DAMASCUS (dpa) – After the war-like rhetoric and the tactical manoeuvring seen during recent weeks, Iraq’s opposition feels sure President Saddam Hussein has something dangerous in the works.
Some opposition members expect a military attack against the semi- autonomous Kurdish areas in northern Iraq, while others believe that Saddam is seriously ill and is only making his military threats in order quietly to pave the way for his younger son Kusai to succeed him in Baghdad.“In the past few weeks he has sent every key figure to positions outside of Baghdad who could pose a danger to his son,” says Bayan Jabor, a critic of the Saddam regime who lives in Damascus.Jabor is a member of the central committee of the “High Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq”, a Shiite group which is the country’s largest opposition organisation.He said he had information that, for example, Defence Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmed was recently sent for what is to be a long posting to Ramadi, west of Baghdad, on grounds of a supposed military threat.Saddam is also believed to have shunted aside, at least for the time being, even influential members of his own clan in favour of Kusai. These include his brother-in-law and personal secretary, Abid Hamid Mahmoud el Tikriti and command council member Ali Hassan el Mashid el Tikriti, whose nickname is “chemical Ali” because of his brutal poison gas attack on the Kurds.“But the biggest problem for Kusai is going to be his own brother Udai,” says Jabor. It is simply not conceivable that the older Saddam son, feared for his recklessness and brutality, is simply going to let himself be pushed aside.The Shiite opposition spokesman says that so far very little is known about Kusai.“He is a man of the secret service and so he operates more in the dark,” Jabor said. “We do not know what he thinks, for if he should differ in his views from his father, he would take care not to express them publicly.”But Jabor says that not much good is to be expected of Saddam’s second-oldest son, either.What is known, according to reports of various Iraqi opposition groups which corroborate each other is that Kusai Saddam Hussein about three years ago had 1,500 political prisoners executed at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison – in a single day.At the end of June, 25 employees of a printing plant in Baghdad were arrested, according to Iraqi opposition sources. The reason: they had printed a statement about the political rise of Kusai, who a few weeks earlier had been elected to the leadership of the Baath Party and was virtually named deputy commander in chief of the armed forces.The incident shows that Saddam Hussein wants to prepare his son for the highest office, but that he does not want to stir up much notice about it in public.A further necessary step in preparing the succession was Saddam’s reconciliation with his first wife Sadshda Cheirallah, Kusai’s mother. She was seen on television at the end of June for the first time in five years.But nobody believes that Saddam Hussein might turn over the presidency to his son while he himself is still alive.
