Thu, Jul 24, 2003 page7

• Saddam's sons: chips off the old block

  POWER-HUNGRY Both offspring symbolized the sick brutality of the Iraqi regime, ruthlessly and in cold blood exerting their influence through murder and violence

  • THE GUARDIAN
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  Uday Saddam Hussein was a monster even by the standards of former president Saddam Hussein's Iraq, a sadist with a taste for cruelty so extreme that even his father was forced to acknowledge that his first-born son would not be a worthy heir.

  And yet for all that Uday Saddam Hussein symbolized the brutality of the Iraqi regime, his powers were severely circumscribed. Although he retained the privileges of the much-indulged son of a dictator, he was shunted from the real centers of power in the military and security services by his quieter, younger brother Qusay.

  Although Uday nominally had a role in politics -- following his election to parliament with 99 percent of the vote in 1999 -- he was studiously absent from Iraqi television during the dying days of the regime.

  

  This is an undated file photo of former Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein with his sons, Uday, left, and Qusay. US soldiers battled Iraqi gunmen inside a suspected hideout of high-ranking members of Saddam's regime in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Tuesday, killing four people. Officials in Washington said they were investigating whether the dead included Uday and Qusay.

  PHOTO: AP

  It was clear controllers realized that showing too many pictures of the most hated man in Iraq was hardly going to spur resistance.

  It was not the life that Uday had intended. Of Saddam's two sons, he was the flamboyant one -- towering well over 1.83m, with a penchant for fast cars and loud and drunken parties, expensive suits and flowing robes, as well as murder, rape and torture.

  His public duties ranged from the Iraqi Olympic Committee and the national football team, to Babel, supposedly an independent newspaper, and Shabab, or youth television, to the Iraqi Photographers' Association. He also was in charge of the dreaded Saddam Fedayeen militia.

  For those unfortunate enough to have strayed across his path, Uday's reasons for taking on such a public life were pathetic: he wanted to build a public profile in preparation for taking over from Saddam.

  The search for public approbation appears to have taken over in the mid-1980s when Uday first took a close interest in sport.

  Footballers say he never really understood or showed much interest in the game itself, but was desperate enough for a win that he would phone up the locker room during half time to threaten to cut off players' legs and throw them to ravenous dogs.

  As football overseer, Uday kept a private torture scorecard, with written instructions on how many times each player should be beaten on the soles of his feet after a particularly poor showing.

  Uday's excesses carried over in his private life where he had a reputation for ordering any girl or woman who caught his eye to be brought to his private pleasure dome.

  The palace, a bad taste Arabian nights fantasy, was decorated with indoor fountains and erotic murals and was in the grounds of his father's presidential estate. A nearby chamber contained huge stashes of drugs as well as an HIV-testing kit, according to US forces.

  He is also reported to have operated an even more private torture chamber on the banks of the Tigris.

  But his brutality finally caught up with him. In 1988 he bludgeoned to death his father's bodyguard Kamal Hana Jajo in front of horrified partygoers.

  He also shot one of his uncles in the leg. The murder, shootings and other erratic behavior put him in permanent disfavor with Saddam. He was briefly exiled to Switzerland and, while he was allowed to return to Iraq, he was never again deemed suitable for succession.

  His two brief dynastic liaisons -- with the daughters of a senior Ba'ath party aide of Saddam and an uncle -- were dissolved after Uday beat up his brides.

  His remove from power grew even greater in 1996 when gunmen fired on his red Porsche as it sped through the streets of Baghdad. The attack left the scion of Saddam able to walk only with great difficulty.

  It also appears to have deepened his rage against his fellow Iraqis. Sports figures in Iraq say he had come to see his duties at the Olympic Committee only as a source of ready cash. His cruelty, already legendary, deepened.

  The last the world heard of Qusay Saddam Hussein, he was by his father's side, performing his duties as heir apparent to a dying regime by accompanying former president Saddam Hussein on a walkabout of an affluent neighborhood of Baghdad.

  That was on April 9. The American forces were quite literally at the gates, tanks roaring into Baghdad from the south and east. It was only hours before Iraqis were to loop a noose around the giant statue of Saddam and bring it crashing down.

  But Saddam chose precisely that moment to appear before his people, and he wanted Qusay by his side. The tour, captured on videotape, symbolizes Qusay's central role to the regime.

  If rumors of his death are true, it means the demise of the man who was Saddam's main strategist during the war. When he disappeared, Qusay was at the apex of his powers, a position he attained only a few days before the start of the US attack when he was given absolute charge of four key regions, including the capital and the family seat of Tikrit.

  He was also reported to have taken control of much of Iraq's finances. According to US intelligence reports after the war, Qusay helped himself to US$1 billion from the Iraqi central bank a few days before the conflict began, carting the money away in three trucks.

  The fiat from Saddam giving Qusay charge of Baghdad's defenses by default put his son in control of the international press in the capital. Pistol-wielding thugs soon appeared at the information ministry, and the constraints on journalists intensified. In Baghdad's residential neighborhoods, meanwhile, Qusay's spies and operatives began taking over empty houses, dispersing throughout the capital and spreading unease.

  Before the war he was the commander of the Republican Guard, believed to be the most elite of the Iraqi fighting units; he also presided over a network of spies and informers in the Iraqi security services.

  Night after night, in the run up to the war, he appeared on Iraqi television, taking his seat at the u-shaped table where Saddam convened his generals to check on the country's defenses.

  Qusay, who usually wore a light brown suit, in contrast to the generals in full uniform, spent much of his time on air scribbling in a notebook.

  He was smaller than his father, pudgy, with a moustache, and in those television images at least, appeared far less relaxed than the jovial, cigar-smoking Saddam.

  Despite his pre-eminence in the regime, Qusay rarely spoke, except to join the generals laughing at his fathers witticisms, or praising his ideas, with a hearty chorus of "nam, nam."

  Unlike Saddam's first-born son, Uday, Qusay did not crave the limelight. He had a palace on the banks of the Tigris, a few doors down from the deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz and other stalwarts of the regime, with chandeliers and exercise equipment laid out beside an outdoor swimming pool. Little is known of his lifestyle or indeed whether he even lived there full-time.

  He was married to the daughter of a prominent general and had two children.

  But behind the awkward demeanour was a man as feared and as ruthless as his father. He was just more adept at hiding it than Uday.

  By 1991, Saddam thought enough of his second son to put him in charge of the bloody suppression of the Shia rebellion in the south after the previous Gulf war in 1991. Qusay was just 25.

  Later he was put in charge of hiding banned weapons from the first wave of inspectors.

  Qusay's importance to the Pentagon became evident with the first wave of bombardments, which relentlessly targeted the intelligence headquarters on the west bank of the Tigris, a building that was hit more than any other.
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