Travelling with Saddam & Co.

[Guest Jobber of the Week]

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wo...0,3921927.story

 

Baghdad, Iraq

 

Five or six days after U.S. troops seized this city in April, Saddam, Uday and Qusay Hussein gathered secretly with a handful of aides at a house in the Adhamiya neighborhood.

 

The men were shocked at their defeat, having been convinced that Iraq's military would keep U.S. forces out of Baghdad. They had not planned for any kind of underground, guerrilla resistance to what they now saw would be a U.S. military occupation.

 

But Hussein and his sons had been moving freely around Baghdad, often with astonishingly little effort to hide themselves. Uday had driven right past a convoy of U.S. soldiers, looking at their faces and quietly insulting the men who now controlled his country. And while disoriented, the Husseins concluded that fighting the Americans was still possible.

 

The meeting to plan a guerrilla war was restricted to a handful of Hussein's top loyalists "so that no one would know the details of the resistance," said one of Uday Hussein's bodyguards yesterday. The guard gave the account of the Husseins in an interview after the death Tuesday of his former boss, but he insisted that he be identified only by a nom de guerre, Abu Tiba.

 

Abu Tiba, whose father had served as a bodyguard to Saddam, worked for Uday from 1997 until the first days of the U.S. occupation. A cousin of his who is distantly related to Uday served as an intermediary, driving with a reporter to Abu Tiba's home. Abu Tiba was interviewed without forewarning and many of his details of Uday's private life meshed with information from independent sources.

 

In the interview, Abu Tiba provided previously undisclosed details of how Iraq's ruling family fought the war, eluded the victorious U.S. troops and grappled with the shock of falling from power.

 

Saddam Hussein's own astonishment was obvious on Friday, April 11, Abu Tiba said, 48 hours after U.S. troops toppled Saddam's government and his most prominent statue in Baghdad. Saddam and his sons attended Friday prayers at the Abu Haditha mosque in Adhamiya. Word spread quickly among the worshipers and a crowd gathered around them outside after prayers were over.

 

An old woman in a black abaya walked up to Saddam and berated him with a boldness that, days earlier, could have gotten any Iraqi killed.

 

"What have you done to us?" she demanded.

 

Iraq's once all-powerful leader smacked his forehead with his open palm and pleaded for understanding.

 

"What could I do?" he asked the woman. "I trusted my commanders. ... They have broken the oath they took upon themselves to protect Iraq. We hope we will be back in power and everything will be fixed."

 

Many in the crowd began crying, Abu Tiba said. "He had told them one thing and another thing had happened," he said. "She was an old woman and she was not afraid."

 

Saddam's protestations were genuine, Abu Tiba said. "They never planned to leave because they had a very good plan to prevent the Americans reaching Baghdad," he said.

 

Abu Tiba, 28, who has a black crew cut, thick eyebrows and stubble in the style of his former boss, spoke matter of factly about Iraq's defeat in the combat of last spring, and about his former boss' violent death Tuesday at the hands of U.S. troops. The killing of Saddam's sons will not end the resistance, Abu Tiba suggested, because it is decentralized - a point underscored by the deaths yesterday of three more U.S. soldiers in attacks by guerrillas.

 

"Every resistance needs a leader but most Iraqis will resist," Abu Tiba said.

 

Abu Tiba provided new details about the movements of Saddam and his sons during and just after the war. Among them:

 

The Hussein family's conviction that the Iraqi military would successfully resist the U.S. assault on Baghdad prevented them not only from preplanning a guerrilla war, but also led them to dismiss the proposals from other countries that they flee into exile.

 

The initial U.S. missile attack of the war - a March 20 strike intended to kill Saddam and his top aides in a farmland area in the south of Baghdad - missed badly. The intended targets were nowhere near, staying in private houses scattered around the city.

 

A U.S. attack April 7 - in which 4 tons of bombs were dropped on Mansour, a residential neighborhood - came close to killing Saddam and his sons, destroying homes and killing a reported 14 civilians only 10 minutes after the Husseins left the area. But the incident was a sting by Saddam against one of his own officers, whom he executed for allegedly helping the Americans target the Iraqi leader.

 

Video on Iraqi state television of Saddam and his sons during the war, including a startling April 4 broadcast of Saddam greeting the public on the streets of Adhamiya, was genuine.

 

Uday, usually a drunken and rapacious playboy, concentrated all his energies during the war to directing the Fedayeen, earning the kind of respect from his father that he had not enjoyed for years.

 

Abu Tiba said the Americans who first occupied Baghdad missed many chances to capture or kill the first family of Iraq, even driving directly past Uday's vehicle at one point.

 

"Once, in Mansour, we drove past a convoy in a normal vehicle, not with blackened windows," he said, laughing. "Maybe they would not recognize Uday's face. He used to laugh at them. He saw one soldier with a red face and said, 'This guy doesn't have a face for fighting,'" adding an obscene insult.

 

Abu Tiba described his boss' mood as confident when the war started but increasingly distraught as things went badly for the regime.

 

"Sometimes he was tense, especially when his properties or palaces were hit in the war," said Abu Tiba, one of a team of six bodyguards who worked in rotation with another team of six. "In the 1991 war, none of his sites were hit. He felt someone inside was giving information about his palaces. Then he'd get very tense and angry. You can see that anger in his looks. You can see the agony on his face. He was most suspicious about his friends."

 

Even his normally steady appetite declined.

 

Nothing hurt Uday's feelings more, Abu Tiba said, than when American bombs hit Uday's palace on the banks of the Tigris where he kept his big cats.

 

"He loved his animals very, very much," Abu Tiba said. "His tigers and his cougars. He was affected so much."

 

Like his brother and his father, Uday moved every two or three days from one private house to another. Sometimes he stayed at one of the more modest of his many homes in regular residential neighborhoods. Sometimes he stayed with friends. Gone were his attention-drawing expensive cars. Now he drove around in Toyotas or Kias, often with his face wrapped in a red kaffiyeh to disguise the face so familiar to Iraqis, if not to passing American soldiers.

 

His bodyguards carried Kalashnikov automatic rifles. Uday kept a machine pistol with him at all times.

 

Even during the war, Uday continued his morning physical therapy sessions for injuries suffered in a 1996 assassination attempt. He had a metal rod in his right leg, Abu Tiba said, and could not fully straighten it. Every day he would lift weights to strengthen his body, which had been almost torn apart by bullets.

 

With the war started, Uday forsook the alcohol and womanizing to which he had devoted his time beforehand. He spent all his time directing the Fedayeen, whose members proved unexpectedly resistant to the American troops advancing from Kuwait.

 

"During the war he went to sleep at one-thirty or two in the morning and he'd wake up at four to check the news and then he would sleep until six," Abu Tiba said. "He slept very little. Before the war he would sleep during the day and wake up at night." Abu Tiba laughed at his boss' night-owl habits.

 

The newly responsible Uday would send orders to his Fedayeen commanders in small cases carried by messengers, avoiding means such as satellite telephones that the Americans might monitor.

 

As the Fedayeen emerged as the most resilient element of the regime's defenses, Uday's stock rose sharply in the regime's inner circles.

 

"When the Republican Guard morale declined he felt like a leader because his father sent him a message congratulating the actions of the Fedayeen," Abu Tiba said. "He felt so happy that he was doing something for his country. ... It was great for Uday that he was commanding a fighting force."

 

Coordinating Iraq's defense required frequent face-to-face meetings among the president, his sons and other top leaders. Too often for Saddam's liking, the meeting places then would be bombed. Suspecting a captain on his staff of informing the Americans, Saddam gave him word that the top brass would be meeting at a house in Mansour April 7.

 

"We went inside and then out the back door," Abu Tiba said. "Ten minutes later it was bombed. So they killed the captain. One of Saddam's bodyguards did it."

 

Nearly all the time Saddam had with him a television cameraman whose tapes would be broadcast on Iraqi TV. The footage - including the unexpected sight of Saddam greeting a crowd of citizens on a street in Adhamiya - was not shot before the war and did not show one of Saddam's doubles, as was widely suspected in the West. "It was real," Abu Tiba said.

 

Despite this last attempt to encourage his people and troops, Saddam's hours as president were fast ticking by. On April 9, his oldest son watched the television coverage of American soldiers pulling down one of Saddam's statues.

 

"After he saw the fall of the statue on TV he was so tense," Abu Tiba said. "His nature changed. It became very hard to talk to him. ... He used to get angry at us, shouting at us endlessly."

 

Fuming over the loss of Baghdad, Saddam accused his commanders of betrayal, Abu Tiba said. Commanders failed to carry out elaborate plans that included three lines of defense around the city, and the setting of explosive charges to kill approaching American troops and destroy their armor.

 

Still the family did not flee. "They could have left Baghdad any time but their main goal became how to organize the resistance," Abu Tiba said.

 

It was during these days that the Americans missed numerous chances to capture Saddam and his sons as they lingered in the city.

 

After five or six days - Abu Tiba does not remember exactly - they held their closed-door meeting in Adhamiya. Soon after, Uday spoke to Abu Tiba and told him that they had to separate.

 

"We'll send for you when we need you," were the last words of the subdued Uday to his trusted bodyguard. Uday gave him $1,000 as a farewell gift. Abu Tiba never got the call.

 

"Before the fall of Baghdad I wanted to stop working for Uday," he said, not explaining why, "but finding Americans in our country so that the Jews can take control of Iraq makes me wish I had stayed to fight, to resist and to be a martyr for my country."

 

Now Abu Tiba sits in his house, waiting out the summer heat so that he can get married in the fall. The family has a comfortable home. Bunches of green grapes droop from a trellis above the driveway. Chrysanthemums blossom in the front garden.

 

Abu Tiba's monthly salary was $300 and Uday would give him bonuses on special occasions. Now he has no income. His father said he plans to help his son open a shop.

 

Asked if he was not afraid of being arrested by the Americans, Abu Tiba said he was not. "I did nothing wrong so why should I be scared?" he said.

 

While the family supports the resistance to the American occupation, they are not taking part in it, the two men said. They miss their president greatly and still profess their love for him. The deaths of Uday and Qusay will be hitting Saddam hard, said Abu Tiba's father, Abu Jassim, 49.

 

"If he had a weapon that would do it he would destroy all of Iraq for his sons," Abu Jassim said. "He will be more determined to avenge them now."

 

But with his sons gone and so many of his top aides in custody, who will protect Saddam now, the two men were asked. Abu Tiba pointed upward. "God," he said.