Bred in brutality, Saddam clings to power through bribery, intimidation and the oil card
By Jere L. Bacharach
Guest columnist
The Seattle Times
Sunday, October 27, 2002 - 12:00 a.m. Pacific
President Bush and al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden have one thing in common: Both believe that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is an amoral, vicious, dangerous man who cannot be trusted.
Both wish to see Saddam removed from power, although their visions of what should follow are diametrically opposed. But how does Saddam himself see the political and military world in which he lives, and what are the probable acts he will take to retain his power?
Saddam is not some megalomaniac imperialist out to conquer the world or destroy Western civilization, but he will use every tool in his arsenal to stay in power. He is rational within the bounds of his value system and life experiences, his understanding of Iraqi society and history, and his willingness to use every resource available to him as dictator of Iraq. Understanding Saddam's past acts aids us in predicting his future ones.
Born in 1937, Saddam was raised by a stepfather and an uncle. Both men brutalized him, probably instilling in him his propensity to use violence. In 1979, he consolidated his power, removed a relative from the Iraqi presidency and made himself president of Iraq. Directly or indirectly, Saddam has been at the center of the Iraqi government since 1968 and its absolute dictator for over 23 years.
Every ruler of Iraq since Britain created the monarchy in the 1920s has followed parallel policies, with Saddam being the most ruthless in carrying them out. He believes that his predecessors failed because they were not willing to maximize the resources available to them.
Saddam's primary source of support is his extended family, meaning a range of individuals from his two sons, one of whom he almost killed, to people from his hometown of Takrit. He believes in absolute control of the country from Baghdad, permitting no regional or local autonomy. He favors through appointments, favoritism and the threat of force the Sunni population of central Iraq over the majority Shi'ites who live in the center and southern parts of the country and the Kurds in the north.
Saddam controls other potential enemies by creating alliances cemented by marriage ties, bribery, intimidation and murder. As an Iraqi nationalist, Saddam demands total control over the Shatt al-Arab waterway (where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers run together), contrary to Iranian claims, and he rejects Kuwait's existence as an independent state. In the same vein he rejects the right of Israel to exist.
Finally, he uses Iraq's most important resource, oil, to win foreign support in the form of money, military equipment and material goods. Knowing these priorities and the policies he follows to achieve them enables us to understand his past acts and possibly predict future ones.
For most scholars, Saddam's two greatest errors were his invasions of Iran in 1980 and his invasion of Kuwait in 1990. From Saddam's point of view, they made sense.
In the first case, he felt that the new Islamic Republic of Iran was actively trying to overthrow him. He also believed the Iranian military was particularly weak; the opportunity to seize the whole Shatt al-Arab presented itself; and he expected the Arab population of the oil-rich area of southwest Iran, the area closest to Iraq, would welcome him as a fellow Arab. He also felt that the U.S. had given him a green light, which was reinforced during the decade-long Iran-Iraq war when the U.S. supplied Iraq with critical secret data on Iranian military formations, and representatives of the Reagan administration such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfield visited Iraq without denouncing Saddam's use of poison gas against the Kurds.
By all accounts, this war ended with great losses to both sides. Saddam had nothing to show for his invasion but large, outstanding debts to oil-rich Arab states, a weakened infrastructure and a demoralized population. However, he was able to develop a program of chemical and biological weapons and lay the groundwork for a nuclear arsenal. The former has been used against internal (Kurdish) and external (Iranian) enemies, while the latter was meant to give him great prestige and allow him to appear as the nuclear counterweight in the Arab world to Israel.
The second case was his invasion and occupation of Kuwait. Saddam's plans for defending his position in Kuwait initially involved trying to divide the anti-Iraq coalition through diplomatic means. If war broke out, he assumed his troops would be able to kill significant numbers of American soldiers, undermining domestic U.S. support for the war. When actual fighting began, his priority was to attack Israel hoping that they would counterattack, forcing the Arab states to support him rather than the American-led coalition.
None of his plans worked. But immediately following the war, he was able to crush the American-encouraged uprising against him by Shi'ites in the south and Kurds in the north and consolidate his dictatorial hold over central Iraq.
This past decade has seen a complex game of cat and mouse during which Saddam has done everything possible to thwart United Nations resolutions, particularly inspections for weapons of mass destruction. Saddam worries that open inspections will undermine his dictatorial authority and thus his ability to intimidate his own population. His opposition to open-ended searches of his presidential palaces includes his conviction that inspectors would give the CIA and Israel's spy agency, the Mossad, data on his internal security system and hiding places. In fact, some U.N. inspectors did share data with the CIA and the Mossad.
When George W. Bush was elected president, Saddam assumed that American action against him would only be a question of time. From Saddam's point of view, his 1993 failed attempt to assassinate former President Bush during the latter's visit to Kuwait guaranteed George W. would seek revenge. This is what traditional Middle East families are expected to do. Saddam is also convinced that nothing he does will make any difference in removing restrictions on Iraq since he believes the single U.S. goal is his removal. Therefore, he has been doing everything he can to subvert U.S. policy.
What are Saddam's present assumptions? He knows that the Kurds and the Shi'ites are not militarily capable of marching against him. He also believes that after their experiences in 1991 of being left unprotected by the Americans, they will sit and wait. He also assumes that all Iraqis as Arabs and nationalists will not want a long or obvious American occupation.
Before any fighting, Saddam will invite international media organizations to Baghdad, while placing military units in highly populated areas. He will then wait for the Arab and worldwide reaction to viewing large numbers of Arab civilians being killed by U.S. and British bombs. Saddam also assumes an attack on him will undermine the overall U.S. position in the region and our war on terrorism because Arab and Muslim governments are not currently supporting U.S. policy toward Iraq.
With war, Saddam will fire missiles at Israel, even if they only have conventional warheads. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has made it clear that he will retaliate if Israel is attacked, and Saddam is counting on it. While Israeli participation in an anti-Saddam coalition will have little military impact on Iraq, it will further isolate America from its Arab and Muslim allies.
A second scenario for Saddam is that any Israeli military action against Iraq may be used by the Hezbollah in southern Lebanon as a justification to fire their thousands of rockets against Israel.
Finally, Saddam has always made his personal safety and survival his highest priority. He uses doubles, never announces where he will be, and moves constantly. He is assuming that any serious U.S. attempt to search for him on the ground will cost many American lives. Our failure to capture the Taliban leader Mullah Omar, let alone Osama bin Laden, encourages him.
Saddam is a man bred in brutality who, among other acts, is acquiring weapons of mass destruction. At some point in the future, military action against him may be necessary, but a U.S.-led war at this time or in the near future will have major negative consequences.
Ignoring both humanitarian arguments and U.S. domestic issues, the U.S. has failed to negate Saddam's advantages if war is undertaken. We have failed to demonstrate that we have exhausted peaceful solutions, particularly through the United Nations. We have failed to create a broad international coalition, particularly among Arab and Muslim states. We have failed to guarantee that Israel will withhold its military participation, which is necessary if we are to retain Arab support. We have failed to articulate a vision for a post-Saddam Iraq that is meaningful to Iraqi Sunnis, Shi'ites and Kurds as we seek their support.
Saddam learned from his mistakes in the Iraq-Iran war and from the aftermath of his occupying Kuwait in 1990; we appear not to have understood the multiple political and military reasons for our successes in Kuwait in 1991 and Afghanistan in 2001, and the necessity of having a long-term follow-up peace strategy.
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Jere L. Bacharach, professor of Middle East history at the University of Washington, is former director of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the UW and former president of the Middle East Studies Association.
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