Keeping his head above the water

By Jim Caldwell

He will need all his street-fighting instincts to emerge alive, let alone in power, if the United States invades to rid Iraq of its alleged weapons of mass destruction - and the man who sought them to further his quest for regional dominance.

Still a hero to some Arabs for his defiance of the United States and Israel, Saddam is demonised today as evil incarnate by some of the same Western powers that armed and supported him in the 1980s, as a bulwark against the Islamic revolution in Iran.

Iraq’s Muslim neighbours believe that Saddam's once-vaunted military, crushed in the 1991 Gulf War and further weakened by more than 12 years of UN sanctions, is a paper tiger.

They fear that Iraq might fall apart without Saddam's iron grip, spreading instability across a volatile Middle East where many governments could face challenges to their legitimacy.

But Arabs, Turks and Iranians can do little to prevent the United States from making Saddam its next target in the “war on terror” declared after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Today, Saddam Hussein's personality cult pervades Iraq.

His craggy visage stares from countless heroic portraits and statues. Some portray him as a new Nebuchadnezzar or Saladin.

Others show him in a white suit, military uniform, tribal costume, Kurdish dress, or even a Bavarian hunting outfit. Saddam, whose name means “collider”, has become the face of Iraq.

Known to admire former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, Saddam is no ideologue, but readily appeals to Arab nationalism, Islam or Iraqi patriotism to cement his personal power.

His global fame is partly due to Bush's determination to go after “the man who tried to kill my dad” - a reference to an alleged Iraqi plot to assassinate Bush senior in Kuwait in 1993.

Saddam has led Iraq into two disastrous wars, with Iran from 1980 to 1988, and with a US-led coalition that expelled Iraqi troops from Kuwait in 1991 after a seven-month occupation.

His disputes with the United Nations over disarmament have helped keep crippling UN sanctions in place since 1990.

UN arms inspectors withdrew in December 1998, after seven years of cat-and-mouse games with the Iraqis. A US-British bombing blitz ensued, and Iraq did not let the inspectors back until November, when the UN Security Council gave Saddam a final opportunity to disarm or face “serious consequences”.

Saddam lost control of the Kurdish-held north in 1991, but his grip on power, buttressed by overlapping security agencies and murky clan, tribe and patronage networks, remains strong.

He has outlasted foes ranging from Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to Bush's father, former President George Bush. And in an October 2002 referendum, the entire electorate voted to give Saddam another seven years in power, his officials claimed.

Saddam was born on April 28, 1937, according to his official biography, in the village of al-Awja, near the poor and violent town of Tikrit, 150km (93 miles) north of Baghdad.

His two sons, Uday and Qusay, seem as ruthless and violent as their father. Qusay runs the Special Security Organisation that protects the president, and commands the 15,000-strong Special Republican Guard, the troops most loyal to Saddam.

On Saturday, Saddam placed Qusay in charge of the vital Baghdad-Tikrit area after dividing Iraq into four military districts to prepare for thethreatened US-led invasion.

A rapid accumulation of power has catapulted Qusay ahead of his elder brother Uday, who had been tipped as successor until he was badly wounded in an assassination attempt in 1996.

Saddam decreed that there would be no new role for Uday when he put Iraq on a war footing on Saturday, but both sons are extremely close to the centre of a web of family and clan networks that their father has used to control the country for more than three decades.

Qusay, born in 1966, has traditionally kept a lower profile than the more flamboyant Uday, who retains influence through ownership of media outlets, among other activitiesAfter the 1996 shooting, which left Uday on crutches for three years, Qusay took command of key parts of the Iraqi military and its feared security apparatus.

He controls the elite Republican Guards, the intelligence services and a special force providing security for Saddam, making him arguably the second most powerful man in the country.

Qusay regularly appears at his father's side in most official functions shown on Iraqi television. Always wearing a civilian suit, Qusay respectfully bows and kisses the hand of Saddam whenever he meets him in front of the cameras.

In leadership or military meetings, Qusay says little but listens intently to Saddam’s every word, taking notes.

Like his father, diplomats say Qusay has been ruthless in dealing with opponents.

He is said to have put down political disturbances in 1998 and sent dissidents to their deaths.

Qusay’s prospects of succeeding his father were for a time clouded by apparent rivalry with his brother.

In August 1999, Iraq’s most influential daily newspaper Babel, which is owned by Uday, ridiculed a press report that Saddam had granted Qusay wide powers that would let him act as president in an emergency.

“Follies and silly things by ignorant enemies, we are a state of a party and law,” Babel said of the report, which it claimed had been issued by enemies of Iraq.

Like Uday, Qusay is wanted by a British-based and US-funded campaign called INDICT that seeks to bring Iraqi officials to justice for alleged crimes committed during the crisis over Iraq's 1990-91 occupation of Kuwait.

Both men had a privileged upbringing in Baghdad, marked by parental tolerance of wayward behaviour, academic sloth and protection by fleets of bodyguards.

“Uday was loud and vulgar while Qusay was quiet and calculating," the mother of a classmatewas reported as saying, in Palestinian author Said Aburish’s biography “Saddam Hussein - The Politics of Revenge”.

“In reality the boys were no different from the relations of other Middle East dictators,” Aburish's book goes on to say.

“Their lack of proper upbringing is another testimony that even in Ba’athist Iraq, ideology was only skin-deep and family connections have always taken precedence.”