Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 26, 1991 TAG: 9102260304
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DOYLE MCMANUS LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
"If I ever fall," Saddam said, brandishing his little finger, "you won't find this much of my body left. People will cut it into pieces."
The remark, recounted by a Saudi prince who was present, helps explain Saddam's fierce determination to hang on to his job now, in the face of overwhelming reverses on the battlefield. For in the violent political tradition of Iraq, few top leaders lose their jobs without losing their lives - and, sometimes, the lives of their wives and children as well.
For Saddam, a dictator who has taken his country's political violence to new heights, the dilemma is even more stark. He has already warned his closest aides and advisers - who otherwise might be tempted to end their country's agony by assassinating their chief - that their fate is tied to his.
"I've told these people: No coup attempts," Saddam told King Fahd during his visit to Saudi Arabia, referring to his own aides. "If you think that when I go, you live, you're wrong. When I go, you all go."
Still, there was a sign last week that Saddam's confidence in his own men might be wavering. In an official Iraqi videotape of a meeting of the ruling Revolution Command Council, all the men around the conference room table wore standard military uniforms except Saddam. He wore a large, bulky overcoat buttoned up to the chin, which some U.S. officials believe was covering a bullet-proof vest.
"This is a man who knows the end is near," said Christine Helms, an expert on Iraq who recently briefed President Bush on Saddam's political dilemma. "Saddam knows he can't retire to a condo on the Euphrates. His back really is against the wall."
There were unconfirmed reports Monday that Saddam had sent messages to friendly governments looking for a place of exile. But several experts on Iraq said that sounded like an unlikely solution.
"He's going to have serious problems ensuring his own security no matter where he goes," said Laurie Mylroie of Harvard University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies. "His regime has been so brutal that there are hundreds of people who would want to track him down and kill him. There isn't really any place in the Arab world where he would be safe. I suppose he could ask the Soviet government if they would let him retire to Moscow, but that's about it."
Even before Saddam Hussein's Baath Party seized power in 1968 (with Saddam serving as vice president during the regime's first decade in office), Iraq had earned a reputation as one of the most violence-prone countries in an already volatile part of the world.
Most Arab countries, mired in various forms of feudal or absolute rule, have seen power pass by military coup, civil war and assassination more often than by other means.
From Algeria in the west through Egypt to Lebanon and Syria in the east, politics in the Arab world often carries a penalty of death for the losers - a fact that may explain why moderation has sometimes been in short supply.
But Iraq's history has been even more unstable and bloody than most of its neighbors'.
"There are a lot of theories as to why that is," said Harvard's Mylroie. "People talk about the Mongol invasion." (The Mongol horde, under Hulagu, leveled Baghdad in 1258.)
"They talk about Iraq being a frontier country, on the fringe of the Ottoman Empire," Mylroie said. "They talk about the country's historical legacy of being fragmented, with no central government. But none of this really explains it very well."
by CNB