Page 3 of 4 Saddam's life after
death By Sami Moubayed
730,000 from Iran, and dislocated the
economies of both countries.
Saddam
responded to the Syrian-Iranian honeymoon with
force. In August 1980, the Syrian Embassy in
Baghdad was stormed by the Iraqi army and most of
its staff were expelled, accused of smuggling arms
to the Iranians. On October 12, 1980, Saddam
closed down his embassy in Damascus, further
pushing the
Syrians into an alliance with
Iran. Assad closed Syria's borders with Iraq in
1982, and signed a trade pact with Tehran that
gave the Syrians oil at very good prices.
Saddam succeeded in making the
Iraqi-Iranian conflict an Arab-Iranian conflict.
The Arab Gulf states, anxious to see him weaken
Iran, did not want to press Khomeini too far,
fearing his wrath. Therefore, they let Saddam do
their dirty work for them. Iraq distributed money
to countries to get their allegiance. Jordan,
according to Eberhard Kienle's book on
Syrian-Iraqi relations Ba'ath vs Ba'ath,
received US$30 million on October 5, 1978.
The Kurds were another problem with
Saddam. Although Sunnis like him, they always had
separatist ambitions that contradicted Arab
nationalism. To silence their opposition to his
regime, and fearing their rebellion, Saddam
attacked the Kurdish town of Halabja on March 16,
1988, with a mixture of mustard gas and nerve
agents, killing an estimated 5,000 civilians.
Another 10,000 were seriously wounded or
permanently maimed. The attack was part of the
Anfal campaign of 1988 where he tried to bring
central authority to the rebellious Kurdish
regions. At the time, Saddam said Iran had
attacked the Iraqi Kurds. The genocide cost the
lives of 100,000 Kurds.
Foreign
affairs Saddam allied himself with both the
US and the Soviet Union, signing an aid pact with
Moscow as early as 1972. He was also close to
France, visiting Paris in 1976 and creating strong
ties with French businessmen and politicians, the
most notable of whom was future president Jacques
Chirac.
Saddam started Iraq's nuclear
enrichment project in the 1980s, with French
support, naming the first Iraqi reactor Osirak,
merging the name of the French experiment reactor
Osiris with the French spelling of his country's
name (Irak). The reactor was eventually
destroyed by an Israeli air strike in the 1980s.
The biggest blunder that led to Saddam's
clash with the West, however, was the invasion and
occupation of Kuwait in August 1990. Saddam called
on Kuwait to cancel most of the debt Iraq had
accumulated during the Iran-Iraq War ($30
billion), claiming that the war had saved the Gulf
from Shi'ite domination. Kuwait, however, refused.
To raise money for postwar reconstruction,
Saddam also called on oil-producing Gulf states to
raise oil prices by cutting back production.
Again, Kuwait refused. Finally, Saddam (like every
leader since Abd al-Karim Qasim) was displeased by
the Kuwaiti-Iraqi border, drawn by the British in
1922, because it limited Iraq's access to the
ocean. Saddam, and many of his generation of
Iraqis, argued that Kuwait was historically part
of Iraq and had no reason to exist as a separate
state of its own.
Finally, Saddam wanted
Kuwait out of greed, coveting its oil reserves.
The small sheikhdom with a population of only 2
million had oil reserves as large as those of
Iraq, with 25 million people. Together, Saddam
believed, Iraq and Kuwait could control 20% of the
world's oil reserves, competing with Saudi Arabia,
which had 25%.
The famous story says that
Saddam sought US support for his planned invasion
of Kuwait, through US ambassador April Glaspie.
They met on July 25, 1990. She told Saddam that
president George H W Bush would not take any
stance on the border dispute with Kuwait, claiming
that this was an internal Iraqi matter. Saddam
took this for a "go ahead and invade" message.
Glaspie did not approve the invasion, nor did she
oppose it. The US was a trusted friend for Saddam,
having given him arms and billions of dollars both
to fight Iran and to stay out of the Soviet bloc
during the Cold War.
Saddam believed the
Americans. Many senior Americans, including
ex-defense minister Donald Rumsfeld (December 1983
and March 1984), had met with Saddam in Baghdad
during the heyday of the US-Iraqi honeymoon in the
1980s. The newly declassified briefing notes for
Rumsfeld's meeting with Saddam reveal the US
envoy's instructions to reinforce the message of
America's desire to improve bilateral relations at
a "pace of Iraq's own choosing". Rumsfeld added
that the US criticism of Saddam's use of chemical
weapons in the war on Iraq should not be
understood as an anti-Iraq stance by the US
government.
The US changed policy, under
the urging of terrified Gulf states and fearing
that a powerful Saddam now controlled world oil
prices. Britain also urged the US to attack, given
its historical relationship with Kuwait and the
billions of dollars in Kuwaiti investment.
Famously, prime minister Margaret Thatcher told
the US president, "Don't go wobbly on me, George!"
Saddam linked his invasion of Kuwait to the
Arab-Israeli conflict, saying he would withdraw
only if Israel withdrew from the occupied
Palestinian territories.
This further made
him a champion in the eyes of millions of Arabs
who were committed to the Palestinian cause. The
call, however, fell on deaf ears and Operation
Desert Storm, spearheaded by the US, started on
January 16, 1991. Saddam was ejected from
