SADDAM'S FAMILY DESERTS

By JAMES WALSH

Shorn of its outward trappings, the adventure might have been woven a thousand years ago under the caliphate of Baghdad: back-corridors palace intrigue; the mysterious wounding at a festival; a headlong flight across the desert by the ruler's beloved daughters and his sons-in-law, one of them the land's chief armorer; their reception by a friendly monarch who shelters them in a palace. Finally, the betrayed ruler's son, who has wormed his way to grand vizier, leads a pursuit attempting to retrieve the fugitives. In a fury he denounces them before the neighboring king, who rebuffs the mission coldly.

It might have been a Thousand and One Nights romance, that is, had this story not played out last week--as fully modern Middle East politics, in deadly earnest and to spectacular international effect. For the Baghdad caliphate, read Saddam Hussein's Iraq; as the fugitives' vehicles, replace camels with Land Rovers and Mercedes sedans; and, in lieu of swords, understand the fleeing armorer's specialty as ballistic missiles, warheads and lethal toxins. Whatever the reasons for it, the overland escape into Jordan by Lieut. General Hussein Kamel al-Majid, his brother and their wives--both daughters of Saddam's--resounded as a signal blow to the Iraqi regime's inner fortifications.

Hussein Kamel, 47, who is also a relative of Saddam's, figured as a pillar of that edifice. Since the 1980s he has overseen procurement of the nightmarish weaponry that variously made his boss a hero in the eyes of some Arabs and an outlaw menace to most of the world. Meanwhile, Hussein Kamel's younger brother, Colonel Saddam Kamel al-Majid, headed the President's elite corps of personal bodyguards. The U.S., thirsting for what a Pentagon official called a potential "intelligence bonanza," pledged at once to defend Jordan against any reprisals and sent Arabic-speaking CIA specialists to Amman in hopes of debriefing the defectors. A senior Administration official exulted, "Outside of Saddam's two sons, there is probably no one closer to him. This could be the most serious setback he's suffered since the mutinies immediately after the Gulf War."

Washington's hopes could still prove to be wishful thinking. Even as President Bill Clinton portrayed Saddam as a failing despot, "out of touch" with his closest aides, even as Hussein Kamel called for Saddam's overthrow into "the garbage heap of history," the brothers may not want to deal--or to be seen dealing--with the West. In any case, neither fits anyone's idea of a flower-power liberal. They rose by nepotism, survived by cunning and thrived by doing their leader's most morally questionable will. However quickly Saddam might replace them, though, Iraq's slow strangulation under U.N. economic sanctions since 1990 continues to make life hard for the strongman's subjects. If his relatives' flight was not fatal, it at least displayed publicly some crucial flaws. Said Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon: "It's clearly a vote of no confidence in Saddam Hussein."

How the stunning hegira unfolded was high drama in itself. Around nightfall last Tuesday, a dusty convoy of military Land Rovers bounced over an unfenced sector of Jordan's border escorting Mercedes-borne worthies who turned out to be the presidential kinsmen. Exhausted and parched, the travelers had made a 14-hour desert trek to evade detection. Water was their first request. "They drank tens of bottles," related a high Jordanian security official. Though the inadequately provisioned party had seemingly departed on the run, the journey was not quite spontaneous. The Jordanian official said Hussein Kamel had visited Amman 10 days earlier to warn of his coming. According to another security officer, U.S. agents met with him at that time, although Washington officials said they had no knowledge of such contacts.

In any case, Hussein Kamel apparently did not leave Iraq empty-handed. The first Jordanian official reports that the general, before the flight with his brother, their wives, assorted Saddam grandchildren and 15 army officers, had brought out $50 million. How did he clear the Iraqi checkpoint? An Arab ambassador based in Baghdad replied wryly, "If you're Hussein al-Majid and you're driving to Jordan, you can bring out not only $50 million but $5 billion and no one will search you." Baghdad later accused the "traitor dwarf" of stealing public funds.

On the evening of their arrival last week, King Hussein of Jordan received Al-Majid's band of fugitives in his palace and granted asylum. Insiders say King Hussein struck up a warm friendship with Hussein Kamel about a year ago when the Iraqi commander underwent surgery in Amman for the removal of a noncancerous brain tumor. The King reportedly visited the hospital nearly every day, and the two hit it off. At the same time, it seems, the invalid's absence from Iraq presented a golden opportunity for Saddam's eldest son, Uday, 33, who has recently ascended in power and prestige.

In the view of some Iraq watchers, Hussein Kamel, whose teeter-totter fortunes looked to be on the upswing again recently, has been advocating a more aboveboard treatment of U.N. monitors, whose job is to search out and police the destruction of Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. According to this line, the general, who in the first place had presided over the stockpiling of Iraq's most dangerous arsenals, argued that the sooner the regime comes clean, the quicker the country might resume oil exports and normal economic life. At bottom, though, the quarrel seems to have been over spoils: black-market profits, cuts of foreign business deals and all the other perks flowing from high rank in a dictatorship. Said Phebe Marr, an Iraq expert at Washington's National Defense University: "It's a terrific feud in the family, and it's been pretty grubby--over money and power."

Uday's rise, in short, has come at Al-Majid clan expense. About three months ago, Hussein Kamel reportedly escaped an attempt on his life that was hushed up. Although in July he was reinstated as chief of the Military Industrial Organization, the Saddam in-laws were reportedly still on edge. Last Monday seemed to be the climax. During a party celebrating the seventh anniversary of the Iran-Iraq war's end, the President's half-brother Wathban Ibrahim was shot in the leg. As a Jordanian official explained it, the episode, which was publicly reported as an accident, was privately called an attempted assassination and blamed by Uday on Hussein Kamel.

Next day the Al-Majids were off on their cross-desert getaway. The bonds that the elder had formed with King Hussein proved very useful, for Uday was soon in pursuit. As a high Jordanian government official related, Uday on his arrival in Amman first asked to speak with Hussein Kamel alone. The defector refused. Then Uday asked to see his sisters, Raghad and Rana. The Jordanians denied this request, for fear of how Uday might act.

Then, as in a gaudy fable recounted by Scheherazade, the pursuer and main fugitive were arrayed before the King in a royal audience chamber to speak their piece. In the senior Jordanian official's telling, Uday spewed recriminations at Hussein Kamel as sober dignitaries looked on. King Hussein then stood up, offered his hand to the guest in asylum, and escorted him out of the hall. The meeting had lasted seven minutes. Security personnel let Uday out, whereupon he returned to Baghdad.

During a press conference on Saturday, Hussein Kamel called on Iraqis to oust his father-in-law, saying that the military should be "prepared for the coming change." While Saddam's palace alliances have been mercurial, he is also a dedicated survivor. The invader of Kuwait would almost surely not attack Jordan, its sole outlet to the outside world, but with or without sons-in-law he has remained in effective mastery of Iraq through brutal wars and a hard peace for 27 years. A Western intelligence coup, should the defectors open up, could help hold him in check, but Saddam, like age-old tales, seems always to endure.

--Reported by Jamil Hamad/Amman and J.F.O. McAllister and Mark Thompson/Washington

With reporting by JAMIL HAMAD/AMMAN AND J.F.O. MCALLISTER AND MARK THOMPSON/WASHINGTON