Saddam : His Rise and Fall (45 page)

Primakov came away from the meeting with the feeling that Saddam was seriously interested in a peaceful resolution of the conflict, and he returned to
Moscow to brief Gorbachev. Two days later the RCC in Baghdad issued a statement indicating Iraq's willingness to withdraw, a move that briefly caused much excitement among the Allies, who thought the horrors of a ground invasion might, after all, be avoided. It soon transpired, however, that Saddam had attached a number of conditions to withdrawal, such as the demand for Israel to withdraw from Palestine and the Arab lands it had occupied in Lebanon and Syria, the lifting of all UN sanctions against Iraq, and the cancellation of Iraq's $80 billion foreign debt. Just how Saddam believed he could get away with any of these conditions is something of a mystery, as Primakov had been quite explicit in telling him just how determined the Allies were to liberate Kuwait. At any rate, Saddam's proposal was dismissed as a “cruel hoax” by President Bush, who called upon the “Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands, to force Saddam Hussein the dictator to step aside.”
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Bush's explicit invitation to the Iraqi people to pursue the “Ceausescu option” did not go down well with Saddam. He responded by repeating his threat to employ chemical weapons.

By exploring the diplomatic options with the Soviets, Saddam had been hoping to exploit potential differences of opinion within the Security Council. Having successfully commandeered Soviet support for his own ends in the past, he clearly believed he had detected an opportunity to do so again. All he had succeeded in doing, however, was to embarrass Moscow at a time when the postcommunist Soviet Union was gently feeling its way in George Bush's self-proclaimed “new world order.” It was one thing for Yevgeny Primakov to be harangued by Saddam in front of the other members of the Iraqi government; it was quite another to make Moscow look naive before the bar of international opinion. Primakov had made it clear to Saddam that the Americans meant business, and that Bush would accept nothing less than an unconditional withdrawal. For Saddam then to impose a whole raft of conditions just days after the Russians had indicated they had achieved a significant breakthrough in Baghdad meant that neither Saddam nor the Soviets was left with much credibility.

Even so, as the Allies began making the final preparations for a land invasion in earnest, Saddam made one last effort to avert disaster. On February 18, Tariq Aziz flew to Moscow and accepted the Soviet proposal to a full and unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait. Except that, yet again, the offer of withdrawal was not unconditional. The Iraqis stipulated that all UN resolutions against Iraq must be canceled and sanctions must be lifted before Iraq
completed its withdrawal. There seemed no doubt that at this juncture Saddam was prepared to vacate Kuwait and that, in different circumstances, the Soviet proposal might have formed the basis of a diplomatic solution. Saddam was looking for a formula that would allow him to save face in the Arab world while also averting a catastrophic defeat. He was prepared to leave Kuwait, but he could not allow himself to submit to an American ultimatum. To do so, in his view, would be to sign his own death warrant. But by now Saddam had prevaricated so often since he first conceived his Kuwait adventure in the summer of 1990 that none of the Western leaders took him at his word. They wanted action, not promises, and unless Saddam began physically removing his troops from Kuwait, the Allies remained determined to do the job themselves.

With this in mind President Bush gave Saddam one last chance. “The coalition will give Saddam Hussein until noon Saturday [8
P.M
. Iraqi time, February 23] to do what he must do—begin his immediate and unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait. We must hear publicly and authoritatively his acceptance of these terms.”
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The die was cast. While leaving Tariq Aziz to pursue what was left of the Soviet diplomatic initiative, Saddam set his mind to preparing for the inevitable. In anticipation of the land invasion, Saddam ordered his occupation forces in Kuwait to set fire to the Kuwaiti oil fields. Mass executions of Kuwaiti prisoners were also carried out.

Saddam did not have long to wait for the Allies to act. At 4
A.M
. local time on Sunday, February 24, Bush announced that General Norman Schwarzkopf, the commander in chief of the Allied forces in Saudi Arabia, had been instructed “to use all forces available, including ground forces, to eject the Iraqi army from Kuwait.” In fact the invasion turned out to be a complete rout of the Iraqi armed forces. Within less than forty-eight hours of fighting, the backbone of the Iraqi army had been broken. What Saddam had intended as a formidable line of defense in Kuwait, the so-called “Saddam line,” was breached and collapsed within hours of the offensive's commencing. After six weeks of saturation bombing, the Iraqi troops were in no mood for a fight, and there were so many Iraqi soldiers trying to surrender that the Allied troops struggled to cope. By the end of the second day the Allies had taken 20,000 prisoners; an estimated 370 Iraqi tanks had been destroyed and seven Iraqi divisions—totaling some 100,000 men—were no longer able to fight.

Realizing that the future of his regime was now very much at stake, Saddam gave the order to his military commanders “to withdraw in an
organized manner to the positions they held prior to August 1, 1990.” But even though there were reports from military intelligence that some Iraqi units in Kuwait were turning and heading north back to Iraq, Bush refused to call a cease-fire until Saddam “personally and publicly” committed himself to a speedy withdrawal. Even at this stage in the conflict, when his army was being completely routed by the Allies' superior firepower, Saddam could not bring himself to make any public utterance that would in any way indicate that he had been mistaken to occupy Kuwait. From his point of view, it was better to let the Allies destroy his army than to undermine his reputation as the infallible “hero president.” And as, on February 26, he announced that the Iraqi armed forces were to complete their withdrawal from Kuwait within the next twenty-four hours, Saddam used the occasion to urge the nation to applaud their heroism. “Applaud your victories, my dear citizens. You have faced 30 countries and the evil they have brought here. You have faced the whole world, great Iraqis. You have won. You are victorious. How sweet victory is.”
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The fighting continued for another two days. While the Allies said they would not attack unarmed soldiers in retreat, they continued to attack Iraq's retreating armed combat units with devastating effect. By the end of February 26 the last Iraqi soldier had left Kuwait. The number of Iraqi prisoners of war now stood at 50,000, a further eight Iraqi divisions had been rendered ineffective, and total Iraqi casualties numbered an estimated 150,000. With the Iraqi armed forces in their death throes Saddam made various appeals to the United Nations to call a halt to the fighting in return for Iraq renouncing its annexation of Kuwait. But his approaches were accompanied by various demands, such as the immediate lifting of sanctions, which were still unacceptable to the coalition members.

The conflict was finally brought to a close on the morning of February 25 when President Bush, who felt he could no longer justify the continuation of Allied attacks against a defenseless Iraqi foe, announced that he was suspending offensive combat operations. Bush's decision was taken after Allied aircraft conducted a particularly devastating attack on a defenseless Iraqi convoy retreating from Kuwait at Mitla Ridge, a key intersection on the road to Basra. Believing that the convoy was an Iraqi unit attempting to link up with the Republican Guard, Allied commanders ordered American warplanes to attack it. The attack became what one American commander later described as a “turkey shoot,” with American aircraft lining up in the skies above
Kuwait to attack the defenseless convoy.
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Hundreds of vehicles were destroyed and many casualties inflicted. As the attack on Mitla Ridge also coincided with the arrival of Western television crews, who had accompanied the liberating Allied troops into Kuwait, the carnage was broadcast throughout the world.

The Mitla Ridge attack effectively ended the war. Even though General Schwarzkopf noted that the Allied forces could easily have overrun Iraq and captured Baghdad, there was mounting unease within the coalition partners about prosecuting the war beyond Kuwait. Public opinion in the West was uncomfortable about any unnecessary killing and there were fears that if the war ended on a sour note it might complicate the postwar political situation in the region. On that basis President Bush decided to end the war. “Kuwait is liberated,” he said. “Iraq's army is defeated. Our military objectives are met. It was a victory for all the coalition nations, for the United Nations, for all mankind, and for the rule of law.” The American announcement was received with enormous relief by Saddam, who responded by making a victory speech to the Iraqi people. “You have won, Iraqis,” he declared. “Iraq is the one that is victorious. Iraq has succeeded in demolishing the aura of the United States, the empire of evil, terror and aggression.”
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Whatever Saddam claimed, the Allies had achieved a devastating and comprehensive victory. In little more than 100 hours coalition forces had captured 73,700 square kilometers of territory, including 15 percent of Iraq. The Iraqi army had been cut to pieces; no more than seven of the original forty-three Iraqi divisions were capable of operations. The full extent of the Allied victory only became apparent to the Iraqis on March 3 when they attended the cease-fire meeting at Safwan air base. The Iraqi commanders listened in stunned silence as General Schwarzkopf explained that the Allies had taken 58,000 prisoners, and occupied large tracts of Iraqi territory. The Iraqis made only one request, namely to fly their helicopters, as most of the country's roads and bridges had been destroyed. Schwarzkopf agreed.

In the days shortly after the rout General Wafic al-Samurrai was once more summoned to meet his commander in chief, who had conveniently absented himself from the cease-fire negotiations. Saddam was now working at a secret office, having moved from one house to another in the Baghdad suburbs almost every night of the war to escape the attentions of the American smart bombs, which he believed, correctly, were trying to assassinate him. To his surprise, al-Samurrai found Saddam relaxed and strangely
buoyed by all the excitement. “What is your evaluation, General?” Saddam asked. Samurrai replied bluntly: “I think this is the biggest defeat in military history. This is bigger than the defeat at Khorramshahr [the defeat in the Iran-Iraq War].”
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At first, Saddam did not reply. He was as well aware as anyone of the scale of the Iraqi defeat. He knew that his troops had been surrendering en masse; he knew about the slaughter at Mitla Ridge and the devastation that had been caused by the Allied bombing campaign. But even if Saddam agreed with the general's assessment, he was not going to say so. In the past, as at Khorramshahr, he had blamed the generals for the defeat, and had punished them accordingly, thereby giving the impression that he personally was not to blame for the military disasters. But on this occasion he knew that the defeat rested squarely with him and this was something that he could never admit. And so his reply to Samurrai was brief and to the point. “That's your opinion,” said Saddam.

The greatest threat to Saddam's survival was not Operation Desert Storm, but the nationwide revolt that followed it. For once Saddam's rhetorical flourishes made little impact on a nation driven to the depths of despair by the catastrophe that had been inflicted on it by his ill-conceived adventure in Kuwait. For the first time in Iraq's modern history, the people rose in strength against their despotic leader. The first revolt occurred in Basra and within days the Shiite heartlands of southern Iraq, including the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, had risen up against Baghdad. Many towns fell to the rebels, numerous armored vehicles were destroyed, and some Republican Guards units deserted. The fighting quickly spread to nearby Sunni cities and even reached Baghdad, where a number of fierce street clashes were reported.

Before long the rebellion had spread to the north, where the Kurds, encouraged by the Shiites' revolt, decided to capitalize on the collapse of the government's authority and assert their own national rights. The Kurdish revolt was launched in the belief that it had the support of the Bush administration, which had indicated its commitment to removing Saddam and protecting the Kurds.
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Within a fortnight the Kurds had liberated 95 percent of Kurdistan and invited various factions of the Iraqi opposition to form a new government. Although the leaders of the Iraqi opposition declined, some three hundred delegates from twenty-three exiled opposition groups met in Beirut on March 10 in an unprecedented attempt to coordinate a joint strategy against Saddam.

The nationwide revolt against the Baath leadership in Baghdad caught the leaders of the Allied coalition by surprise. Throughout Operation Desert Storm several coalition leaders, including President Bush and British prime minister John Major, had called for Saddam's overthrow. In mid-February President Bush explicitly called on the Iraqi people “to force Saddam Hussein the dictator to step aside,” while Mr. Major stated in parliament that Saddam “may yet become a target of his own people.”
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Indeed, soon after the cease-fire had been signed, President Bush was handed an intelligence assessment that predicted that Saddam would be out of office within a year. The only question mark hanging over Saddam's ability to survive was whether the formidable security apparatus he had created could withstand a widespread insurrection at a time when the country lay in ruins.

Although the Allies were keen to see Saddam deposed, the simultaneous revolts by the Shiites and the Kurds put them in a quandary. Although the coalition leaders had urged the Iraqis to overthrow Saddam, they were not prepared to commit Allied troops in support of the rebels. The war was fought on the basis that it was a military campaign to liberate Kuwait; removing Saddam was not part of the mandate. The argument against extending Operation Desert Storm to include the overthrow of Saddam's regime was articulated by the
New York Times,
which, for example, argued that if the war aims were broadened, they could result in higher Allied casualties and destabilize the region, particularly if Iraq's neighbors, such as Iran, were to exploit the weakness of the government in Baghdad for their own ends.
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The Gulf monarchies, who had to contend with the constant threat posed by Iranian-backed Islamic militants, were unhappy at the prospect of Iran's influence being extended to the Shiite areas of southern Iraq.

The noninterventionist rationale was best summed up by Richard Cheney, the U.S. defense secretary, who, ten years later, would be a key player in a renewed American commitment to remove Saddam from office. “If we'd gone to Baghdad and got rid of Saddam Hussein—assuming we could have found him—we'd have had to put a lot of forces in and run him to ground some place. He would not have been easy to capture. Then you've got to put a new government in his place and then you're faced with the question of what kind of government are you going to establish in Iraq? Is it going to be a Kurdish government or a Shiite government or a Sunni government? How many forces are you going to have to leave there to keep it propped up, how many casualties are you going to take through the course of this operation?”
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Cheney would himself be searching for the answers to these key questions ten years later when he was elected vice president along with President George W. Bush, the son of the American president who had commanded Operation Desert Storm.

Although the Allies favored a change of regime in Baghdad, their preference was for a repeat of the conventional coup d'état that had historically brought about change in the Iraqi government, rather than a popular revolution. A popular uprising was full of hazards. No one knew what kind of regime would replace the Baathists and the State Department remained convinced that the Iranians would try to exploit whatever success the rebels achieved, whether it was the Shiites in southern Iraq or the Kurds in the north. The Allies, moreover, were more interested in tackling Iraq's substantial arsenal of nonconventional weapons, which they believed posed more of a long-term threat to the region than Saddam. Operation Desert Storm had been fought against the backdrop of the Iraqi regime's constant threats to use nonconventional weapons, some of which Saddam had already used against his own people.

With this in mind, the United States, Britain, and France on April 3, 1991, pushed through UN Security Council Resolution 687, the longest in the organization's history, which was known as the “mother of all resolutions.” Apart from stipulating the inviolability of Iraq's boundary with Kuwait, which would be demarcated by an international commission, the resolution demanded that Iraq present the United Nations with full disclosure of all its chemical and biological weapons and facilities, its ballistic missile stocks, and production capabilities (over 150 kilometers range), and all nuclear materials. The Iraqis were then to cooperate fully with the destruction of their nonconventional weapons arsenal. In addition Baghdad was to facilitate the return of all Kuwaiti property and agree to compensation to those foreign nationals and companies that had suffered as a result of the occupation of Kuwait. All sanctions would remain in place for anything other than “medicines and health supplies.” The sanctions were to be reviewed every sixty days, and Iraqi compliance with the UN resolutions, particularly with regard to the disarmament program, was central to any decision to reduce or lift sanctions. In the meantime Iraq would not be allowed to sell any oil.

With Iraq in ruins, and half the country in revolt and facing the most uncompromising sanctions against a regime ever devised by the UN Security Council, most Western leaders accepted the general assessment that Saddam
would be gone within a year. The only drawback was that they were not prepared to assist with his demise. President Bush was content to utter platitudes such as “Saddam cannot survive…people are fed up with him. They see him for the brutal dictator he is.”
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But supporting the insurrection being undertaken by the Shiites and the Kurds was another matter entirely. Marlin Fitzwater, the White House spokesman, was noncommittal, almost to the point of naivete, when asked about American intentions toward the rebels. “We don't intend to get involved in Iraq's internal affairs,” he said. “We have these reports of fighting in Basra and other cities, but it is not clear to us what the purpose or the extent of the fighting is.” Clearly Bush was not about to let his magnificent triumph in Kuwait become tarnished by allowing American troops to be ensnared in the maelstrom of Iraqi politics. He wanted U.S. troops home as soon as possible.

The manner in which Saddam managed to turn the perilous plight he faced in the spring of 1991 to his personal advantage was a textbook demonstration of the political cunning, and skill, that had enabled him to survive as the undisputed champion of Iraq for the better part of three decades. It showed that he remained a formidable foe when challenged on his own territory. Even though Saddam had badly misunderstood the West's attitude toward Iraq and the Baathist regime in the run-up to the invasion of Kuwait, he could detect that the West had no heart to take the fight to Iraq following the liberation of Kuwait. Saddam was quick to exploit the West's weariness with the Middle East and calculated that, if he gave the Allies no reason to intervene in Iraq's internal affairs, he could easily reestablish the government's writ. Thus in early March he allowed his foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, to write to the UN secretary-general informing him of Iraq's renunciation of its annexation of Kuwait, and agreeing to return Kuwait's plundered assets. Aziz finally accepted the terms of UN Resolution 687, although its implementation would soon be directly related to Baghdad's calculations on the readiness of the coalition, which was dissolving as quickly as it had been assembled, to resort to armed force to ensure compliance.

Having done enough to keep the UN off his back, Saddam made some important adjustments to the regime's structure to consolidate his own position and to guarantee absolute loyalty to his command in the struggle that lay ahead to suppress the Shiites and the Kurds. His deputy in the Revolutionary Command Council, Izzat Ibrahim, was made deputy commander in chief of the armed forces and sent to the south to supervise the suppression of the
Shiite uprising. Saddam's favorite son-in-law, Hussein Kamel al-Majid, was appointed minister of defense, and Taha Yassin Ramadan, Saddam's long-standing henchman, became deputy president. As a gesture to the Shiites Saddam gave up the office of prime minister, a significant concession, and appointed another of his longtime associates, Saadoun Hammadi, a prominent Shiite, to the position—although Hammadi was widely regarded a weak person with no power base. Finally Ali Hassan al-Majid was appointed minister of the interior. Given his atrocious record, both as the official responsible for gassing the Kurds at Halabja, and his recently vacated position as the brutal governor of Kuwait, Majid's appointment sent a clear signal to the rebels that Saddam was not intending to treat them with kid gloves. As he had done so many times in the past, Saddam had ensured that the fate of all the leading members of the regime was inextricably linked to his own.

Saddam made a concerted effort to raise the morale of his battered troops. An across-the-board pay raise was announced for the military and the security forces. Any officer whose loyalty was regarded as suspect was purged, and there were a number of executions. Saddam's network of military commissars had survived the war intact. A number of senior military commanders were replaced, including General Wafic al-Samurrai, the head of military intelligence, who was no doubt punished for having been so candid in expressing his opinions on the military implications of Operation Desert Storm.

The Republican Guard was unleashed against the rebellion in the south. Buoyed by their new command and pay structure, the battalions of the Guard that had survived the war were keen to redeem themselves from the disgrace that they had suffered at the hands of the Allies. They plunged into their new task with a brutality that was exceptional even by the harsh standards of the Baathist regime. In the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala thousands of clerics were arrested and hundreds were summarily executed. Any turbaned or bearded man who took to the street ran the risk of being arrested and shot. People were tied to tanks and used as human shields, while women and children were indiscriminately shot. The Baath Party commissioned a film to be made of Ali Hassan al-Majid, the newly appointed interior minister, conducting operations against the Shiites. On one occasion in the film Majid can be heard giving instructions to an Iraqi helicopter pilot on his way to attack a group of rebels holding a bridge: “Don't come back until you are able to tell me that you have burnt them; and if you haven't burnt them don't come back.”
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Later in the film, which was distributed to Baath Party activists after
the revolt had been suppressed, Majid is joined by another senior Baathist, Mohammed Hamza al-Zubeidi, and the two men slap and kick some of the prisoners as they lie defenseless on the ground. “Let's execute one so the others will confess,” says Zubeidi, who later was promoted to prime minister by Saddam as a reward for his distinguished service in southern Iraq. The film then shows a group of prisoners looking frightened and resigned. Majid chain-smokes while he carries out his interrogation of the prisoners. He points to one of them and remarks: “Don't execute this one. He will be useful to us.” By the time Western correspondents were finally allowed to visit the area after the revolt had been fully suppressed, they reported that Karbala “looked as if it had been hit by an earthquake.”
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In late March a major offensive was launched against the Kurds and within days the main cities of Kurdistan had fallen to government forces, and fearful Kurds began fleeing to the mountains in a desperate attempt to escape the advancing Iraqi army. Saddam's psychological hold over the Kurds was revealed when his forces, simply by dropping white flour on groups of refugees, instilled total panic, and the defenseless civilians thought they were being attacked with chemical weapons. In early April nearly one million Kurdish refugees were concentrated along the Iranian and Kurdish borders, and by the end of the month the number exceeded two million. In the mountainous regions of Kurdistan the refugees were reported to be starving to death at the rate of a thousand people a day.

The victorious Allies, who had only two months previously been toasting their triumph over Saddam, now had to deal with a humanitarian disaster for which they were mainly responsible. Backed by UN Security Council Resolution 688, which authorized humanitarian organizations to aid the Kurds and banned Iraqi aircraft from flying north of the 36th parallel, the embarrassed Allies launched Operation Provide Comfort, with transport aircraft and helicopters delivering tons of relief materials, including food, clothes, tents, and blankets. But the emergency international relief effort was hampered by appalling overcrowding in the refugee camps and by bad weather. The only solution to prevent the situation reaching catastrophic proportions was to find a way in which the refugees could return to their homes. In early April John Major proposed establishing “safe havens” for the Kurds, areas of Kurdistan where they would be protected from attack by Saddam's forces. Initially President Bush, whose overriding concern was to prevent American troops from becoming embroiled in Iraq's civil war, was lukewarm
to the plan, but in mid-April he changed his mind and authorized the U.S. military to establish a number of secure sites in northern Iraq to facilitate the distribution of food aid. By the end of the month nearly 10,000 American, British, and French troops were deployed in northern Iraq supervising the relief effort for the Kurds.