Saddam, Still

By Bruce W. Nelan

In Baghdad's art galleries hang heartrending depictions of slaughter, ruin and misery, painted since the Gulf War. On the sidewalks, poor families sell their meager household goods to procure enough money to eat. In the back alleys, women offer their bodies for sale -- an extreme act of desperation in Muslim society -- and men steal cars or rob their neighbors' houses.

These are not the people that Saddam Hussein counts on. He has drawn around himself a tight circle of supporters, loyal members of his al-Tikriti clan, whose interlocking relationships ensure his control of the security services, the military and the Baath party. The army is run by a cousin who launched poison-gas attacks against the Kurds in 1988 and destroyed Shi'ite holy sites in the south after the war. Internal security is entrusted to two half- brothers, and Saddam's younger son, Qusai, 26, was recently put in charge of the 10,000-man presidential guard. Another half-brother, Barzan al-Tikriti, has just returned from a 10-year stint as U.N. ambassador in Geneva to serve as presidential adviser. He is also the overseer of Saddam's personal financial empire, allegedly a $30 billion fortune amassed by skimming 5% off Iraq's oil revenues since Saddam became President in 1979. Because $5.5 billion in official Iraqi accounts has been frozen abroad, Saddam is suspected of tapping his private accounts to finance restoration of the country.

Two years after Saddam's shattering defeat in the Gulf War, the Iraqi dictator remains in full control of the Baghdad government. Though he has lost his hold on Kurdistan in the north and over parts of the Shi'ite south, he has bottled up the insurgents in both regions so they do not threaten his rule. Every step he takes has been aimed at buttressing his authority. He rebuilt Baghdad and the central region, where his Sunni Muslim backers hold sway; he gives government workers and members of the armed forces regular pay increases and relentlessly bombards the nation with self-serving propaganda.

As a result, Saddam's power base remains solid. Postwar clashes with the armed and dangerous Kurds and Shi'ites alarmed the minority Sunnis, who provide the bulk of Saddam's military and civilian support. "When things threaten to fall apart," says Baghdad novelist Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, "you stick with the man who can hold it together. Saddam was the one man who could make the center hold."

Using his monopoly over press and television, Saddam has apparently convinced large segments of the population that the ever hostile West simply used the occupation of Kuwait as an excuse to attack Iraq: they see themselves as the victims. Saddam also seized on Bush's air strikes in January as evidence of Washington's vendetta. Iraqi TV director Faisal Yasiri produced a series of 56 installments on the Gulf War that portrayed the country as a victim. "People discovered by watching the programs," Yasiri says with a straight face, "that the target of aggression was Iraq. The liberation of Kuwait was only an excuse to attack Iraq."

These citizens are unlikely to be moved by the U.S. report made public last week cataloging just how brutally Saddam's forces behaved in the Gulf War. According to Pentagon investigators, Iraq tortured and killed 1,082 Kuwaiti civilians and violently abused all captured prisoners of war. Kuwaiti victims were dismembered by axes and drowned in acid baths; U.S. POW's were beaten and forced to urinate on the American flag. The atrocities were so widespread, said the report, "that they could not have occurred without the authority or knowledge of Saddam Hussein." The document was completed a year ago, but some officials say it was withheld to protect Bush from campaign charges that he had failed to bring Saddam to justice for his crimes. Clinton has his own political reasons for publishing: while the Iraqi leader has sought to charm the new President, the Administration wants to dispel any notion that he would adopt a softer line.

Saddam's continued survival in many ways defies Western logic. The U.N. trade embargo keeps Iraq from marketing its oil abroad or importing most goods. The dinar has collapsed, inflation is out of control and foreign suppliers are shutting off its credit. The armed forces are down from a million men to 400,000, and morale is reported to be low.

Despite such pressures, which would guarantee a change of government in most countries, Saddam predicts that Iraq will soon re-emerge as the dominant power in the region. To speed the removal of U.N. sanctions, he is assuring the West he will comply with all Security Council resolutions. In the Arab world, Saddam is appealing for a united front against Islamic fundamentalism, the threat that most worries the conservative governments of the Middle East. A key part of the strategy, he says, is cooperation to contain Iran, still a leading state sponsor of terrorism. With some success, Saddam has sent his half-brother Barzan to several Arab capitals to deliver that message.

Oman and Bahrain, ever fearful of Iran, advocate normalization with Iraq. Even Egypt, which led the Arab League's battle against Iraq, says it might be willing to reconcile. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's political adviser Osama al-Baz calls for a rapprochement with Baghdad "within a collective framework." Earlier this month, Turkey, which provided a base for U.S. bombers during the Gulf War, reopened its embassy in Baghdad.

When a cease-fire halted the fighting in February 1991, a U.N. mission referred to "near apocalyptic" damage. Baghdad, in the Sunni heartland, shows little sign of the war's devastation today. All but one of the city's 12 bridges across the Tigris River are back in service. The Defense Ministry has been rebuilt, and the central telephone exchange is operating out of brand-new headquarters. Bazaars and open-air restaurants are full.

Saddam has pampered the privileged while exploiting the misery of the poor for propaganda. He and his aides denounce the West for imposing the embargo and depriving people of food and medicine. In fact, the sanctions do not apply to food or humanitarian supplies, and the U.N. has offered Iraq the chance to sell oil worth $1.6 billion to finance such purchases. Saddam refuses to do so, claiming that the deal would violate Iraq's sovereignty because the U.N. would supervise the sales and the purchases. The real reason, Western officials believe, is that the arrangement would require Saddam to pay reparations to Kuwait and he is unwilling to hand over any oil revenues.

Iraqi citizens may accept their leader's line on the sanctions, or they may be too frightened by the secret police and its informers to say anything else. At Qadissiya hospital on the outskirts of Baghdad, Dr. Maysoon Askar, a pediatrician, describes a cycle of milk shortages and protein deficiency among children that leads to disease and death. She says, "The sanctions have to be lifted. That is the problem."

The embargo has not decreased the food supply but increased prices. At an outdoor market in Saidiyah, near Baghdad, the stalls are laden with Turkish lentils, Vietnamese rice, local lamb and fish. The prices are constantly rising; meat is 10 times as expensive as it was three years ago. "Before the war, we had money," says Rashid Karim Mohammed, a 62-year-old pensioner. "Now we are living on our savings." He blames the sanctions. Western diplomats suggest Saddam is acting out an old Iraqi proverb: "Make your dog hungry so he will follow you." Starving creatures can also grow dangerous, but no signs of mutiny are visible.

Saddam has survived repeated rebellions, assassination attempts, a long and exhausting war with Iran and a devastating clash with most of the world. He now says he can overcome U.N. and Western sanctions, especially if his fellow Arabs accept his call to come together against fundamentalism. Since he also thrives on being underestimated, he may be right.

With reporting by Dean Fischer/Baghdad