks after his release he set off with his pregnant wife to pay his telephone bill. As he got out of his car, he was shot dead by two of Saddam's assassins.

Similar treatment was meted out to other high-profile former Baathists. Another retired Baathist, Murtada Saad Abdul Baqi al-Hadithi, who had recently been Iraq's ambassador to the USSR despite losing his membership in the RCC in 1974, was executed in Baghdad in June 1980. Like Shaikhly, Hadithi had been recalled from Moscow in July 1979, arrested, and thrown in prison. Saddam had determined that his presidency would be run on the basis of absolute terror, a policy he rigorously pursued throughout his presidency. No dissent was too trivial or slight in Saddam's eyes. Any suggestion of opposition to Saddam's will was to be crushed ruthlessly and with the utmost brutality.

Salim Shakir, the former Iraqi army officer who had become a national hero in Iraq for his role in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, was one of the few survivors of Saddam's political purges of 1979. Shakir had been an active member of the Baath since the late 1950s, and had worked with Saddam to bring the Baath to power. A career army officer, he had commanded one of the tank units sent to fight Israel in the Yom Kippur War. After the war he served abroad as a military attaché, and by 1979 he was Iraq's ambassador to Senegal. Immediately after Saddam's accession he suddenly found himself accused of treachery, as were, according to his estimate, thousands of officers and officials from all walks of life. In common with many other Iraqi ambassadors at that time, Shakir received a call ordering him to return to Baghdad for “consultations” with Saddam. Shakir believed he was simply returning to Iraq to be briefed on the new government's diplomatic objectives, but as soon as he landed at Baghdad International Airport he was arrested and taken away
for interrogation. When interviewed by this author many years later, Shakir, a short, smartly dressed, amiable man with a penchant for English tweeds, was suffering from partial deafness and tinnitus as a result of the beating he had received at one of Saddam's interrogation centers. “It is hard to describe the horror of that place. Everyone who went there was tortured to some extent. For Saddam torture was almost a way of life. I was lucky in that I was only beaten, but some of the others were not so fortunate. I believe I was only beaten because I was well-known as a war hero, and even these people had some respect for me.”

Shakir was accused of plotting against Saddam and brought before the special revolutionary court chaired by Naim Haddad. The trial was a summary affair, so much so that Shakir was not even allowed to see his own affidavit, which, of course, he had no memory of making. “I had no chance whatsoever to defend myself,” said Shakir. “The tribunal had already decided what to do with my case. I had been denounced as a traitor, and that was sufficient evidence for them.” He received a seven-year jail sentence with hard labor. Shakir was never given specific details of his wrongdoing, and still does not know what he did to cause Saddam offense. “Saddam had always told me how proud he was of my military service and my role in the 1973 war,” Shakir recalled. “Perhaps he was also jealous of me. He was very sensitive about the fact he had not served in the army himself, and it may well be that my record was an embarrassment for him.” The only other explanation Shakir could provide for the treatment he suffered was a meeting he had with Saddam back in 1969, when he was asked to provide a list of officers' names for promotion. Saddam took exception to one of the names Shakir had put forward, claiming that the officer concerned nurtured pro-Syrian sympathies. Shakir attempted to defend the officer's reputation, but Saddam interjected by saying, “The problem between Syria and us is not political, economic, or philosophical. It is a matter of life and death.” Shakir concluded that Saddam may have harbored a grudge against him since that exchange, and decided to act once he was in power. “You have to remember that Saddam had no real friends. He just had all those people around him who were terrified of him. Anyone who was close to Saddam was required to prove his or her loyalty to him all the time.” According to Shakir, one of Saddam's favorite claims was “I can tell simply by looking in someone's eyes whether they are loyal or a traitor.” Saddam was also prone to emotional displays, such as bursting into tears if one of his children hurt themselves in any way. “Saddam suffered from a
split personality. He could be crying over his children while at the same time signing a death warrant for the execution of fifty people.” On one occasion Shakir asked Saddam how he would feel if he executed the wrong man by mistake. “It is far better to kill an innocent man rather than to allow a guilty man to survive” was Saddam's unequivocal response.
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The purges removed any hint of opposition to Saddam's rule, and he quickly set about reorganizing the government in a way that further strengthened his power base. His first move was to increase the power of the cabinet while reducing its size to a handful of loyalist ministers. Many ministries were merged, and the day that he took office Saddam created the post of first deputy prime minister and five positions of deputy premier. Taha Yassin Ramadan was appointed to the first new position, and the five others were occupied by Adnan Khairallah, who still held the defense portfolio; Tariq Aziz, who had the foreign brief; Naim Haddad; Saadoun Ghaydan; and the ill-fated Hamdani. The restructuring of the cabinet, which was to hold regular meetings chaired by Saddam, was aimed at reducing the authority of the RCC, which Saddam continued to regard with suspicion, despite the purging of his enemies.

In March 1980 Saddam implemented another significant constitutional change by resurrecting the National Assembly, Iraq's state legislature that had fallen into abeyance after the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958. The new law provided for an assembly of 250 members who were to be elected by secret ballot every four years. If the assembly gave the impression, certainly to the outside world, that the new Iraqi regime had democratic pretensions, the reality was very different. The selection process for potential candidates was dictated by strict conditions. Each district was allowed only a single electoral list, thereby eliminating any competition among parties or groups. All candidates, who had to meet various criteria before they were accepted, had to adhere to the principles of the July revolution of 1968 and to submit themselves for examination by an election commission to receive permission to run. To ensure that the electorate was not left in any doubt as to how to cast its vote, Saddam declared: “We must ensure that the thirteen and a half million [the size of the Iraqi electorate] take the same road. He who chooses the twisted path will meet the sword.”
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The elections were held on June 20, 1980. Few voters opted for “the twisted path,” and the assembly was filled with Baath appointees. Saddam's sardonic comment on the process was to the effect that his party's triumph in the elections was an indication that the Iraqi people had endorsed emphatically both the Baath candidates and Baathist principles.