Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

REVUE DE PRESSE-PRESS REVlEW-BERHEVOKA ÇAPÊ-RIVISfA STAMPA-DENTRO DE LA PRENSA-BASlN ÖZETi
A twilight of blood
and fear in Iraq
Saddam Hussein's bedrock, the Sunni core
of the country, is crumbling. In the last of three
articles, David Hirst in Irbil describes the
long death throes of a regime builton brutality
EVERsince. with half a
dozen killings to his
credit, the youthful
Sadd am . Hussein
emerged from the criminal
underworld of his birthplace in
the town of Takrit, he has taken
it for granted you destroy
others before they destroy you
- and you let the world know
about it.
From Takrit to Baghdad,
from provincial thug to absolute
despot, he has exwted in
the victories of a career where
brute survival is all. When
George Bush lost the American
presidency last November, the
world saw Saddam fire his pistol
Lito the air from a balcony
overlooking the Square of
Great Celebrations. That was
third-rate theatre.
More intimate, sinister and
revealing was an earlier celebration.
In Jwy Colonel Sabri
Mahmoud, a commander of the
loyalist Republican Guard, attempted
the last known military
coup. After having him
shot, Saddam went to the colonel's
birthplace, Shaagat, near
Mosul. There, around the
grave, he performed a traditional
bedouin sword dance.
What Iraqis who saw it on their
television screens did not realise,
or not at first, was that it
was the colonel's own father
and nearest of kin, from the Jiburi
clan, who were forced to
dance with the Iraqi president.
But there was little to celebrate.
The Sunni minority has
always dominated Iraq, but
Saddam has relied on a minority
of this minority, first his
own immediate family, second
the Takritis and third a compact
group of clans from the
central Sunni "triangle".
What so firlTÙYbinds them to
him is the fear that if and when
he goes, they will go with him
.in a bloodbath that would make
the fall of the monarchy in 1958
look like a genteel spOli.
Yet. since the Shi'ite uprising
after the Kuwait war. that
Sunni power base has been
!,'l'owingyet narrower, increasingly
consumed by internal animosities.
by fear and hatred of
40
Saddam himself which compete
with fear and hatred of the common
Shi'ite foe. The Jiburis, a
large Sunni clan, have been a
traditional bulwark of the
regime. Luckily for Saddam.
they are far from Wlited, but
one can well imagine what feelings
lie behind that mask ofjoyaus
allegiance which the late
Col Mahmoud's branch of it
affect.
Sensing Saddam's approaching
end, Surmis are taking precautions.
Four.fifths of Baghdad
is Shi'ite. "I know a Shi'ite
family," said a visitor from
Baghdad, "who have made a
secret hole in the wall so that
their Sunni neighbours, lifelong
friends, can take refuge If
the massacres start."
But there will probably be a
murderous settling of scores
There are signs
that Saddam is
resigning himself
to the eventual
loss of Basra
among Sunnis themselves. "I
know of many who are arming
themselves," said a Sunni politician,
"not only for self-defence,
but for long.awaited private
vengeances. The demand
for pistols with silencers is
unusual."
Mistrusting his traditional
power base, Saddam has been
concentrating even more power
within his own immediate family.
One of his sons, Qusai, is
godfather of the whole range of
mutually vigilant security and
militaryorganisations, though
other family members control
everyone ofthem.
But. thanks to the alienation
of hitherto reliable constituencies.
the reservoir on which
Saddam draws grows ever
smaller and the quality of
recruits ever poorer.
Saddam also has a !,'l"owing
technical problem: a diminishing
stock ofweapons and equipment.
He is transferring some
of the best ofthem from the regwar
army to the loyalist Republican
Guard and their superloyalist
progeny, the Special
Guards; the army imports tyres
through Kurdistan and enlists
the private s£:dur•.being more
resourcefw. in the repair and
maintenance.
He has a growing fmancial
problem. In a sanctions-smitten,
increasingly impoverished
society, that process of economic
"rationalisation" which
began years ago is coming to its
grotesquely logical climax. Saddam's
family are literally devouring
what they can of a diminishing
productive capacity,
both for their own enrichment
and as a source of patronage for
a proportionately ever more
costly security apparatus. "It is
amazing," said the Baghdad visitor,
"almost every week you
hear that Odai [Saddam's other
son, a kingpin on the family's
business side] has bought up
some new company. for about a
fiftieth ofits true value." One of
Odai's more original schemes,
where terror and finance dovetail,
is arranging for the arrest,
for ransom, of the sons of
wealthier Shi'ites.
Nothing better highlighted
Saddam's three main concerns
- mass pauperisation, the
Shi'ite peril and doubts about
his Sunni power base - than
his execution of 42 merchants
last summer. He wanted to appease
his penurious pUblic
(though prices leapt higher)
and to open up new opportunities
for the family business.
Most of the merchants were
Shi'ites of Iranian origin,
clearly selected for that reason.
But a handfw were Sunnis; one,
with Muslim Brotherhood leanings,
was much loved for his
embarrassing generosity with
the poor. But, ~ost significantly,
one was from Takrit
and one from nearby Dour. the
cousin of Izzat Douri, deputy
chairman of the Revolutionary
Command Council who, apparently
in shock, disappeared a
while from public view.
Any doubt that Saddam now
feels a need to strike additional
terror into the hearts of his
very own was dispelled when
he singled out these last two
victims for "victory" celebrations.
He went to both Dour and
Takrit for the graves ide pistolfiring
rituals.
Strong arm ... In a scene end
seek to portray him as a man 0
If this general narrowing and
tightening of his power base is
a sign of weakening, so is an
opposite trend - the doubtless
reluctant, but deliberate, loosening
of control which is apparent
in the Shi'ite south. Sunni
party officials have virtually
withdrawn from there, much to
their relief. since they face almost
certain doom if' the
.Shi'ites rise again; one Takriti
held a party to celebrate his
reprieve. Shi'ite Ba'athists have
taken their place; these are less
imperiled, but also, enjoying
local complicities, much less
reliable, and some are making
their arrangements for the day
of rœkoning. Saddam is also
relying less on the Ba'ath as a
whole, and instead courting traditional
clan leaders, whom he
once branded "feudalists and
reactionaries".
There are signs that Saddam
is even resigning himself to the
eventual loss of Basra. He
would almost certainly fight for
it because the shock of its loss
might provoke Götterdämmer.