Saddam : His Rise and Fall (39 page)

If Saddam had been willing to excuse Uday's past excesses, he was not prepared to have his son interfering with his own love life. The killing of Geogeo provoked a furious reaction from Saddam, who immediately denounced his son on television, and ordered that he should stand trial for murder. The Arab press was soon filled with lurid accounts of Saddam going to his son's house and beating him up and then, when his wife intervened on her son's side,
beating her up, too.
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Another account, provided by a man who acted as one of Uday's “doubles,” claimed that Uday was so overcome with remorse that he swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills and was taken to the same hospital where Geogeo had been taken after Uday attacked him. Unlike Geogeo, Uday's life was saved by the medical staff. As they were pumping out his stomach, Saddam arrived in the emergency room, pushed the doctors aside, and hit him in the face, shouting: “Your blood will flow like my friend's.”
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Given the considerable political strain Saddam was under following the disastrous war with Iran, the domestic scandal caused by Uday's murder of the presidential food taster did little to improve the president's popularity. Aware that he needed to take firm action if he was to stand any chance of salvaging the ruling family's reputation, Saddam ordered that both his wife and Uday disappear from public view. This was particularly embarrassing for Sajida, who had been hosting various state functions in Baghdad in honor of President Mubarak's wife Suzanne when the murder took place. When Mrs. Mubarak went to the Baghdad airport to catch her return flight home to Egypt on October 21, Iraq's first lady was curiously absent from the farewell ceremonies. The day after the killing Uday's name was dropped from the masthead of the local sports newspaper of which he was nominally editor in chief. A few days later he was stripped of his official positions as head of the Iraqi Olympic Committee and the Iraq Football Federation. A brief announcement stated simply that he had resigned “for personal reasons.” Uday's resignation from the football association was particularly embarrassing as he had just been unanimously reelected by its members—all of whom belonged to the Baath Party—to serve another four-year term. He was also required to stand down from his newly acquired post as rector of the Saddam University for Science and Technology in Baghdad.

Initially Saddam tried to keep the scandal a family secret, but reports soon began to appear in the foreign press, and Saddam was obliged to go public. Uday was jailed and a special commission set up to investigate the killing, and Saddam declared that if the commission held Uday responsible, he would be put on trial for murder. The manner in which the court was set up and the background lobbying that took place to secure Uday's eventual release is highly revealing about the nature of the byzantine politics that lay at the heart of Saddam's regime. The judge appointed to conduct the investigation, Abdel Wahab Hussein al-Douri, was in fact a cousin of the vice-chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri. The commission
was quickly assisted in its deliberations when Geogeo's father, who was, after all, employed as Saddam's personal cook, asked for the charges to be dropped. In addition he invoked the tribal custom of appealing to Saddam to spare the life of Uday. Saddam was subjected to intensive lobbying on Uday's behalf by Sajida and her brother, Adnan Khairallah, the Iraqi defense minister, and Saddam's first cousin. Sajida railed at Saddam, demanding to know why he should punish Uday for killing the food taster when he had done nothing about Uday's previous killings. “Why arrest him?” she reportedly asked her husband. “After all, it is not the first time he has killed. Nor is he the only one in his family who has killed.”
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The latter remark was clearly a dig at Saddam's own youthful transgressions.

The reluctance of the judicial commission to upset the president, combined with the intensive lobbying that was undertaken by Uday's relatives, resulted in the case being dropped. Saddam remained furious with Uday for having the gall to intrude upon his romantic liaisons, and his eldest son was sent into exile to Geneva to join his half uncle, Barzan al-Tikriti, who himself was still sulking over Saddam's refusal to allow his son to marry one of the president's daughters. Uday's banishment to a country like Switzerland, which prided itself on its civility, was no doubt intended to curb his wilder instincts. But Saddam's hopes that Geneva would become a finishing school for his errant son were short-lived. Reports of Uday's behavior in Baghdad had reached the attention of the Swiss authorities, and when Barzan and Uday applied for their diplomatic residence permits, they approved Barzan's while postponing a decision over Uday. A few weeks later the Swiss made a formal request to Uday to leave the country. Even while his application for diplomatic status was pending, he had managed to involve himself in an altercation with a Swiss policeman, in which he pulled a knife during a row at a restaurant in Geneva. Uday's departure was so abrupt that his plane crossed paths with that of his mother, who was unaware of his expulsion and was traveling to Switzerland to see him. He returned to Baghdad, where a reconciliation of sorts was effected with his father. Uday received a presidential pardon, was reelected unanimously as president of the Iraqi Olympic Committee, and was allowed to resume many of his former activities. Former Iraqi officials who went into exile after the Gulf War reported that Uday had developed into a carbon copy of his father. “He is rude and shows no respect. He is a bully and thug.”
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If Saddam was prepared to come to terms with his son, the same cannot be said of his relations with his wife. It was because of Sajida's jealousy over
Saddam's mistress that Uday had been encouraged to murder Geogeo in the first place. As Iraq's first lady, Sajida herself was virtually immune from any form of retribution, especially as the press reports of Geogeo's murder had made it clear that it was Saddam, and not his wife, who was ultimately responsible for the scandal by having the affair in the first place. Unable to avenge himself directly on his wife, Saddam resolved to punish her by acting against her brother and his childhood friend, Adnan Khairallah.

By 1989 Saddam and Adnan, who had grown up together in Khairallah Tulfah's house in Tikrit, had been friends, companions, and colleagues for more than thirty years. Adnan had been a key ally in Saddam's rise to power. His appointment as defense minister in 1977 had been a watershed moment in Saddam's preparations to take over the presidency, as it meant Saddam no longer had to contend with any threat from the military establishment. Adnan had worked closely with Saddam during the Iran-Iraq War. Like his father, Khairallah Tulfah, he was not averse to exploiting his position for personal gain. Apart from acquiring a fortune in real estate deals with his father, Adnan had also skimmed off millions of dollars in commissions on the arms deals he had negotiated on behalf of the government. By 1989, when the rest of the country was still suffering the austerity of the war years, Adnan had acquired an estimated five hundred cars for his personal use.

Relations had already been strained between Saddam and Adnan before the row over Uday became public. As defense minister, Adnan had claimed some of the glory for the “victory” over Iran for himself, and was coming to see himself more and more as Saddam's heir apparent. Saddam was always deeply suspicious of colleagues who looked as though they might be in a position to challenge him. Unlike Saddam, Adnan had attended the prestigious Baghdad Military Academy as a young man, and had made a reputation for himself as a highly competent military officer. A long-standing member of the Baath, Adnan was courteous and was capable of presenting his ideas in a professional, military manner. Before becoming defense minister, he had served in Iraq's 10th Armored Brigade, the “Golden Brigade,” and unlike most of the other members of the regime, he had not been involved in the atrocities and torture conducted by Saddam's security officials. Consequently he was popular with his fellow officers. During the war with Iran Adnan's superior military knowledge and capability became a source of constant friction with Saddam. If, for example, an Iraqi officer withdrew from an engagement with the enemy, Adnan was able to grasp the tactical explanation for the
maneuver. Saddam, on the other hand, who had no military training, would interpret any retreat as cowardice, and demand that the officer responsible be executed. Relations between Saddam and Adnan had become so strained during the war that Adnan seriously considered resigning his position as defense minister, but was persuaded to stay by his father, Khairallah Tulfah, who, although elderly and infirm, continued to enjoy his status as the regime's unofficial “godfather” until his death in the 1990s.

After the war, as criticism of Saddam's leadership qualities mounted, articles began appearing in the Arab press suggesting the possibility that Adnan Khairallah might replace Saddam as president. The articles had a similar theme; Adnan was better trained, more professional, and more reasonable than Saddam and was better suited to running the country. Furthermore, Iraq was a nation in which successful military officers had previously taken control of the government. Saddam's intelligence officers kept him fully informed about the articles appearing in the foreign press, and also about the impact they were having on the ruling elite in Baghdad. His suspicions about Adnan were further heightened by reports that he had become rather too familiar with the CIA officials who had been based in Baghdad during the war, and had provided Iraq with crucial intelligence material.
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Adnan's decision to side publicly with his sister in the dispute over Saddam's mistress was the last straw. Saddam was aware that, true to the Arab tradition, Adnan would always stand by his blood relatives when it came to any dispute. And as defense minister Adnan was also responsible for Saddam's personal protection. In this respect Adnan's position was not helped in January 1989 when Saddam was forced to cancel the annual Iraq Army Day celebrations—the first held since the end of the war—after his ever-vigilant security agents uncovered a plot to kill him during the military procession. A group of dissident military officers, no doubt still seething at Saddam's bungling during the war effort, had planned to attack the reviewing stand during the official march past. There were even suggestions that rebellious pilots were to strafe and bomb the stand. Although the plot was uncovered in time, the fact that it had not been discovered earlier left the impression that Adnan was not paying sufficient attention to the fulfillment of his duties. Adnan did not have to wait long for Saddam to exact his revenge. Four months later he was killed in a helicopter crash. The official explanation was that Adnan, who was piloting the helicopter, was disoriented by a sandstorm, lost control, and crashed while returning from a tour of inspection in Kurdistan.

The true story of Adnan's death was provided a few years later by Hussein Kamel al-Majid, Saddam's first cousin and son-in-law. According to Hussein Kamel, Adnan had been to a family gathering near Mosul, in northern Iraq, with Saddam and Sajida. The meeting was an attempt by Saddam to heal the rift within the family that had been caused by the row over Uday. During the meeting, however, a dispute broke out between Saddam and Adnan, and Adnan decided to leave the gathering. At this point Saddam told Hussein Kamel “to take care of matters.” Hussein Kamel admitted that he placed the explosives on Adnan's helicopter with a timer set to make them explode once the aircraft was airborne.
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Adnan's murder signaled the end of Saddam's relationship with his first wife. Shortly before Adnan had boarded the helicopter Sajida had had a premonition that it might not be safe for him to fly back to Baghdad, especially as it was getting dark. Saddam had attempted to reassure her, saying that Adnan must carry out his duty, and consoled her with the words “We must put our faith in God to protect us.” After Adnan's murder Sajida was in no doubt who had been responsible for her brother's death, and she vowed never to speak to Saddam again. An official separation between Saddam and Sajida was later arranged whereby she acquired the official title “Lady of the Ladies,” while Samira, who became Saddam's second wife soon afterward, took the title “First Lady.”

 

Saddam's domestic difficulties no doubt had a bearing on the policies he pursued in the immediate aftermath of the war. For once Saddam appeared to be on the defensive, aware that his own position was susceptible to political challenges, both from within his own ruling elite and from the military. Between the end of the Iran war and 1990 several attempts were made on his life. The first took place in November 1988 and reportedly involved a plan to shoot down his plane on his return from a state visit to Egypt. The second was at the Iraq Army Day parade. This was particularly worrying for Saddam as it involved officers from the Republican Guard, his elite bodyguard unit. Dozens, if not hundreds, of officers were executed in the reprisals that followed. A third coup attempt was aborted in September 1989, at a time when the Iraqi leader was being hailed as the new Nebuchadnezzar at a national festival in the rebuilt Babylon. And in January 1990 Saddam narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by army officers while he was riding in his car through Baghdad.

Aware that his personal popularity was at a low ebb, Saddam embarked on an Iraqi form of perestroika, a program to liberalize some of the state institutions. One of his first steps was to hold new elections in April 1989 for the National Assembly, the body that came closest to providing a genuinely democratic platform for political expression. As in previous elections, however, all the candidates were carefully scrutinized by the security services. Non–Baath Party members were allowed to run as “independents,” and a large number of these so-called independent candidates were elected, although the authorities were less keen to publicize the fact that any potential candidate who was regarded as being “dangerous to the state”—a status that enjoyed a broad definition—was not allowed to run. Apart from arranging the elections the regime indicated that it would in the future tolerate a degree of criticism of government ministers and policies, although it stressed that such criticism could only be directed at ministers, the technocrats responsible for running the country. The president, his relatives, and other members of the ruling circle were immune from adverse comment, which was just as well in view of the antics of some of Saddam's more headstrong relatives at that time.