The Star-Ledger March 19, 2003
A dictator who has layers of protection
By John Hassell
Star-Ledger Staff
Since July 1979, when he declared himself president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein has defied the odds on political survival. His ruthlessly effective personal security regime has withstood assassination plots, palace coups, even precision-guided U.S. bombs. However, Saddam's complex self-preservation network -- a web of elite troops, intelligence agencies, body doubles and intensely loyal senior staff -- has never faced a challenge quite like the 220,000 American troops now massed along Iraq's borders.
How well Saddam's security apparatus holds up in the face of a U.S.-led invasion will go a long way, defense analysts say, toward determining whether regime change in Iraq is a swift affair or a long, frustrating manhunt in a country the size of California.
"Saddam Hussein did not stay in power as long as he has by trusting his personal security to chance," said François Boo, a defense analyst at GlobalSecurity.org, a think tank in Alexandria, Va.. "He knows a lot of people want his head on a stick."
At the moment, the chief headhunter is President Bush, whose 48-hour deadline for Saddam to leave Iraq expires at 8 tonight, and who confidently promised in a prime-time speech Monday night that "the tyrant will soon be gone."
Few military experts doubt that the United States has the firepower to overrun the bulk of the Iraqi army in short order, as Bush's aides have predicted. But targeting a notoriously paranoid and elusive figure like Saddam, should he choose to remain in Iraq, could prove trickier.
According to a detailed study of Saddam's security apparatus published in the Middle East Review of International Affairs last September, the layers of protection around the Iraqi dictator are managed by five separate but interlocking agencies.
Officially, these organizations are known as al-Amn al-Khas (Special Security), al-Amn al-'Amm (General Security), al-Mukhabarat (General Intelligence), al-Istikhbarat (Military Intelligence) and al-Amn al-'Askari (Military Security).
"In addition to preventing coups and protecting Saddam, these agencies, whose duties largely overlap, maintain domestic security and conduct foreign operations," the study found. The reach of these agencies, the study noted, permeates "every aspect of Iraqi life."
Efforts by foreign intelligence services to sow division within Saddam's regime have been hampered in large part by the rivalry among these agencies, which "overlap in order to encourage competition," the MERIA study reported.
In addition, the report said, the key positions in the regime "are staffed by relatives of Saddam, members of his al-Bu Nasser tribe, or come from the towns of Tikrit, Dur, Sharqat, Huwayja, Bayji, Samarra and Ramadi," Saddam's geographical power base.
In an additional effort to prevent betrayal, Saddam on Saturday placed his most loyal family members and aides in charge of the country's four military regions, taking the reins of control away from career military officers who might turn on him.
The most critical region -- Iraq's heartland, which includes Baghdad -- rests in the hands of Saddam's son Qusay, who also commands the nation's elite Republican Guard and his father's personal security detail.
The southern region of Iraq, which would face the first major wave of U.S. ground troops, was placed under the control of Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, the infamous architect of the 1998 campaign against rebellious Kurds in northern Iraq.
Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, Saddam's long-time deputy, now has responsibility for the country's northern region, while Mazban Khader Hadi, another veteran of Saddam's inner circle, will oversee an area that includes the Muslim holy sites of Najaf and Karbala.
Although the initial goal of Iraq's military will be to prevent U.S.-led forces from grabbing key southern bases, defense analysts predict that their focus probably will shift quickly to protecting the brain trust of Saddam's regime.
In that sense, analysts say, seizing huge swaths of Iraqi territory may prove much easier than capturing Saddam himself.
As a recent study by Jane's Intelligence Review pointed out, Saddam is guarded by several personal guard units, the Special Republican Guard, six divisions of the regular Republican Guard and tens of thousands of fanatical Fedayeen, or "Men of Sacrifice." Saddam also is known to employ numerous look-alikes as decoys, and rarely stays in the same location two nights in a row.
Boo, of GlobalSecurity.org, said a determined military campaign may very well get to Saddam eventually, but he compared the effort to the search that Allied troops mounted for Adolf Hitler in the waning days of World War II.
"We were going after Hitler, and Hitler was one of the last things we got to," Boo said. "The same is probably true in Iraq: Every layer of defense, every obstacle facing U.S. troops is just another thing that separates us from Saddam Hussein."
Some former U.S. military commanders, however, expressed doubt that Saddam's personal security, so successful over the years at preventing internal dissent, would last long against the crushing onslaught of a 21st-century military campaign.
"The system of defenses he has put around himself was designed to frustrate anything less than what we are now prepared to throw at him," said Kenneth Allard, a former U.S. Army colonel and intelligence expert. "This is an entirely different kettle of fish."
Even if Saddam employs weapons of mass destruction to slow the advance of American forces, Allard said, it is only a matter of time before U.S. troops tighten the noose around the Iraqi dictator.
"Let's put it this way," Allard said. "No matter how many underground bunkers or body doubles Saddam has, I wouldn't want to sell him life insurance right now."
Copyright © 2003, The Star-Ledger
