An Afternoon with Saddam

Alcibiades Hidalgo
Translated by Douglas
French original: "Un après-midi avec Saddam"
(Le Monde, 2003/03/10)

With a wave of his right hand, Saddam Hussein interrupted the briefing by the head of the Cuban Army’s intelligence services on the capacities of the American military forces that were on the verge of punishing the invasion of Kuwait. “I’ve had several reports like this one. My ambassador at the UN sends me them and most of the time they end up in there,” he said, pointing to a marble trash bin.

The comment seemed rather for the benefit of the handful of Iraqi military leaders seated on one side of the long table covered in dates and flowers. The Cubans opposite them, myself included, who had been sent by Fidel Castro to attempt to convince his ally in Baghdad of the likely outcome of a war in the gulf, understood that our afternoon at Al Qadissiyya palace would be difficult. It was at the very beginning of November 1990. Four months earlier, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait had shocked the world and worried distant Cuba. One of the island’s allies was defying at once the Arab world, of which Saddam was part, the Iranians, the Turks, the Israelis and the West in general, in deploying a crushingly superior military against a little independent neighbor. An incongruous scenario, that offered unfortunate similarities to the fears that Cuba’s own big neighbor caused.

At first, Cuban diplomacy decided to play the ostrich. After all, the Kuwaitis were only distant acquaintances. One more absolute monarchy rotting in a sea of petroleum. Not allied with, of course, but having a penchant for, the United States. Saddam, however, was an old friend.

At the heart of the Communist Party’s central committee, there were several of us among the old negotiators drawn from among the Cuban troops of Angola who proposed, on the contrary, that we distance ourselves from Baghdad’s latest adventure. Saddam had already put us in an awkward position: we had him to thank for a number of misunderstandings with the non-Islamic clientele of Cuban policy in the third world, as with his own Arab brothers. Not to mention the numerous opponents of Iraq’s bloody variation on Baathism who had ended up on the end of a rope in the Square of the Hanged, among whom were almost all of the local Communists. We needed to separate ourselves from this business to preserve Cuba’s fundamental interests.

The commander in chief decided to criticize the invasion. Cuba, a non permanent member of the UN Security Council, voted in favor of resolution 660 of August 2 condemning Iraq’s actions. Toward the middle of Autumn, it became obvious that the prolonged occupation of the Emirate, which Baghdad viewed as its 19th province, and the determination of the United States, heading an unprecedented international coalition, were leading to war. A conflict that, according to Cuba, would only offer the chance for a humongous display of force by the victors of the Cold War. Moscow, whose star was fading, barely attempted to limit the damage of Iraq’s misstep while avoiding irritating George Bush.

For Havana, where the economy that had hitherto been propped up by the socialist countries was now beginning its free fall, things couldn’t be worse. Any means would be acceptable to avoid catastrophe, including a personal appeal to Saddam. This was an idea of El Comandante’s: convince the Iraqi numero uno of the enormity of the military retaliation that was then being prepared, and of which Cuba was amply informed thanks to its sources that were still in the USSR.

The mission had to be discrete. It would be led by José Ramon Fernandez, vice president of the Ministerial Council. This career officer and old-hand of the revolution, a key figure in the battles against the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, enjoyed the total confidence of the Commander in Chief. Despite his Asturian origins, he was dubbed “El Gallego” (the Galician), a name the Cubans gave to all the Spanish. Rodrigo Alvarez Cambras, the surgeon who several years earlier had removed a tumor from Saddam’s spine, earning him top appointments in medicine as well as politics, was naturally part of the delegation. His presence underscored the friendly, almost intimate nature of the trip.

As for me, beyond my new responsibilities in relations outside the central committee, I had the advantage of knowing the country and its leader well, after a long stay in the Middle East. In 1975, I was the only Cuban journalist to go with the Iraqi army through the rocky and frozen cordilleras of Kurdistan to the headquarters of mullah Mustafa Barzani, a victory that had consolidated Saddam’s power over Iraq’s ethnic and religious mosaic.

To deliver the presentation, Raul Castro chose the young colonel Jaime Salas, who was then at the head of army intelligence. Body guards, assistants, translators, and the chancellery’s vice-minister for Arab affairs made up the rest of the delegation. Fidel’s personal message to Hussein gathered all the reasons for not allowing Washington to seize the opportunity to exert global hegemony. The heaviest job fell to colonel Salas: with Gorbachev’s consent, the Soviet military, who were informed of this mission, had compiled highly detailed descriptions of the forces deployed on the Arabian peninsula and in Turkey. The Soviet base Torrens, just outside Havana, collected copious amounts of electronic data emitted by Florida command centers and from all over North America. The Cuban military analysts, exhausted from the study of all the armed conflicts in which the United States had ever been involved, had added their appraisals. Fidel put the finishing touch on the message: four pages of reflections in a measured and cordial tone, with the help of the Gallego Fernandez, who was to present it to Saddam. Then the Cuban expert most knowledgeable on Soviet matters was charged with editing a Russian version, with the slight modifications intended to make it acceptable in Gorbachev’s eyes.

Fidel Castro took leave of us late in the evening at his office in the Palace of the Revolution. He had examined the diagrams, maps and photographs in the military dossier and reviewed its arguments one by one. He emphasized the crucial nature of the mission and the personal risks we would encounter in entering, at his request, an Iraq already besieged by allied forces. He saw us as soldiers going off to war. Before bestowing an accolade on each of us, he had a discrete aside with Fernandez, to whom he gave a sealed envelope, slipping an arm around his shoulders. “For expenses,” he said. “in case anything should happen.” An agreement whispered among “Gallegos.”

We set out for Madrid and then for Amman, flying first class on Iberia and then Jordan Airlines. Once in Amman, we were told that Saddam’s private jet would take us as far as Baghdad. To travel on board such a conspicuous aircraft, tracked by hundreds of enemy coalition radar systems, was not he best option. But there was no other. Declining our hosts offer was unthinkable and flights into Iraq were forbidden by the sanctions that were already in place.

Saddam’s impeccable jet landed softly that night at Saddam international airport and we were rapidly taken to the residence prepared for the Cuban mission. The waiting began. The following day, a first attempt by the Iraqis to obtain Fidel’s message met with resistance from Gallego Fernandez, who then displayed talents worthy of his studies at the Fort Silk artillery school in Oklahoma: the letter would only be submitted and explained to its addressee. This absurd game of hide-and-seek lasted several days. In vain, Alvarez Cambras called on his numerous contacts in the Iraqi political machine to obtain an audience with Saddam. With no more success, I tried to meet with Tarik Aziz, whom I had known since that distant time when he headed a press agency. But Saddam alone decided on his the use of his precious time.

On the fourth day, our hosts invited us to pass the time by visiting Babylon, the reconstruction of which was among the regime’s priorities. We traveled southward. While visiting the paths in which Saddam, ever the Nebuchadnezzar, had had his name engraved in the thousands of replicated clay bricks in new constructions, we were urgently recalled to Baghdad: the meeting would take place the following day.

That evening the delegation reviewed the subjects to be touched on one last time. Toward midday, our convoy left for an unknown destination. Juan Aldama, stationed in Baghdad the previous two years, recognized the route we were taking. We were being led to the president’s favorite palace: Radwaniyah, also known as Al Qadissiyya. It was one of Aldama’s last meetings with Saddam. After receiving his diploma the school for foreign affairs in Moscow, he had returned to Baghdad, his first posting, in the company of a charming Russian wife, the daughter of an important Soviet functionary. One Spring evening in 1991 he would fire a bullet into his temple from the Makarov pistol that he always kept on him. His suicide was never made public and remains unexplained to this day.

Al Qadissiyya palace is one of the presidential residences suspected of housing lethal weapons laboratories. Our convoy passed quickly through the security checkpoints before arriving at one of the modern Islamic style buildings. We crossed the length of a hallway lined with Samarkand ceramic tiles and interior patios with with splendid fountains in order to arrive at the room scheduled for the meeting. Saddam appeared, followed by a half dozen high ranking army officers in field dress as impeccable as their chief’s. He greeted El Gallego with a scarcely amiable gesture and the latter introduced us in turn. Without going through the usual introductions, Saddam pointed to his retinue with a vague motion and invited us to be seated around a long table in the middle of the room.

El Gallego began to speak. Our conduct was based, he said, on the solid friendship between Iraq and Cuba, Saddam and Fidel. The damage that the conflict would cause the Iraqi government worried us, as did the benefit that the United States would have in displaying their military power. The Iraqi listened, impassive. Fidel’s message was then submitted to its addressee who read it attentively, with no more reaction than two or three words muttered under his breath and several movements of the head that were difficult to read.

After the long presentation by El Gallego, Saddam’s impatience was palpable. It was impossible to discern among his entourage the least sign of approval for the Cuban position. I understood I had to be brief. A diplomatic outcome remained conceivable. Among the series of emissaries in Baghdad, the Soviet diplomats were struggling not to abandon an Arab ally, which would have been a first. The USSR could be counted on for a last minute effort at the Security Council that China would sign on to. The representatives of the third world would stop at nothing to arrive at an honorable solution, on the condition that Iraq agree to retreat from Kuwait. Territorial claims could be reformulated another time. The support of Javier Perez de Cuellar, UN Secretary General and close friend of Havana, was a passkey for negotiation. The presentation on diplomatic options received no comment.

Colonel Salas then approached a blackboard where there was a carefully arranged display of diagrams, maps, photographs and charts. He described the various stages of American and allied deployment since the Fall and specified the characteristics of the troops. He pointed out the latest developments in desert and amphibious combat, the high degree of readiness, the adversary’s estimated strengths. He identified the points where the different units were concentrated, the foreseeable operations and likelihood of concerted action. He made a particularly overwhelming enumeration of the enemy’s powerful weapons including many that would be used for the first time. The colonel spoke of a technological war, of multiple-head Tomahawk missiles that could be launched from the Red Sea of the Persian Gulf, of Apache antitank attack helicopters, of B-52 bombers, of the new F117 A Stealth fighters, undetectable to radar, Awacs command systems that would simultaneously orient hundreds of aircraft in combat, Patriot missiles, Abrams tanks equipped with 120 millimeter cannons, new GPS systems, unmanned aircraft and other smart weaponry, in addition to which there were those of US allies, all of which would assure that this war resembled no other.

The even-handed but invaluable comparison with the Iraqi forces made Saddam lose his patience. Though he had remained unmoved before the description of the capacity for resistance of his infantry, that numbered fewer than a million men, 7,000 tanks and many fewer pieces of artillery, as soon as the colonel began to describe the manifest air superiority of the enemy, Saddam ended the presentation.

After having shown us in a grave manner the place where diplomatic reports such as the one he had just heard would crash, he began a diatribe over the colonial injustice that the State of Kuwait had caused. He condemned the ingratitude of the Arab nation toward the only one of its members that had fought against Persian expansion in the Gulf. At first the victim of maneuvers on the petroleum market, he now found himself isolated in his new crusade against he West. He criticized the ingratitude of other friends, hostile to Iraq’s decision not to give in before the enemy, the UN’s impotence and the disloyalty of the Communist nations. He spoke of Saladin, a fellow native of Tikrit, he said, and then spoke of his date with history and of the formidable lesson that the Iraqi people, determined to be victorious, would give to any aggressor.

“You can tell comrade Fidel Castro,” he said getting up, “that I thank him for his solicitude. If the troops of the United States invade Iraq, we shall crush them like that,” he concluded resoundingly, stamping the carpet several times with his shining military boots... The audience had ended. Without smiling, Saddam shook the hands of each of the Cubans as we left the sumptuous hall. He bid the Gallego farewell with an Oriental embrace and asked that his greetings be sent to El Comandante.

That evening I drew up a long report. Two days later, we returned to Cuba the way we had come. At the residence of the Cuban ambassador to Madrid, Fernandez opened the envelope that Fidel had given him and gave each of us a hundred dollar bill and told us to buy souvenirs. On 12 November 1990, the official newspaper Granma reported the return from Iraq of an official delegation whose departure had never been announced. Fidel received us the same day. Without asking us to repeat what happened again, he only asked the Gallego to imitate with his own feet the gesture with which Saddam had shown how he would crush the Americans. We spoke of other things and Fernandez returned the envelope, explaining the expense from Madrid. El Comandante raised an eyebrow as if surprised but said nothing.

(Translated from the Spanish by Carmen Val Julian)

Alcibiades Hidalgo

Former Cuban ambassador to the United Nations, in July 2002 Alcibiades Hidalgo secretly left Cuba by sea for Florida. Today he lives in the United States.

[Posted 2003/03/12]

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