The real saddam

He reads voraciously - on subjects from physics to romance - and has broad interests. He has a particular passion for Arabic history and military history. He likes books about great men, and admires Winston Churchill, whose famous political career is matched by his prodigious literary output. Saddam has literary aspirations himself. In recent years he appears to have written and published two romantic fables, Zabibah and the King and The Fortified Castle; a third, as-yet-untitled work of fiction is due out soon. Before publishing the books Saddam distributes them quietly to professional writers in Iraq for comments and suggestions. No-one dares to be candid - the writing is said to be woefully amateurish, marred by a stern pedantic strain - but everyone tries to be helpful, sending him gentle suggestions for minor improvements.

Saddam likes to watch TV, monitoring the Iraqi stations he controls and also CNN, Sky, al-Jazeera and the BBC. He enjoys movies, particularly those involving intrigue, assassination, and conspiracy - The Day of the Jackal, The Conversation, Enemy of the State. Because he has not travelled extensively, such movies inform his ideas about the world and feed his inclination to believe broad conspiracy theories. To him the world is a puzzle that only fools accept at face value.

Saddam can be charming, and has a sense of humour about himself. "He told a hilarious story on television," says Khidhir Hamza, a scientist who worked on Iraq’s nuclear-weapons project before escaping to the West. "He described how he had once found himself behind enemy lines in the war with Iran. He had been travelling along the front lines, paying surprise visits, when the Iranian line launched an offensive and effectively cut off his position.

"The Iranians, of course, had no idea that Saddam was there. The way he told the story, it wasn’t boastful or self-congratulatory. He didn’t claim to have fought his way out. He said he was scared. Of the troops at his position, he said, ‘They just left me!’ He repeated ‘Just left me!’ in a way that was humorous. Then he described how he hid with his pistol, watching the action until his own forces retook the position and he was again on safe ground. ‘What can a pistol do in the middle of battle?’ he asked. It was charming, extremely charming."

General Wafic Samarai, who served as Saddam’s chief of intelligence during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war (and who, after falling out of favour in the wake of the Gulf war, walked for 30 hours through the rugged north of Iraq to escape the country), concurs: "It is pleasant to sit and talk to him. He is serious, and meetings with him can get tense, but you don’t get intimidated unless he wants to intimidate you. When he asks for your opinion, he listens very carefully and doesn’t interrupt. Likewise, he gets irritated if you interrupt him. ‘Let me finish!’ he will say sharply."

Saddam has been married for nearly 40 years. His wife, Sajida, is his first cousin on his mother’s side and the daughter of Khairallah Tulfah, Saddam’s uncle and first political mentor. Sajida has borne him two sons and three daughters, and remains loyal to him, but he has long had relationships with other women. Stories circulate about him nightly selecting young virgins for his bed, like the Sultan Shahryar in The Thousand and One Nights, about his having fathered a child with a long-term mistress, and even about his having killed one young woman after a kinky tryst. Those who know him best scoff at the wildest of these tales.

Major Sabah Khalifa Khodada, a career officer in the Iraqi army, was summoned from his duties as assistant to the commander of a terrorist training camp on 1 January, 1996, for an important meeting. It was night-time. He drove to his command centre at Alswayra, south-west of Baghdad, where he and some other military officers were told to strip to their underwear. They removed their clothing, watches, and rings, and handed over their wallets. The clothing was then laundered, sterilised, and x-rayed. Each of the officers, in his underwear, was searched and passed through a metal detector. Each was instructed to wash his hands in a disinfecting permanganate solution.

They then dressed, and were transported in buses with blackened windows, so that they could not see where they were going. They were driven for a half hour or more, and then were searched again as they filed off. They had arrived at an official-looking building, Khodada did not know where. After a time they were taken into a meeting room and seated at a large round table. Then they were told that they were to be given a great honour: the president himself would be meeting with them. They were instructed not to talk, just to listen. When Saddam entered, they were to rise and show him respect. They were not to approach or touch him. For all but his closest aides, the protocol for meeting with the dictator is simple. He dictates.

"Don’t interrupt," they were told. "Don’t ask questions or make any requests."

Each man was given a pad of paper and a pencil, and instructed to take notes. Tea in a small glass cup was placed before each man and at the empty seat at the head of the table.

When Saddam appeared, they all rose. He stood before his chair and smiled at them. Wearing his military uniform, decorated with medals and gold epaulets, he looked fit, impressive and self-assured. When he sat, everyone sat. Saddam did not reach for his tea, so the others in the room didn’t touch theirs. He told Khodada and the others that they were the best men in the nation, the most trusted and able. That was why they had been selected to meet with him, and to work at the terrorist camps where warriors were being trained to strike back at America. The United States, he said, because of its reckless treatment of Arab nations and the Arab people, was a necessary target for revenge and destruction. American aggression must be stopped in order for Iraq to rebuild and to resume leadership of the Arab world.

Saddam talked for almost two hours. Khodada could sense the great hatred in him, the anger over what America had done to his ambitions and to Iraq. Saddam blamed the United States for all the poverty, backwardness, and suffering in his country. Khodada took notes. He glanced around the room. Few of the others, he concluded, were buying what Saddam told them. These were battle-hardened men of experience from all over the nation. Most had fought in the war with Iran and the Gulf war. They had few illusions about Saddam, his regime, or the troubles of their country. They coped daily with real problems in cities and military camps all over Iraq. They could have told Saddam a lot. But nothing would pass from them to the tyrant. Not one word, not one micro-organism.

The meeting had been designed to allow communication in only one direction, and even in this it failed. Saddam’s speech was meaningless to his listeners. Khodada despised him, and suspected that others in the room did too. The major knew he was no coward, but, like many of the other military men there, he was filled with fear. He was afraid to make a wrong move, afraid he might accidentally draw attention to himself, do something unscripted.

When the meeting was over, Saddam simply left the room. The teacups had not been touched. The men were then returned to the buses and driven back to Alswayra, from where they drove back to their camps or homes. They had stepped into the world of the tyrant.

In Saddam’s home village, al-Awja, just east of Tikrit, in north-central Iraq, his clan lived in houses made of mud bricks and flat, mud-covered wooden roofs. The land is dry, and families eke out a living growing wheat and vegetables. Saddam’s clan was called al-Khatab, and they were known to be violent and clever. Some viewed them as con men and thieves, recalls Salah Omar al-Ali, who grew up in Tikrit and came to know Saddam well in later life. Those who still support Saddam may see him as Saladinesque, as a great pan-Arab leader; his enemies may see him as Stalinesque, a cruel dictator; but to al-Ali, Saddam will always be just an al-Khatab, acting out a family pattern on a much, much larger stage.

Al-Ali fixed tea for me in his home in suburban London. He is elegant, frail, grey and pale, a man of quiet dignity and impeccable manners who gestures delicately with long-fingered hands as he speaks. He was the information minister of Iraq when, in 1969, Saddam (the real power in the ruling party), in part to demonstrate his displeasure over Arab defeats in the Six Day War, announced that a Zionist plot had been discovered, and publicly hanged 14 alleged plotters, among them nine Iraqi Jews; their bodies were left hanging in Baghdad’s Liberation Square for more than a day. Al-Ali defended this atrocity in his own country and to the rest of the world. Today he is just one of many exiled or expatriated former Iraqi government officials, an old socialist who served the revolutionary pan-Arab Baath Party and Saddam until running afoul of the Great Uncle. Al-Ali would have one believe that his conscience drove him into exile, but one suspects he has fretted little in his life about human rights. He showed me the faded dot tattoos on his hand which might have been put there by the same Tikriti who gave Saddam his.

Although al-Ali was familiar with the al-Khatab family, he did not meet Saddam himself until the mid-1960s, when they were both socialist revolutionaries plotting to overthrow the tottering government of General Abd al-Rahman Arif. Saddam was a tall, thin young man with a thick mop of curly black hair. He had recently escaped from prison, after being caught in a failed attempt to assassinate Arif’s predecessor. The attempt, the arrest, the imprisonment, had all added to Saddam’s revolutionary lustre. He was an impressive combination: well-read, articulate, and seemingly open-minded; a man of action who also understood policy; a natural leader who could steer Iraq into a new era.

Al-Ali met the young fugitive at a caf near Baghdad University. Saddam was pleased to meet a fellow Tikriti. "He listened to me for a long time," al-Ali recalled. "We discussed the party’s plans, how to organise nationally. The issues were complicated, but it was clear that he understood them very well. He was serious, and took a number of my suggestions. I was impressed with him."

The party seized control in 1968, and Saddam immediately became the real power behind his cousin Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr, the president and chairman of the new Revolutionary Command Council. Al-Ali was a member of that council. He was responsible for the north-central part of Iraq, including his home village. It was in Tikrit that he started to see Saddam’s larger plan unfold. Saddam’s relatives in al-Awja were throwing their newly ascendant kinsman’s name around, seizing farms, ordering people off their land. That was how things worked in the villages. If a family was lucky, it produced a strongman, a patriarch, who by guile, strength, or violence accumulated riches for his clan. This was all ancient stuff. The Baath philosophy was far more egalitarian. It emphasised working with Arabs in other countries to rebuild the entire region, sharing property and wealth, seeking a better life for all. In this political climate Saddam’s family was a throwback. The local party chiefs complained bitterly, and al-Ali took their complaints to his powerful young friend. "It’s a small problem," Saddam said. "These are simple people. They don’t understand our larger aims. I’ll take care of it."

It finally occurred to al-Ali that the al-Khatab family was doing exactly what Saddam wanted them to do. This seemingly modern, educated young villager was not primarily interested in helping the party achieve its idealistic aims; rather, he was using the party to help him achieve his. Suddenly al-Ali saw that the polish, the fine suits, the urbane tastes, civilised manner and the socialist rhetoric were a pose. The real story of Saddam was right there in the tattoo on his right hand. He was a true son of Tikrit, a clever al-Khatab, and he was now much more than the patriarch of his clan.

Saddam’s rise through the ranks may have been slow and deceitful, but when he moved to seize power, he did so very openly. He had been serving as vice-chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, and as vice-president of Iraq, and he planned to step formally into the top positions. Some of the party leadership, including men who had been close to Saddam for years, had other ideas. Rather than just hand him the reins, they had begun advocating a party election. So Saddam took action. He staged his ascendancy like theatre.

On 18 July, 1979, he invited all the members of the Revolutionary Command Council and hundreds of other party leaders to a conference hall in Baghdad. He had a video camera running in the back of the hall to record the event for posterity. Wearing his military uniform, he walked slowly to the lectern and stood behind two microphones, gesturing with a big cigar. His body and broad face seemed weighted down with sadness. There had been a betrayal, he said. A Syrian plot. There were traitors among them. Then Saddam took a seat, and Muhyi Abd al-Hussein Mashhadi, the secretary-general of the Command Council, appeared from behind a curtain to confess his own involvement in the putsch. He had been secretly arrested and tortured days before; now he spilled out dates, times, and places where the plotters had met. Then he started naming names. As he fingered members of the audience one by one, armed guards grabbed the accused and escorted them from the hall. When one man shouted that he was innocent, Saddam shouted back, "Itla! Itla!" ("Get out! Get out!"). (Weeks later, after secret trials, Saddam had the mouths of the accused taped shut so that they could utter no troublesome last words before their firing squads). When all of the 60 "traitors" had been removed, Saddam again took the podium and wiped tears from his eyes as he repeated the names of those who had betrayed him. This chilling performance had the desired effect. Everyone in the hall now understood exactly how things would work in Iraq from that day forward. The audience rose and began clapping, first in small groups and finally as one. The session ended with cheers and laughter. The remaining "leaders" - about 300 in all - left the hall shaken, grateful to have avoided the fate of their colleagues, and certain that one man now controlled the destiny of their entire nation. Videotapes of the purge were circulated throughout the country.

It was what the world would come to see as classic Saddam. He tends to commit his crimes in public, cloaking them in patriotism and in effect turning his witnesses into accomplices. The purge that day reportedly resulted in the executions of a third of the Command Council. (Mashhadi’s performance didn’t spare him; he, too, was executed.) During the next few weeks scores of other "traitors" were shot, including government officials, military officers, and people turned in by ordinary citizens who responded to a hotline phone number broadcast on Iraqi TV. Some council members say that Saddam ordered members of the party’s inner circle to participate in this bloodbath.

While he served as vice-chairman, from 1968 to 1979, the party’s goals had seemed to be Saddam’s own. That was a relatively good period for Iraq, thanks to Saddam’s blunt effectiveness as an administrator. He orchestrated a draconian nationwide literacy project. Reading programmes were set up in every city and village, and failure to attend was punishable by three years in jail. Men, women, and children attended these compulsory classes, and hundreds of thousands of illiterate Iraqis learned to read. UNESCO gave Saddam an award. There were also ambitious drives to build schools, roads, public housing, and hospitals. Iraq created one of the best public-health systems in the Middle East. There was admiration in the West during those years, for Saddam’s accomplishments if not for his methods. After the Islamic fundamentalist revolution in Iran, and the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979, Saddam seemed to be the best hope for secular modernisation in the region.

Today all these programmes are a distant memory. Within two years of his seizing full power, Saddam’s ambitions turned to conquest, and his defeats have ruined the nation. His old party allies in exile now see his support for the social-welfare programmes as an elaborate deception. The broad ambitions for the Iraqi people were the party’s, they say. As long as he needed the party, Saddam made its programmes his own. But his single, overriding goal throughout was to establish his own rule.

Mark Bowden is the author of Black Hawk Down and Killing Pablo; he writes a weekly column for The Philadelphia Inquirer. In part two on Monday: Saddam’s plan to take on the world.