Iraq - The Country

We promised to bomb then into the Stone Age. But Fred and Barney live much better than the average Iraqi. We called their leader names, but he didn't cry. We dropped and continue to drop millions of dollars of high-tech hardware on him, but he keeps rebuilding. Much to the annoyance of the Uncle Sam and the gang, Iraq is still being run by the one guy we all know and love . . . yes, Saddam Hussein, the man on whom the United States regularly offloads several tons of ordnance whenever he gets uppity, He still rules the roost in Baghdad. And, apart from periodically blowing the place to pieces, the United States doesn't quite know what to do. U.S. and British planes have made approximately 110 sorties to bomb Iraq this year alone. The reason? Because Saddam just won't do what he's told, which is to say that he wants the sanctions lifted, the no-fly zones repealed and northern Iraq back under his loving tender care-all penalties imposed after the Gulf War.

It all started-this time round-back in 1998, when Saddam decided to show who was boss in Iraq. So, to wind the United States and its allies up a bit, he kicked out the UN inspection teams searching for weapons of mass destruction (all that nerve gas, ballistic missiles and a couple of nuclear bombs that Saddam has stashed away), a simple UN/CIA affair that was supposed to take 90 days and is still inconclusive nine years later.

What did the United States do? Responded with operation Desert Fox. Who thinks up these names? For four days in December 1998, U.S. and British planes blasted the hell out of Iraq. Targeting 97 sites throughout Iraq, the United States unleashed 325 Tomahawk missiles, 90 cruise missiles and quite a few B-52s. And with what result? Er, nothing actually. The UN is out, Saddam is in and the media had a field day. Oh, and the Arab world got very upset.

Then for good measure this year, Saddam has violated the no-fly zones 110 times by sending a few rusty MiG-23s into the air and targeted USAF planes flying over Iraq 190 times using radar lock on. In 11 weeks between February and March the United States and Britain dropped 274 bombs on 105 targets. The United States says that 25 percent of Iraq's air defense system in the no-fly zone has been destroyed. In all, a grand total of 1,100 bombs have been dropped on 359 different targets over Iraq in the first 8 months of 1999. But Saddam's not flapping.

Saddam's consolation prize for all this was a message of "solidarity and fraternal greetings" from Vladimir Zhirinovsky, aka "Mad Vlad," Russia's leading comedian who masquerades as a politician-or is it the other way around? Meanwhile, the bombing has continued pretty much off and on. In Baghdad the man responsible for air defense, Lieutenant General Shaheen Yassin, claimed that "it will be very soon that our skies will be free of hostile crows." What? Somebody send the guy on a spin doctoring course. Has all this fazed Saddam at all? Not a bit. He's put up a bounty of 25 million Iraqi dinars (US$14,000) for anyone who can bring down a U.S. plane. Who says the guy's short of cash?

Quite apart from thumbing his nose to the United States, Saddam's been busy on the domestic scene, too. He's had his three wives to look after, the kids to keep apart and those tiresome family squabbles to handle. Then there have been coup attempts to foil, officers to shoot, sanctions to bust, dissenters to execute and a nuclear bomb to build. All in all Saddam's had a busy year. It's tough at the top.

It can safely be said that Saddam has not only kept his place on Uncle Sam's list of the Bad Boys Club, but is way out ahead of the rest of the gang, although his pal Slobo in Belgrade has made a serious effort at catching up - and may be drawing level. Fidel, Muammar and Kim, though, are all lagging streets behind Saddam these days. So, how do you get to be a member of the Bad Boys Club? I hear you ask. Well, you can make an early start by sponsoring a little international terrorism, which is always helpful for the career minded. Saddam invited Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal to stay in Baghdad. Nidal is the head of the Fatah Revolutionary Council. He was also responsible for the attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador to London back in the '80s, which Israel used as an excuse to invade Lebanon. As said: a good qualifying round for Saddam. Full marks.

But if you really want to make your mark there's nothing better than invading another country. A country that the United States is friendly with, that is, as opposed to a country like Iran, when Uncle Sam will furnish you with all the weapons you need. Try Kuwait. Then, if you want to reach the dizzy heights of stardom, just take on the world-and stay in one piece. Well, I guess we all know that story.

What are the membership privileges of Uncle Sam's Bad Boys Club? Well, you don't get to go on holiday to the United States for a start. You get all your foreign assets frozen. You definitely do not get to do business in the United States, and you get a guarantee of as many cruise missiles as you can handle being chucked at your country. You also get to have lots of international politicians denouncing you as a monster (and at the same time hoping that no one remembers the time they were flogging you with weapons). But the really cool part is that you get to run a country that frustrates and embarrasses every attempt by the world's only superpower to suppress you.

In 1998 the U.S. Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act, which granted US$97 million to Iraqi opposition groups. Opposition? What opposition? The latest cunning ploy by the United States to get rid of Saddam has been to launch as many cruise missiles, bombs and Tomahawks at him as possible, keep the fingers crossed, and hope that it will provoke a rebellion. Better rethink boys.

The downside is that the Western press gets to make fun of you. Some people just have no respect! In March 1997, Saddam Hussein sued a French magazine for defamation for referring to the Iraqi dictator as an "executioner," a "murderer," a "monster" and "a perfect cretin." Apparently, what really upset Saddam was the bit about being called a "perfect cretin." It's unlikely he'll get Kuwait back in damages. Kuwait, for its part, has sued Saddam for equally inflammatory remarks and for damages stemming from Iraq's attacks on Kuwaiti oil fields. Somebody call Johnny Cochran.

Iraq's plummet into the depths began in earnest in 1980. That year, Saddam launched the war against Iran, which lasted until August 1988. Iraq had long-standing border disputes with Iran and Kuwait, and a fierce animosity toward Israel. In addition to this, Saddam and President Hafez al Assad of Syria have a deep personal hatred of each other that goes back years. After the August 1988 cease-fire with Iran, Iraq supplied arms and money to the Christian forces of Michel Aoun in Lebanon to relaunch the war there against the Syrian army. It invaded and annexed Kuwait in August 1990, with the intention of seizing funds from Kuwait's banks and investment companies for the reconstruction of Iraq.

During the Iran-Iraq war, many countries supplied Iraq with arms in contravention of international conventions (as well as their own laws) that precluded arms supply to countries at war. Here are some of them: the United States, the former Soviet Union, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, China, Chile, Brazil and East European countries. Iraq has used chemical weapons against Iranian forces and subsequently against the Kurds in northern Iraq.

For now, Iraq is one of the world's great travel bargains. You'd have a hard time finding things to buy, however, no matter what budget you're on. But if you want to top your tank off, you're in luck. The collapse of the Iraqi dinar from its official rate at about $3.20 to its real rate of about a thousand times less means that when you buy a full tank of gas using dinars, you pay less than an Uncle Sam's penny. Gasoline costs .0009 cents a gallon, or 0.07 dinars a liter. But if you make other transactions at the official rate, beware. Don't reach out and touch someone; telephone calls from Baghdad to the United States can cost $158 a minute.

The embargo on Iraq imposed after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, and a scarcity of U.S. dollars, is pulling the value of Iraq's currency to the value of used Charmin. In a country where educated people make about 2,000-3,000 dinars a month ($2-3!), there is little to buy and even less to buy it with. Just imagine a country where a crisp U.S. 100-dollar bill will bring you nearly 5,000 25-dinar notes. It's positively retro! The currency is worth so little that people pay for goods, where they can find them, in wads of 100 25-dinar bills wrapped with rubber bands. Shopkeepers don't even bother counting the notes. All in all, invading Kuwait seems to have been a bit of a costly mistake. Iraq has lost some US$150 billion in revenues since 1991.

After the Gulf War, Allied forces had destroyed, neutralized or captured 41 of the 42 Iraqi army divisions in the war zone of Kuwait and southern Iraq. The coalition estimated the number of Iraqi prisoners of war at 175,000 and the number of Iraqi casualties at 85,000-100,000, out of an estimated 500,000 soldiers positioned in the combat area. Iraq lost 3,700 of its 5,500 main battle tanks, 1,857 of its 7,500 armored vehicles and 2,140 of its 3,500 artillery pieces. Ninety-seven of Iraq's 689 combat aircraft and six of its 489 helicopters were destroyed. One-hundred-sixty combat aircraft were flown to Iran, where they were impounded as war reparations. Nine airfields were destroyed, as well as 16 chemical weapons plants, 10 biological weapons plants and 3 nuclear weapons facilities. Yet Baghdad continues holding onto thousands of pieces of civilian and military equipment that it had stolen from Kuwait during its occupation of the country.

Iraq currently possesses approximately 9,000 pieces of military equipment, including trucks, jeeps, armored personnel carriers and missiles, as well as perhaps 6,000 civilian items. These items were supposed to have been returned under the 1991 UN Security Council Resolution. And those are just the harmless things in Saddam's inventory. He otherwise has 6 fully operational ballistic missiles, 25 more hidden and stashed away, and one nuclear bomb minus its fissile core. The reader will also sleep better knowing that Saddam has still got VX nerve toxins, a mobile biological weapons production facility and freeze-dried anthrax. Any of which would kill most of New York in a matter of minutes.

Dr. Germ-Roses are red, violets are blue and my chemicals are all for you.

Iraq's biological and chemical weapons program is masterminded by 43-year-old Dr. Rihab Taha, aka Dr. Germ. To the substantial embarrassment of the British government she took her Ph.D. in plant toxins (don't you just love the smell of roses!) at the University of East Anglia between 1981-1984. But don't worry, Iraq is really up on animal rights, so none of the bio and chem weapons were ever tested on animals. They were tested on Iranian prisoners of war instead.

Iraq has rebuilt much of its infrastructure, including the phone system, electrical plants, government buildings and bridges-not to mention its all-important chemical weapons facilities. The Iraqi people have shown themselves to be a very resilient bunch, not that they really have a lot of choice. For those Baghdad residents who are not fortunate enough to live near a government ministry they get a whole half an hour's electricity a day. Saddam's is not the first dictatorship they have endured, and it won't be the last. Economic embargoes tend to have greater ramifications on innocent citizens than on the dictators who led them into it. Despots rarely go hungry. They're occasionally assassinated, but usually with full stomachs. Saddam still sports that tire around his waist, while his people are being starved to death.

In fact, DP learned that Saddam is perhaps a little concerned about his increasing weight. Among the "essential items" that have been imported to Iraq this year is a liposuction machine worth US$16,000. And just to make sure Saddam can keep up the flashy smile, a teeth whitening laser (worth US$126,000) has also been imported into Iraq. Of course, it's all absolutely essential.

Among the other vital necessities that have been imported have been silicon breast implants at US$ 750 a shot and viagra pills. Did you know that despite three marriages, Saddam's son Uday has yet to conceive? The Iraqi authorities maintain that an astonishing 1.5 million babies have died in Iraq as a direct result of the U.S.-led sanctions. Doubtless this is why other "vital necessities" include acne cream, crystal glasses, crates of whisky and champagne, not to mention cigars. By the way, 20 capsules of common antibiotics such as amoxycillin cost US$1.60 and 20 doses of penicillin cost just 50 cents.

Saddam seems to be somewhat confident of a long reign, despite the United States' claim that its embargo will ensure his demise. How do we know he is so confident? Well, since the Gulf War, he has spent US$2.2 billion building or rebuilding more than 74 palaces in Iraq. In April 1997, Saddam threw himself a lavish 60th birthday bash, complete with a Tigris River procession of 60 Turkish yachts, to remind everyone he was still alive. Saddam's birthday bash this year was a more modest affair. He merely held it at one of his summer resorts while the loud speakers in Baghdad all played "Happy birthday, Mr. President." Now 62, Saddam is in good health. He has a team of 12 Russian doctors on call 24 hours a day. This leaves him in tip-top form for fun on the river.

Saddam's vewy vewy pwoud of his yacht, the Al Mansur. And so he should be: it is 394 feet long and can accommodate over 200 of his buddies. If you're ever invited you should know that every room is also bugged. More recently Saddam has been building a special holiday resort on the shores of Lake Tharthar, north of Baghdad, for fun and frolics for the faithful. Saddam's own little palace in his hometown of Tikrit is a modest complex that consists of 13 different palaces with the interiors lined with gold and marble.

But it's not all fun and games ruling Iraq. Oh no. Quite the opposite. There's some serious work to be done. There's full-time sanction busting to be organized, relatives to kill, countries to threaten and TV appearances to maintain. Most of Saddam's cash comes from border trade with his neighbors. He's been exporting cheap oil to Jordan and Turkey ever since the Gulf War ended, and more recently to Syria. The U.S. turns a very big blind eye to this because it says that Jordan and Turkey are U.S. friendly and need the cash. The United States neglects to say that without this money Saddam would be utterly unable to pay his security forces. Syria is also not mentioned. All Saddam's cash goes on important things like paying the different branches of his secret police and the elite Republican guard-in other words, the people who keep him in power by torturing and murdering anyone who expresses anything less than undying love for Saddam.

No one really knows how many people have been executed in Iraq this year. But one of the more prominent people to bite the bullet was Shiite cleric Ayatollah Mohamed Mohamed Sadeq al Sadr, who was killed with his two sons in the city of Najaf. Sadr is just the latest in a long line of influential Shiite clerics who have fallen foul of Saddam and Co. Sadr, the third cleric in less than a year to get zapped for opening his gob, joins his cousin, who was whacked in 1980 by Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al Majid.

Coups 'R' Us

Want a risky job? Then join the Iraqi army. You'll have a hard time getting any insurance, though. And if you're a General, your best bet is to take early retirement. More military officers are executed in Iraq than in any other country in the world. In January 1999, Lieutenant General Sachit al Janabi, the deputy army chief in southern Iraq, was one of eight conspirators executed for allegedly plotting to assassinate Saddam.

When he's not signing execution warrants it's those tiresome family feuds that Saddam has to deal with. In 1995 his delightful son, Uday, shot his uncle Watban al Tikrit in the leg at a drinking party. Watban had been silly enough to argue with Uday about a car that Watban had and Uday wanted. This prompted two of Saddam's sons-in-law, Hussein Kamal al Majid and Saddam Kamal al Majid to leg it to Jordan, out of terror of the ever erratic Uday. Saddam was not chuffed with Uday for any of this. What did he do? Had petrol poured on all Uday's sports cars and then burned them. Back to the errant sons-in-law languishing in Amman. After a few months in Jordan, Saddam offered them a pardon if they would return. With growing calls from the Iraqi opposition that they be tried for crimes against humanity, the pair decided to take their chances in Baghdad. A silly choice, as it turned out.

On arrival in Baghdad their two wives were granted divorces within 24 hours. Almost the same evening their homes were surrounded and sealed off by security forces. Uday and his father-in-law, Ali Hassan al Majid, rocked up and the two prodigal sons-in-law found themselves under heavy machine gun, mortar and rocket fire. Eventually killed, their bodies were thrown onto the garbage dump after al Majid and Uday had emptied their pistols into the heads of the errant duo. I mean, what is this? The Iraqi version of the Jerry Springer show?

The UN reports that most of Iraq's population is experiencing mass deprivation, chronic hunger and endemic malnutrition, along with the collapse of personal incomes and a rapidly increasing number of destitute, jobless and homeless people. Sounds like a great place for a bargain vacation. For now the Iraqis can sell oil for food. The UN oil-for-food program began in 1996. It was resisted for months because of Iraqi concerns about loss of sovereignty (i.e., Saddam not being able to spend the cash on toys for the boys, like nuclear weapons). The UN allows Iraq to sell $10.4 billion worth of oil a year on condition that Iraq uses the revenues to buy food and medicine for its people. Yeah, some chance.

Meanwhile, Saddam is willing to pony up $14,000 for anyone that can shoot down a hostile jet in Iraqi space.

Publicly Saddam may be squawking, but his accountants are having some new deposit slips printed up. In fact, Saddam is reckoned to be one of the world's richest men. He is personally estimated to be worth around US$4 billion upwards and would rank number 47 in Forbes magazine's list of billionaires if it wasn't for the fact that he had stolen it all. Or is it just that he gets a really cool salary as president of Iraq?

Meanwhile, the Iraqi dinar continues to plunge. About 1,800 dinars fetch a buck these days. And the dinar won't catch up any time soon. U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright declared in March 1997 that economic sanctions against Iraq would remain as long as Saddam stays in power. The sanctions have decimated the Iraqi people.