Saddam's Secrets Page 12

  Looking Backward

  Any way you measure it, the Iran-Iraq War was a disaster. It lasted for eight miserable years and everybody suffered. For all the destruction and loss of life, no one gained a thing. But after it was over, our two countries participated in months and months of complex negotiations about captured territory, prisoners of war, reparations for property and equipment that was destroyed, and many other things, including the agreement to share the Shatt-al-Arab waterway between Iraq and Iran. That was one of the issues that had provoked the dispute in the first place. But there were no winners in that war: only losers.

  At one point I thought they would put me in prison because I dared to ask the questions no one else seemed willing to ask. I said, “Okay, we fought for eight years with the Iranians, and after it was over we decided to negotiate. And through the negotiations, each side was able to resolve hundreds of issues that were of concern to them. Wouldn’t it have been much better to have done the negotiation on the front end of the war instead of on the back end? It would have been so much easier and we would have kept all those Iraqis and Iranians alive.” No one dared to speak the truth in that way, of course, but they knew I was right. More than a million lives could have been spared, all our lives would have been better, the economy would have been much better, and everyone would have been happier.

  But of course there was one big problem for us in Iraq, and that was Saddam Hussein. The problem was that Saddam didn’t want peace, and he didn’t care how many people were killed in his rage for absolute power. Yet, even here, I would say that if the people of Iraq had stopped to think about what was happening, using what I call “prehap” planning instead of waiting until it was a “mishap,” we would never have let a man like Saddam become the ruler of the country. Germany had their Hitler; Russia had their Stalin; and we had our Saddam. But how much better if we could have stopped these men before they unleashed their terrible destructive appetites on the world.

  Some people, I suppose, understood the risks of Saddam’s little adventure in Iran. On September 22, 1980, shortly after the war started, a cartoon was published in the London Times; it was a caricature of Saddam kicking the Ayatollah Khomeini in the rear. The joke was that Saddam was trying to pull his boot out of Khomeini’s backside but it was stuck there. Despite the rather graphic nature of the cartoon, the point was well made. Saddam might be able to start a war with Iran, but it wasn’t going to be so easy to end it. Before it was over, that turned out to be a very prophetic image.

  I remember some Saddam loyalists in Iraq mocking that drawing when they first saw it. They said, “The English don’t know what they’re talking about. We’ll be out of there in fourteen days!” But eight years later we were still fighting in Iran, and the toll was horrendous. Hundreds of thousands were killed and maimed. Estimates of casualties are hard to pin down, but most analysts say there were a million killed and wounded in that war, and government sources put the Iranian dead at a half million and Iraqi dead at between 200,000 to 300,000. In the end, it was only Saddam’s decision to invade Kuwait that made him agree to a quick settlement and a negotiated peace that turned out to be very, very unprofitable for Iraq.

  On the day the war ended, August 8, 1988, I happened to be driving to the Al-Sanjar Army Base northwest of Mosul where my son was training to go to war as an army doctor. Saddam had said, “What good is a doctor or an engineer to us if Iraq is destroyed?” So he ordered that all our medical students and physicians should be trained as soldiers. My son was an outstanding student and a good soldier, and I used to go up there to visit him every weekend to see how he was doing. During the summer, they were on bivouac, living and working outdoors, so I would take him cakes, cookies, and other food cooked for him by his mother and sister. As I was driving to the camp that day, I heard the news on the radio that the war was over.

  I knew that negotiations were still going on, but I was happy for my son, that he wouldn’t have to go to war. But I was also happy for everybody else. So many pilots, officers, and soldiers were lost in that war. But the statistics don’t account for the suffering that we endured because of that war. And, for that matter, the official numbers in the government reports don’t account for the thousands slaughtered by Saddam and buried in mass graves. There’s no way of knowing how many more died in that way.

  So I was very happy to know that my son wouldn’t have to go to war, and he could get on with his medical studies. Living conditions in Iraq had deteriorated terribly during the war, and our currency was nearly worthless. But the day the war ended, the value of the dinar started to rise again and our standard of living also improved dramatically. One Iraqi dinar used to be equal to just over three U.S. dollars. During the war it collapsed to nearly nothing, so to be able to use our money once again was wonderful.

  The oil wells were still pumping, thank God, and we had plenty of it, so after the war the European and other Western ships began coming back to our ports. The Kuwaitis agreed to loan the government $10 billion to help us rebuild our country, and both the Russians and the French started selling us weapons—as many as we wanted. Within a matter of months our pantries and our arsenals were replenished and there was euphoria in the air.

  CHAPTER 4

  A NEW BEGINNING

  I was involuntarily retired in 1986 at the top of my career, when I was just forty-six years of age. I was one of the only high-ranking officers in the Iraqi military who was not a member of the Baath Party. After the revolution in 1963, they came and asked me to join the party but I said no. I didn’t want to be part of the Baathi organization. I never joined any party or took seriously any other type of allegiance because I believed that, as a professional soldier, my duty was to the air force which had trained and commissioned me, and not to any political group.

  There’s an old saying: “The army belongs to the king,” which means that the military belongs to the nation and should not be engaged in politics. But when the Baath Party came into power in 1968, the first thing they did was to politicize the army, air force, and coastal forces of Iraq. The goal was to make sure that everyone, from the newest recruit to the most senior officer, was a member of the party, loyal to the rulers of the nation.

  There’s a saying in Arabic: “The Arab nation is one motherland with an eternal message.” What does that really mean? The explanation given by Michel Aflaq, who was the founder of the Baath Socialist Party, was that “the body of the nation is Arab and the soul of the nation is Islam.” So whenever the Baathis would call me, asking me to join the party, I would ask them, “How do you expect me to join a party in which the body is Arab and the soul is Islam, when I’m neither Arab nor Muslim? I’m an Assyrian Christian, so clearly I don’t belong in such a party.”

  But they would just say, “Come on, Georges. You’re a very good pilot, you’re rising very fast in rank and responsibility. Why don’t you join?” But I said no. My people are the original inhabitants of this land. For more than twenty centuries, long before the Arabs came here, the Assyrians ruled this land. My ancestors were the rulers of Nineveh and Babylon. I’m the genuine Iraqi. It wasn’t until the Arab conquest of AD 634 that there were Arabs in this place, so why would I claim to be something I’m not?

  A Royal Performance

  Iraq’s army and security forces have been in the hands of Sunni officers and commanders ever since the modern military was established in 1921. And particularly since the uprising by the Kurdish nationalist leader Mustafa Barzani in the mid-1940s, few Kurds have been accepted into the military academies. It has always been difficult for Kurds to achieve high rank in the military. The Kurdish people have their own militia groups, of course, but like the majority Shia population, they were never more than a small fraction of our military forces.

  The Baath Party tried to downplay the differences between the various religious and ethnic groups, but everyone in Iraq knew there were differences. In the first place, these groups never liked each other, and some of them had been
at war for centuries. There were also distinctions between Muslims and Christians, and there were many times when being a Christian, or just having a Christian name, could be a handicap. This came home to me on one occasion when I was asked to fly a special aerobatics demonstration.

  This happened in 1968 when the Emir of Bahrain, Sheikh Issa Ibn Salman al-Khalifa, the father of the present king, came for an official state visit to Iraq. My base commander called me and said they needed someone to put on a demonstration of low-level aerobatics for the emir. At that time I was very advanced in the MiG-21 and the only Iraqi pilot who would do low-level aerobatics with that high-performance aircraft.

  So they chose me as the pilot, but when they introduced me to the emir they didn’t say my name, Captain Georges Sada. Instead, they took me to meet the emir and they told him, “This is Captain Laith.” Obviously, I was surprised by that: why did they say Laith instead of my real name? So I took a few steps away from the emir and said to the officer who introduced me, “Why did you say my name is Laith? You know that’s not my name!” Well, everyone could see that I was unhappy about this. The prime minister, the air force commander, and many other dignitaries were there, and they wanted to know why I was arguing with this man.

  The officer said to me sheepishly, “You know, Georges. You have a Christian name, and the emir may be offended if we send a Christian to fly the demonstration for him.” Well, that was a big mistake for many reasons. For one, there were hundreds of British officers in Bahrain at the time, and many of them, no doubt, were named George. It’s a fairly common English name. In any event, the emir couldn’t care less whether the pilot had an Islamic name or a Christian name. So I said to that officer, “Okay, if that’s what you want, then you can go and find a pilot with a name you like better. I will not fly.”

  He looked at me in shock and said, “What do you mean? You have to fly. It’s all planned. You can’t disappoint the emir and the prime minister, who is here as well.” So I said, “If I can’t use my own name, then I won’t fly.”

  When the prime minister saw that we were arguing about something, he called out, “Why is that captain shouting so much?” So the wing commander went over to him and said, “Sir, the captain is a very good pilot, but he’s upset now because they didn’t use his proper name when he was introduced.” Now, I should also point out that the prime minister knew me very well because many years earlier he had been an assistant to my father-in-law, who was the regimental commander of the Iraqi cavalry.

  He said, “What do you mean they didn’t use his proper name?” And the officer told him, “They introduced him as Captain Laith instead of saying he is Captain Sada.”

  Lion of the Air Force

  The prime minister was angry when he heard that. “Why did you do this? Why did you call him Captain Laith if his name is Captain Sada? You said he is a very good pilot, and the best man to do the aerobatics. So why wouldn’t you want to tell the emir and the prince his real name? You should be ashamed. Go and solve this problem.”

  The wing commander came over to me and said, “Georges, the prime minister is with you, and he’s very angry about what happened. God only knows what he will do to the base commander and the air chief for this insult.”

  So I said, “Okay, then, I’ll do it.” I said a silent prayer because I knew that I was going to be doing some very dangerous low-level flying, and then I went up, and the show I put on for the dignitaries was really outstanding. Everything went beautifully and I could feel it. The MiG-21 handled perfectly, and it simply couldn’t have gone any better. So when I landed the plane, there was a tremendous round of applause and the air controller came on the radio and told me to park the aircraft and come straight to the reviewing stand, because the emir and the prime minister wanted to shake my hand.

  I thought, Oh, my! Something has happened. There was a big change between not mentioning my name and then suddenly being called over to receive their congratulations. But when I walked up to the platform, the air chief said to the emir, “Sir, when we brought this pilot to meet you earlier, we didn’t mention his name, we just called him Captain Laith.” You see, in Arabic the word laith means lion, so they told the emir and the prime minister they had called me Laith because, “He is ‘The Lion of the Air Force,’ and our finest pilot.”

  Needless to say, I did a double-take when they said that. To my knowledge, no one had ever called me the lion of the air force before, but I liked it. I was only twenty-eight years old at the time and I knew that an introduction like that could only help my standing as a fighter pilot. So, when I thought about it for a moment, I was glad they had done it that way.

  When they explained everything, the emir took my hand and said, “Son, you are a lion of the air force and an eagle of the Arabs. When you come to Bahrain, I don’t want you to go to the hotels. I want you to come to the palace and you will be my guest.” And then he said, “Before coming here today, I selected some gifts to give to the people here, but now that I’ve seen you fly, I realize these presents aren’t up to your standard. So when I return to my country, I will choose something you will like much better.” And he asked me, “You are married, aren’t you?” And I told him, yes, I was married. So he said, “I owe you two presents, then: one for yourself and one for your wife.” I said, “Thank you, sir. You are very kind. God bless you.”

  A few weeks after that meeting, I did receive a package from Bahrain. Unfortunately, I discovered it had been opened by someone else. Inside the box there was a beautiful Omega gold watch, but it wasn’t the one from the emir. A senior officer told me later that the actual presents sent to my wife and me by the emir had been stolen by someone in the air force.

  The one the emir had sent for me had four diamond insets at three, six, nine, and twelve o’clock. It must have been enormously expensive. And there was a beautiful necklace of pearls from the Gulf of Bahrain for my wife. But I never saw either of them. Instead, the base commander ordered a new gold Omega for me, but nothing for my wife. I have no idea what happened to the emir’s gifts, but nevertheless it was an unforgettable experience.

  Facts and Factions

  One reason I mention this story is because we were always told that there was no difference in Iraq between Sunni, Shia, Kurds, and Christians. We were all the same, they said, but that wasn’t entirely true. There may have been less persecution in Iraq than some countries, but the differences were always apparent. It’s true that from time to time someone from one of the minority groups could rise to a position of influence. Tariq Aziz is a good example. He was from a Chaldean Catholic family in the city of Mosul. He had a Christian name but he had to change it to improve his chances of success.

  But even so, there were occasionally problems for him too. I recall one time when his son, Ziad, was thrown into prison for some reason and Tariq Aziz was anxious to get him out. He was the deputy prime minister, so he should have had easy access to the president. But for whatever reason, Abd Hamoud, who was Saddam’s chief bodyguard, wouldn’t let him in to see the president. He was denied access for at least six months, but one day Tariq Aziz was called to a high level meeting at the palace. He was seated close to Saddam, so he slipped him a note.

  It said, “Sir, my son Ziad has been in prison for more than six months. If you please, I need to speak to you about this.” When Saddam read the note, he said, “What does this mean? Why haven’t you come to me before now?” And Tariq Aziz told him, “Abd Hamoud, your bodyguard, wouldn’t let me come to see you.”

  When he heard that, Saddam turned to Hamoud and said, “Hamoud, by this time tomorrow I want Ziad to be having lunch with his father.” So that was it, and the next day Ziad was released from prison. It was true that Ziad had been involved in illegal activities involving foreign currency and money changing, or something of that sort. But because Tariq Aziz was a Christian, he wasn’t allowed to intercede for his son, and it was only because Saddam intervened that Ziad was finally set free. The point is that when peopl
e say there was no difference between Muslims and Christians in Iraq, you should know that this wasn’t always the case.

  Even among the Sunnis there were factions, and if they were not loyal to Saddam, there could be a stiff price to pay. And this was true for the people from his hometown, Tikrit, as well. If they were not absolutely loyal to the president, they would be punished. On many occasions I have seen high-ranking officers, including general officers from Tikrit, who were punished or killed because they had spoken a few words out loud that someone interpreted to be against Saddam and his regime. Such things were not at all uncommon.

  Defensive Measures

  But there was another incident I should mention that casts some of these religious and ethnic distinctions in a slightly different light. I flew many combat missions during the Iran-Iraq War, using both offensive and defensive tactics. On one of them my orders were to take a flight of four MiG-21s to an area near Al Kut, on the eastern side of Iraq, halfway between Baghdad and Basra and very close to the border with Iran. We had received intelligence that a group of fighters from Iran was being sent to attack our base in that region.

  We were patrolling that area, keeping an eye out for Iranian aircraft, when a call came in from our radar station. They shouted, “General, come back to Baghdad as quick as you can. We’re about to be attacked by Phantoms.” They already had the aircraft on the radar, and it was obvious they were going to hit our refineries on the east side of Baghdad. We still had plenty of fuel but it was a long way back there, so I ordered the others in my flight to put on the afterburners so we could catch those planes before they could do any damage.

  I thought this was going to be a good fight, but I also knew that the F-4 Phantoms don’t usually engage in air-to-air combat. They’re not made for that, so when they’re engaged by another fighter, they normally drop their ordnance wherever they are and make a run for it at low level. That plane flies beautifully at low level, and a good pilot can fly for more than six-hundred miles at less than fifty feet off the ground. And because that’s well below radar level, there’s no way for infrared rockets to lock on and shoot them down.