Saddam : His Rise and Fall (59 page)

The Bush administration could hardly contain its delight. The following day President Bush made a brief appearance in the Rose Garden at the White House to say that the deaths of Qusay and Uday should reassure Iraqis “that the former regime is gone and will not be coming back.” Paul Bremer, the U.S. civil administrator in Iraq, was equally upbeat, claiming, “It is only a matter of time before we find Saddam Hussein.” In an attempt to convince skeptical Iraqis that the bodies were indeed those of two of the most feared members of the former regime, the Americans took the highly unusual step of releasing pictures of the dead men. When some Iraqis still complained that it was difficult, because of the severe facial injuries they had suffered, to distinguish them as Uday and Qusay, the American authorities then released pictures of the bodies after they had been shaved and cleaned up by a military mortician. Coalition officials later revealed that more than $100 million in cash, a number of pornographic magazines, condoms, and quantities of the sex drug Viagra had been found in Uday's suitcase. Any devout Muslims who felt offended by the manner in which the Americans had handled the bodies of the dead men would have been even more upset by Uday's decidedly un-Islamic behavior.

A few days later, on July 29, the expected taped message from Saddam was delivered to a Dubai-based television station in which he eulogized his sons as
“martyrs for Iraq.” The new tape was made as U.S. forces intensified their efforts to track down Saddam, conducting 233 raids on the homes of suspected bodyguards and collaborators in the space of just twenty-four hours. The code name assigned to those hunting Saddam was Task Force Iron Horse. Despite American claims that the net was closing on him, Saddam remained defiant. “I mourn the deaths of Uday and Qusay and those who struggled with them,” he said. “You are the honor of this nation. America will be defeated. Even if Saddam Hussein had 100 children other than Uday and Qusay, Saddam Hussein would offer them in the same way.”

The Americans faced a dilemma about what to do with the bodies of the dead men. If they buried them, there was the possibility that they might be turned into a martyr's shrine. If they held on to them, they would be accused of insulting Islamic custom. Eventually it was decided that the bodies should be buried in a cemetery on the outskirts of al-Ouja, Saddam's birthplace, which was located close to the ornate shrine Saddam had built in memory of his mother, Subha. About seventy people turned up for the funerals of Uday, Qusay, and Mustafa, which were held in early August. The head of Saddam's al-Bejat tribe, Sheikh Mahmoud al-Nida, attended the service, and remarked that it was a sad day for his tribe, which had benefited enormously from the patronage of the dictatorship. Other mourners were less sanguine, and vowed vengeance on the Americans for killing their fellow tribesmen. “When the time comes we will kill double the number of Americans,” remarked one of the mourners. It was also noted that, next to the newly dug graves, there was an emply plot of land. “We are saving that for Saddam,” said an American soldier. Any hope the Americans entertained that the deaths of Uday and Qusay would result in a drop in the number of attacks against their troops soon vanished when three American soldiers from the same division that killed Saddam's sons were themselves killed in an ambush.

At the same time that the funeral arrangements were being made for Uday and Qusay, two of Saddam's daughters, Raghad and Rana, surfaced in Jordan, where they had been granted asylum by King Abdullah. Although Saddam had presided over the murder of their husbands, Hussein Kamel and Saddam Kamel al-Majid (see pp. 301–302), the daughters paid an astonishing tribute to their father, sending him their love and praising him as a “very good father” with a “big heart.” Speaking on behalf of her family, Raghad, the elder daughter, claimed the Americans had won the war only because Saddam had been betrayed by those he trusted most. “The main betrayal came from the people
whom he trusted fully,” she said. “This is an act of treason. If someone does not like you they should not betray you…betrayal is not a trait of the Arabs.” Raghad said that the fall of Baghdad had come as “a big shock.” As soon as American tanks rolled into Baghdad, their father had sent them a car from his special security forces and instructed them to leave the house. Also present with Raghad and Rana was Sahar, Qusay's wife. “The moment of saying goodbye was horrendous,” Raghad recalled. “We left Baghdad and met up with my mother [Sajida] and Hala [Saddam's youngest daughter]. After a few hours links were all but cut off with my father and brothers because matters got out of hand.”

A few weeks after the war Raghad and Rana had unsuccessfully sought asylum in Britain. They wanted to live in Leeds, where a cousin of theirs lived. At the time they made the application they were living in Damascus. But after the Syrian government came under pressure from Washington for harboring members of the Iraqi regime, Saddam's family decided to seek sanctuary in Jordan. Raghad revealed that she had last seen her father for an hour five days before the war began at her mother's palace in Baghdad's al-Jabiriyah district. “All the grandchildren began pulling out chairs and sat around their grandfather in a circle. He was very kind to them and after he left, he sent them sweets.” Raghad said that her husband's decision to flee to Jordan in 1996 had been “a big mistake,” and their decision to return “even a bigger mistake.” She had been “trapped between two raging fires…that of my husband and children, and that of my father and my family.” She blamed the murder of her husband and his brother not on Saddam but on his cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid. “This Ali is a malicious, wicked and damned man, with a black history,” she said. “After the defection he turned things to his advantage. He climbed up on our shoulders.” Despite being close to her father, Raghad claimed that she had no idea where he might be hiding. “He is not going to tell anyone where he is now, even my mother or anyone else in the family.”
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By the summer of 2003 the coalition was starting to make tangible progress on developing a new political structure in Baghdad to replace the Baathists. A survey carried out by Baghdad University showed that 70 percent of Iraqis supported the overthrow of Saddam. In mid-August the coalition forces captured Taha Yassin Ramadan, the former Iraqi vice president, and Ali Hassan al-Majid (“Chemical Ali”), Saddam's longtime enforcer. These
arrests meant that more than forty of the most-wanted Iraqis named in the coalition's “pack of cards” had been detained. But even this breakthrough counted for little so long as Saddam was at large and the armed resistance conducted against the coalition by loyalists and outside fighters remained a threat. Most of the attacks were concentrated in an area known as the “Sunni triangle,” which lay within the Sunni-dominated population centers of Baghdad, Tikrit, and Fallujah. In late August they managed to launch a devastating suicide bomb attack against the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, killing 17 people, including Sergio Vieira de Mello, the head of the UN mission, who had played a key role in setting up the interim government. Another 100 people were wounded in the attack, which forced the UN to withdraw most of its operational staff from the Iraqi capital indefinitely.

The coalition's inability to improve the security situation by the autumn was seriously hindering the reconstruction effort. Even though in late October the Bush administration was able to win the unanimous backing of the UN Security Council for its plan to administer Iraq until power could be transferred fully to a new Iraqi government, the increasing effectiveness of the insurgents' attacks meant that it was still having trouble attracting investment and sponsorship from international donors to pay for the multibillion-dollar reconstruction program. During a three-week spell between late October and early November, Saddam's loyalists managed to shoot down three American helicopters—including two Black Hawks—which brought the total of U.S. soldiers killed in action since President Bush had declared major combat over on May 1 to 143, which was significantly more than the 114 American servicemen killed during the war itself. The fact that Saddam was still intermittently issuing audiotapes in which he urged his followers to maintain their attacks against the “infidel” coalition troops only strengthened their resolve to capture the deposed Iraqi leader. Coalition commanders were privately concerned that the security situation was rapidly spinning out of control, and a confidential report drawn up by the CIA estimated the number of insurgents taking part in the resistance at fifty-thousand.
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After urgent discussions between President Bush and Paul Bremer in Washington, it was agreed that the timetable for the handover of power to the Iraqis should be brought forward to the summer of 2004.

At the same time the Pentagon set up yet another covert force to intensify the hunt for Saddam. This one, made up of 600 soldiers from the Fourth
Infantry Division and a detachment of U.S. Special Forces, adopted tactics similar to those used by the Israelis to track down Palestinian militants in the West Bank. Their first step was to seal off al-Ouja, Saddam's birthplace, which was fenced off with razor wire. All 4,000 residents—some of whom were Saddam's relatives—were issued identity cards. In order to leave or enter the village, the residents had to pass through a checkpoint, where they and their cars were thoroughly searched. The tactic, though drawing protests from the residents, soon started to pay dividends. Within days between 20 and 30 members of key families with close links to Saddam had been detained. Another 200 Iraqis, suspected of involvement in the insurgency, were also held. During a raid on a farmhouse south of al-Ouja U.S. forces seized $8 million in cash and $1 million worth of jewelry belonging to Saddam's wife Sajida. Colonel James Hickey, the force commander, made no apologies for his uncompromising tactics, which he insisted would eventually lead to Saddam's capture. Hickey was convinced that Saddam was moving in and out of the area because “this is like Chicago to Mayor Daley—this is where he grew up, where his key supporters are, where his security people are. He's got to come back here.”
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However much the coalition tried to limit the damage done by the insurgents, the attacks continued unabated, with disaffected Iraqis using a variety of ingenious methods to attack the Allies. Toward the end of November two hotels and the Oil Ministry were hit by a dozen rockets that were fired from donkey carts. A few days later insurgents nearly succeeded in shooting down a cargo jet at Baghdad Airport with a shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile. And on November 30, shortly after President Bush had paid a quick visit to Baghdad to have Thanksgiving dinner with U.S. commanders, seven Spanish intelligence officers were dragged from their cars and brutally murdered in Baghdad's southern suburbs, and two Japanese diplomats were killed in an ambush near Tikrit.

Donald Rumsfeld, the defense secretary, expressed his concern about the continuing level of violence, and the coalition's failure to capture Saddam, when he visited Baghdad in early December. While in public Rumsfeld declared, “The direction that we set from the outset is the right one and is being executed exceedingly well,” in private he was demanding to know why Saddam was proving so elusive. “I'm dumbfounded when I think of it,” Rumsfeld remarked to one of the commanders. “The chances of us using that kind of money to find somebody—to figure out how to invest some time and
develop a network and produce the information that would do it—I mean, that ought to be doable.”
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The U.S. defense secretary did not have long to wait. Just a few days after he visited Baghdad, the Fourth Infantry Division's covert operations unit made the vital breakthrough they had been seeking. The military operation at al-Ouja finally paid dividends when U.S. forces tracked down one of Saddam's personal bodyguards. Acting on the information that the bodyguard provided, at 8
P.M.
on Saturday, December 13, a combined force of Fourth Infantry troops and U.S. Special Forces launched Operation Red Dawn. Their target was a farmhouse in the village of al-Dawr, which was owned by Qais al-Nameq, one of Saddam's former bodyguards. Al-Dawr is located eight miles south of Tikrit on the bank of the Tigris opposite al-Ouja. This was the spot where Saddam claimed he had nearly drowned swimming across the freezing river after his failed assassination attempt on Abdul Karim Qassem in 1959. About one mile from the target, the U.S. forces set up a perimeter fence and told local residents to stay inside their homes, shut their doors, and observe a newly decreed curfew.

Then, making their way through orange groves and sunflower fields, the troops began their final advance using night-vision goggles. They were backed by a formidable array of weaponry, including tanks, artillery, helicopters, and unmanned Predator surveillance drones. As the troops neared the farmhouse, two men armed with AK-47 machine guns ran from one of the farm buildings. They were quickly overpowered and captured. Then, with every possible escape route covered, they converged on the one-story farm hut. The troops moved in, and in a lean-to shack they found a single filthy bedroom with a bare mattress. To one side was a basic kitchen with a tap and cold running water. For those hunting the deposed dictator, this was hardly the hideout of a fugitive laden with pillaged money. But after a painstaking search, they soon found clues that betrayed the presence of the deposed Iraqi leader. On the mattress, still in their plastic wrappings, were T-shirts and socks—fresh clothes for a man on the run. And on the floor there was a battered green metal suitcase containing $750,000 in wads of neat, flat $100 bills.

Outside the bedroom other special forces had begun to investigate a trapdoor, covered with a carpet the size of a prayer mat. At first glance its metal lid looked firmly fixed to the ground. But when the soldiers tried to prize it away, to their surprise they discovered that it simply lifted off the ground with
the lightest touch. Beneath what proved to be a Styrofoam flap, about 2 feet by 3 feet, lay an 8-foot-deep hole with just enough space for one man to lie down. A fan with an air vent provided sufficient air to sustain life. As the troops dragged out the occupant, an elderly man with wild hair and an untrimmed beard with gray streaks, they realized at once that their hunt for Saddam Hussein was at an end. “I am Saddam Hussein. I am the president of Iraq and I am ready to negotiate,” the shambolic figure muttered to the U.S. officer. The American replied bluntly, “President Bush sends his regards.” At the time of his arrest, the only possession that Saddam had with him was a revolver. But the man who for decades had acclaimed his fellow countrymen, and most recently his own family, as “martyrs” for sacrificing their lives for their country, felt no need to pay the ultimate sacrifice himself. Survival, after all, had always been Saddam's primary objective.