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5/7/2002 (21:47) |
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If Saddam's hold on power is as tenuous as some officials in Washington claim, that is not visible in Baghdad. The government has lost control over the Kurdish north but has tightened it somewhat in the Shi'ite-dominated south and still firmly grips the Sunni center. The country has been weakened, the army especially, but Saddam remains the strongest of the weak. His control over the intelligence and security services appears unshakable. Officers' families are hostages, and the regime is very good at creating a community of guilt, in which everyone has committed crimes from corruption to execution and fears judgment by a more democratic successor government.
Especially since the Sept. 11 attacks, for which he feared immediate American retaliation, Saddam has taken measures to tighten his protection. The inner circle of guardians, known as al-Himaya, is made up exclusively of close relatives. Says a senior U.S. official: 'They're the ones standing with weapons in the background of photos you see of Saddam.' The next circle is the Murafiqoun, also related by blood or from unimpeachable families, who are in charge of broader personal and family security and crowd control for Saddam. The outermost circle is the elite SSO, run by son Qusay.
For years Saddam's elder son, the wild, thuggish Uday, was considered the heir apparent. But Uday's penchant for excess was too much even for Saddam after the son, in a fit of pique, murdered a beloved bodyguard of Saddam's in 1988; Uday was jailed for several months. He has largely recovered from a 1996 assassination attempt that has left him barely able to walk. Though he is still a feared man, he has clearly been eclipsed by Qusay, 36. Qusay, say observers in Baghdad and Washington, is a force to be reckoned with. Sober, hardworking and deferential to his father, he is considered as cruel and ruthless as Saddam, though lacking his father's charisma. He never appears in public, but his accumulating strength is evident. He has been 'elected' to a leading position in the Baath Party.
Qusay's SSO is increasingly the crucial force, in charge of both internal security and internal intelligence. Members of the SSO are recognized even by the military as having near absolute power; soldiers call these civilian watchdogs 'the Masters.' Says Falah al-Nakib, a senior member of the Iraqi National Movement, a rival of the I.N.C.: 'Every corps commander has one of them in his office watching what he's doing every minute.'
Saddam appears to be preparing for war. I.N.C. officials and Kurdish intelligence sources say that for the past two months, government agencies have been conducting preparatory exercises, sending top officials to designated safe locations, for example, and protecting official archives. The sources claim that the commanders of the army have been reshuffled and that various military units have been moved around the country. The I.N.C. says its sources report that military factories are being dismantled so that key components can be hidden from bombing.
But ex-Colonel Hamadi says the army he left behind last year was in sorry shape, demoralized, underpaid and ill equipped. Of the 33 tanks in his sector, he says, 15 were out of commission. In a land of oil wells, there was even a shortage of tank lubricant. Washington officials say sanctions have worked well to undermine Saddam's 424,000-man army. Only the 100,000 or so Republican Guards are still considered serious fighters. So a cataclysmic collapse of the army under pressure from U.S. attack is possible. But experts inside and outside Iraq count 15,000 to 25,000 Saddam loyalists in Qusay's SSO and the Special Republican Guard, the elite of the elite, who would put up a tougher fight.
Saddam's Intentions
Saddam has always been obsessed with building. The Pharaonic size of his enterprises—vast palaces, gigantic mosques, even the idea of an atom bomb—reflect his self-image as history's hero. He never forgets he was born in Tikrit, home nine centuries ago to the great Saladin, the Islamic victor in the Crusades. Saddam's latest Baghdad palace features columns topped with huge replicas of his own head bearing Saladin's helmet. He shaped the minarets on the grand new Mother of All Battles mosque to resemble the Scud missiles he fired at Israel during the Gulf War. These things give concrete expression—literally—to his central ambition: to be remembered and revered as the leader who restored Iraq and the Arab world generally to their rightful glory. He considers himself, says Charles Duelfer, the former deputy executive chairman of the U.N. weapons-inspection team in Iraq, 'the incarnation of the destiny of the Arab people.'
Like his hero Stalin, Saddam sees weapons of mass destruction as the great equalizers that give him the global position he craves. A nuke plus a long-range missile make you a world power. Deadly spores and poisonous gases make you a feared one. These are the crown jewels of his regime. He sacrificed the well-being of the Iraqi people and billions of dollars in oil revenues to keep the unconventional weapons he had before the Gulf War and to engage in an open-ended process of acquiring new ones. During the cat-and-mouse game of U.N. inspections that ended in 1998, he seemed determined to hold on to some of everything, as if to keep all options open. The weapons clearly are critical to his ambitions. But no one, perhaps not even Saddam, seems to know what he will do with them.
He appears to have not so much a strategy as a concept of grandeur. He is never satisfied with what he has. He operates by opportunity more than by plan and takes devastating risks if the gambles might expand his power. He believes in the ruthless use of force. When he thought Iran was weak, he invaded. When he thought he could get away with taking Kuwait, he invaded. Such conventional warfare is probably not available to him anymore. But intimidation is just as good, maybe better. Weapons of mass destruction could help him coerce the oil-rich Gulf and other Arab states to act in his favor.
Of course, blatantly using such weapons against his greatest enemies, the U.S. and Israel, would expose him to a nuclear reprisal that would almost surely end his rule. But if he could punish either country and survive, he might do it. He has not contracted out his aggressions up to now. But he might risk supplying terrorists with his deadliest weapons if he saw a way it might redound to his power.
Meanwhile, Saddam is working hard to undercut international support for a U.S. attack on him by deploying his diplomatic weapons. He has found a rich issue to exploit in the Palestinian crisis and has made it a constant theme. His offer of $25,000 to the family of every suicide bomber and every Palestinian family made homeless by the Israeli assault last month on a refugee camp in the West Bank city of Jenin has won wide admiration at home and in the larger Arab world. He is showing muscle in the oil market with his 30-day moratorium on Iraqi oil sales to protest Israel's aggression. He has burnished his reputation as the one Arab leader who says no to Washington and stands up against Israel.
At the same time, he has conducted an astute, quiet campaign to integrate Iraq's economy with those of neighboring countries and to convince Europe that the sanctions are wrong and pointless. He made a rapprochement with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia at the Arab summit in March that he hopes will quiet any regional enthusiasm to join an anti-Saddam coalition. He is playing a fresh chess match with the U.N. on weapons inspections. If he can get more favorable terms, he'll probably let them resume. That would undercut European eagerness for a war on Iraq.
While others would find the situation desperate, Saddam has always managed to make his way through. If the U.S. indeed attacks, his paramount strategy will be to weather the assault, hoping that it will prove inadequate and the world will turn against the Americans before they succeed in taking him down. Until that day comes, if it comes, Saddam will rule on from the shadows that protect him from a lifetime's worth of enemies. For him, as long as he's alive, every birthday that passes is another glorious victory.
—With reporting by J.F.O. McAllister/London, Scott MacLeod/Amman, Massimo Calabresi, Mark Thompson/Washington, Andrew Purvis/Kurdistan
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