Chapter 98
Chapter 98: Why Can’t We Be Friends - The Middle East in 1975
Above: Vice President Saddam Hussein of Iraq during a state visit to Paris to meet with recently elected President Mitterand of France in 1974.
Unlike many of the succession crises of Iraq’s all too frequently turbulent history, the coup of 1968 was, according to historians, “a relatively civil affair”. Beginning in the early morning hours of July 17th, 1968, military units and civilian supporters of the Ba’athist Party stormed the streets of Baghdad and seized several key government and military buildings, including the Ministry of Defence; the city’s power plant; radio stations; bridges; roads; and military bases. Telephone lines were cut at 3 AM and then-President Abdul Rahman Arif was even allowed out of the country into exile on the first available flight to London with his wife and son. His revolutionary successor, Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr shortly thereafter went on the airwaves to inform the Iraqi people that a new government, with himself at the head would be formed immediately. The Baathists had taken control of Iraq without firing a single shot. So smooth was the coup that not a single life was lost. If only the future of the new Republic could claim to be as bloodless. This trend would not last, as al-Bakr sought to tighten his newly acquired grip on power and tasked his right hand man and protege, fellow revolutionary attack dog Saddam Hussein, with dispatching al-Bakr’s chief political rivals: Deputy Head of Iraqi Military Intelligence Abd ar-Razzaq an-Naif, and Head of the Republican Guard, Ibrahim Daud. Naif, whose military support had been essential in the coup’s success, demanded the post of Prime Minister in the new government upon its formation. Hussein countered with a simple offer: leave Iraq or face the murder of himself and his entire family. Naif complied, moving into exile with his family to Morocco, but Hussein did not live up to his end of the bargain. Naif would be assassinated, on Saddam’s orders, in 1973 while out with his wife. Sensing a similar fate could be awaiting he and his family, Daud preempted any offers from al-Bakr or Hussein, and fled to Saudi Arabia. Through careful political maneuvering, expertly executed espionage, and absolutely, savagely ruthless methods, the Baathists established an iron grip over Iraq.
It did not take long for Saddam Hussein to make himself the center of this new government, either. President al-Bakr’s first order of business was to strengthen his own position within the party by taking advantage of the security and intelligence apparatuses developed by Saddam during the coup and its aftermath. Nasserist thought (which encouraged the formation of a pan-Arab state) was vigorously purged by al-Bakr’s government, though al-Bakr did extend an olive branch to the Iraqi Communist Party, eventually welcoming it into his ruling coalition in 1973. The President offered prominent communists positions in his government, and generally aligned Iraq with the Soviet Union in geo-political affairs, due to staunch American support for Israel under the Kennedy, Romney, and Bush administrations. This heavy reliance on Saddam only grew the younger man’s influence and by the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Saddam was Prime Minister, Vice President, and de facto leader of Iraq. The year prior, Hussein had used his authority to nationalize international oil interests in the country, which had previously made up a substantial part of nation’s economy. When the Yom Kippur War came and caused an international oil crisis, the revenues from Iraqi oil skyrocketed. Virtually overnight, Iraq became one of the wealthiest nations in the region and Saddam sensed a tremendous opportunity. By the end of the decade, Iraqi oil revenues would bankroll social services, welfare, and public programs unprecedented anywhere throughout the Middle East and developing world. Hussein established a national campaign to eradicate illiteracy, modeled on the work of President Salvador Allende in Chile. This would eventually involve the introduction of free, universal, compulsory education in the country, which extended up even to graduate and postgraduate levels of study. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis learned to read as a result of these programs, and many became the first in the history of their families to attend universities. The Baathist government also passed legislation providing for free universal hospitalization if ever required, subsidies to the country’s struggling farmers, and financial support to the families of active-duty soldiers and veterans, living and dead. The Iraqi system of public health set up and overseen by Hussein was perhaps the most modern and effective in the Middle East by 1978, and would win Hussein an award from UNESCO for his efforts, not to mention the immense affection and support of his people. Yet still, he was not satisfied.
The Iraqi Vice President’s early life was shrouded in tragedy and woe. His father and brother passed of cancer shortly before his birth. This drove his mother to such intense grief that she attempted to abort her pregnancy and commit suicide, both of which failed. When Saddam was finally born, his mother wanted nothing to do with him, leaving the boy to be raised by his uncle far from home. Several years later, Saddam was reunited with his mother after she remarried, bringing to Saddam three half-brothers and a very abusive step-father. This harsh treatment and growing feelings of alienation caused a 10 year old Saddam to flee back to his uncle, Khairallah Talfah in Baghdad. Talfah, the father of Saddam’s future wife, Sajida, and a devout Sunni Muslim, was also a veteran of the Anglo-Iraqi War of 1941, and inspired in Saddam an intense distrust of the Western, “imperialist” powers. Following his uncle’s influence, Saddam would attend a nationalist high school, then drop out of law school at the age of 20 to join the Ba’athist Party, of which his uncle was a fervent supporter. During this period of his life, Saddam supported himself by serving as a secondary school teacher and dreamed of one day fulfilling his uncle’s dreams of a fiercely nationalist, powerful Iraq. Now that he had risen quickly through the ranks of the Baathists and made himself indispensable to the new government, Saddam Hussein finally had his chance. He was not about to throw it away.
After the introduction of his health and education initiatives, Vice President Hussein turned next to the seemingly insurmountable task of reforming his country’s bloated, inefficient economy and non-existent infrastructure. He began by attempts at diversification, knowing that eventually the oil crisis would end and if Iraq wanted to remain wealthy in its aftermath, it would do well to not rely solely on one industry for its prosperity. He implemented a national infrastructure and construction campaign which made tremendous progress in building roads, promoting mining, and developing other industries, which in turn helped the development and growth of the country’s domestic energy market. Electricity was finally brought to nearly every city in the country, along with much of the countryside. Before the 70’s, most Iraqis lived far from the nation’s cities; two thirds of them were agrarian peasants. As the country’s industries boomed and high paying jobs and education became more widely available with the oil boom, many moved to the burgeoning cities and attained a new sense of wealth and status. Iraq’s average quality of life improved dramatically, earning Saddam further praise from his citizens. Of course, it didn’t hurt that his secret police put dozens of Arab newspapermen, journalists, and artists on their payroll, and encouraged them fiercely to paint the Vice President in the best possible light, as a true man of the people. Saddam’s Cult of Personality began to form long before his formal rise to power following President al-Bakr’s death in September, 1975 (likely due to poisoning by an assassin sent by Saddam, although this is disputed). Development and modernization of Iraq reached such a frenzied pace during this period that workers were attracted in from other Arab States and even Yugoslavia to help complete the public works projects. What the flattering accounts, both domestic and foreign left out, were the insidious consequences of Saddam’s paranoid personality, and his dark dealings in foreign affairs.
In 1972, Yuri Andropov and Vice President Hussein (representing President al-Bakr) signed a 15 year “treaty of friendship and cooperation” with the Soviet Union, upsetting the Cold War balance of power in the Middle East, from the U.S. perspective. In response to this decision in alignment, U.S. President George Bush authorized covert American financial and material support to Kurdish rebels, led by Mustafa Barzini in the Second Iraqi-Kurdish War. When the Kurds were eventually defeated, Saddam came to few them as the chief threat to his hold on power, and a tool for “American imperialism and interference” in his country. The dictator forcibly removed and relocated hundreds of thousands of Kurdish civilians, and began a long, horrific process of their systematic massacre and genocide by Hussein’s regime in the decades to come. Saddam’s entire political philosophy was predicated on absolute control of the state by him and himself alone. Divisions between demographics which had previously divided Iraqis, Sunni vs Shiite, Arab vs Kurd, and so on, only served to weaken the Iraqi State, and so, such divisions must be eased or erased, in Saddam’s mind. Saddam sought to paint himself as a modern day Nebuchadnezzar II or Hammurabi, and encouraged a new form of Iraqi national identity which traced itself back to ancient Mesopotamia and the Empires of Assyria and Babylon. His people were not just Arabs or Muslims, they were the inheritors of a proud, millenia-old heritage, one which deserved to be spread throughout the region. He fostered loyalty to his party among Iraq’s rural areas with a varying “carrot and stick” method of farming cooperatives, expanded agricultural development and investment, and violent crackdowns on any form of resistance or protest against his rule. Over time, many Iraqis became content to live with his brutalistic regime, if it meant that they could retain their economic benefits Saddam was providing. His tactics began to work, and the Vice President turned his eyes to the west and to expanding his domain. As President al-Bakr’s health faded and his already minor influence waned, Saddam appointed his brother-in-law, Adnan Khairallah Tulfah as Minister of Defence and began to draw up plans for a truly magnificent celebration to mark his formal rise to power once al-Bakr eventually kicked the bucket, what Saddam called: “A Presidential parade from Baghdad, right into the heart of Damascus.”
For all intents and purposes, the Ba’athist movement’s true origins lay not in Iraq, but in its neighbor, Syria, the home of its arguable founder, Michel Aflaq, as well as its other influential thinkers, Zaki al-Arsuzi, and Salah al-Din al-Bitar. Since November 1970, the country had been led by Hafez al-Assad, a devout Ba’athist and former Syrian Minister of Defence who had been developing himself as a strongman dictator over his country as well, and viewed Saddam’s rise to power in Iraq with suspicion, even jealousy. He viewed Saddam as a rival, and following Syria and Egypt’s defeat by Israel in the Yom Kippur War, Assad grew increasingly paranoid that Hussein was “laughing in Baghdad” and plotting against him. As it turned out, Assad had reason to be wary. Though Hussein was nominally purging Nasserist pan-Arabists in Iraq, this was largely out of their belief in Egyptian leadership of the Arab world, a belief which Saddam could never abide by. But a semi-united Arab world with Iraq at its center? Now this was an outcome which would fulfill Saddam’s fantasies about his country’s future and his personal dreams of Empire. In order to achieve this dream, however, Saddam needed to show that he was serious about tending not just to the needs of his own people, but to those of the Arab World as a whole. This process began in 1974, when a meeting of the Arab League was held in Baghdad and Saddam used the meeting as an opportunity to convince the League to formally reproach Egypt and Syria for their failures in the Yom Kippur War, as well as to call for Presidents Sadat and Assad to step down, “so that true pan-Arab leaders could rise to take their place”. Saddam’s speech shocked the world, which had viewed Egyptian and Syrian leadership of the pan-Arab movement as a fact of life, but also drew many to him as a possible “radical” alternative to the prior leaders, who had “failed to make any progress against the zionists and imperialists”, in the words of one fanatical supporter. Though President Sadat managed to quell any unrest against him in his own country, President Assad had a harder time combatting both the pro-Iraqi Ba’athists, who began to call for a referendum to merge the Syrian and Iraqi nations into a federated United Arab Republic, with Saddam at its head, as well as the Muslim Brotherhood, who detested the Ba’athists altogether, and called for the formation of a theocratic “Islamic Republic” based on Sharia Law. Both forces began protest movements against Assad’s government, which shortly thereafter turned violent. Protesters outside the Presidential Palace in Damascus were finally fired upon by government troops on July 29th, 1975, sparking the start of the Syrian Civil War and Saddam Hussein’s first major act of foreign aggression.
The infirm Iraqi President al-Bakr immediately sought to issue a statement of neutrality in the War, calling for an end to the bloodshed, but his Vice President moved quickly to put his own plans into motion. Disguising one of his own infantry divisions in Syrian uniforms and launching a false-flag attack on Iraqi troops near the Syrian border, Hussein and his brother in law at the Defence Ministry managed to convince the Iraqi people that their nation had been attacked by angry and vengeful Syrian troops who were furious that there was a popular movement to install Saddam as leader of both countries brewing and fermenting civil war back home. Appearing on radio shows across the nation, Saddam promised “retaliation to the utmost degree” and issued his own statement, demanding an apology from Assad for the behavior of “his” soldiers. Assad refused to claim responsibility for the attack, and so Hussein authorized for Iraqi fighters to be scrambled and for the air force to be ready to attack Syrian targets at any moment. President al-Bakr urged restraint and a “stop to this madness”, completely unaware that Saddam had already made himself determined on a path of war with Syria. Al-Bakr died suddenly on September 3rd, leading to Hussein’s formal ascension to the Presidency and in his inaugural address, the now-President of Iraq called upon his countrymen to rally behind him and their Syrian brethren. The time had come to repay Assad for what his men had done, and bring their peoples together in the name of one Arab World at last. The crowd in Baghdad roared in approval and only a week later, the first Iraqi tank regiments rolled across the border into Syria to support the pro-UAR rebels in the countryside. Saddam’s troops were greeted largely as liberators, at least according to pro-Hussein newspapers, though in reality, Syrian resistance was spirited and Hussein faced intense blowback from other parts of the Arab World which felt his response to Syria making peace with Israel during the Yom Kippur War (invasion) was a step too far. Nevertheless, armed with Soviet supplied T-62 tanks and AK-47 assault rifles, Iraqi troops made rendevouz with the anti-Assad rebels and quickly took control of Syria’s infrastructure and, by the end of the year, all of the country north of the Euphrates River. The Syrian Civil War, also called by some the Iraq-Syria War would drag on for several years, destabilizing the Middle East, and ultimately lead one strongman to claim dominion over a Ba’athist, anti-western, federated United Arab Republic upon its completion in late 1978.
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In the United States, the Iraq-Syria War had the immediate effect of escalating uncertainty about the world’s geopolitical situation, but it also gave President Bush an idea about how to swing the Arab-Israeli conflict in a more hopeful direction. He called CIA Director Bob Cushman, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, and Secretary of State George Shultz into his office on November 19th, 1975, and laid out plans for an ambitious summit to bring newly sworn-in Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat together for peace talks. These would take place at the Bush Family Compound, also called the “Summer White House” where the President and his children had spent countless summers away from the stifling, arid Texas heat. In the coastal town of Kennebunkport, Maine, “Walker’s Point” as it was known, jutted out into the Atlantic Ocean and seemed like the perfect, relaxed atmosphere the experienced, diplomatic President knew he would need if he was going to get any work done toward settling this hornet’s nest down. Though most of the world (perhaps understandably) saw Israel and Egypt as perennial, mortal enemies, Bush saw that there was opportunity for compromise developing on both sides of the conflict in the wake of Iraq’s rise as a serious power to the North (which threatened Egyptian hegemony and power in the region), and Israel’s near defeat in the Yom Kippur War, which saw the resignation of Prime Minister Golda Meir and a surge in popularity for Rabin’s chief political opponent, the right-wing nationalist Menachem Begin. Hoping to strike the iron while it was glowing hot, Bush dispatched Scowcroft to Cairo and Shultz to Tel Aviv with express instructions to “get Sadat and Rabin to the table at Walker’s Point.” The President also instructed his advisers to “give away nothing”. The Commander in Chief wanted all possible chips on the table if and when the middle eastern leaders agreed to attend the talks. It turned out that Bush’s instincts about the situation had been right. Both Rabin and Sadat were tired of conflict, and Sadat was feeling spurned by the USSR, who had promised more in the way of direct support than they had delivered on for decades. With Andropov’s loyalties in the region seemingly shifting to that mad, radical Saddam Hussein in Iraq, perhaps Sadat and his people were better served seeking friendship with the United States and the West. Israel and Egypt agreed to attend the talks, though both remained skeptical that the Americans could help them reach a meaningful agreement. The President insisted on keeping the talks as low-key as possible until an agreement could be reached, despite the possible political gains he could have made by advertising them to the American public. International pressure from press coverage was the last thing these already embattled leaders would need in the work they were about to begin.
Early exploratory meetings on the subject, performed throughout the end of 1975 and first months of 1976 by Secretary of State Shultz and others produced a plan to reinvigorate the peace process at the Walker’s Point talks. This basic plan was founded on the Geneva Peace Conference which had ended the Yom Kippur War and established three primary objectives for the upcoming negotiations: Arab recognition of the state of Israel’s right to exist in peace; Israel’s withdrawal from territories gained during the Six Day War through negotiating efforts with neighboring Arab nations to secure Israeli sovereignty; and securing a safe, undivided Jerusalem. Though these meetings had begun nearly a year before Saddam invaded Syria, the new war expedited the process, as Egypt sought to reclaim its position as “leader of the Arab World” and Israel could not long abide having to worry about Egypt to its South simultaneously with the possibility of an invigorated UAR under Saddam to its North. President Bush himself had already made phone calls or met in person in Washington with President Sadat, King Hussein of Jordan, Prime Minister Rabin of Israel, and President Assad of Syria on the subject and all were in agreement that peace had to be reached in some form so that the international focus could shift to containing the threat posed by Saddam’s empire building. King Hussein and President Assad would ultimately decline to participate in any peace talks, but their willingness to “tolerate” the results of an Israeli-Egyptian agreement, marked an early achievement in the peace process. President Bush was encouraged, and thus invited both Rabin and Sadat to join him at Walker’s Point to spend the Summer “working toward peace and tranquility between them.”
The summit convened in Kennebunkport on May 1st, 1976, just as the year’s Presidential Elections were really heating up. Many in Bush’s staff, including White House Chief of Staff Dick Cheney had advised the President the year before to wait to hold the summit until after the election, as it would consume a great deal of the Commander in Chief’s time and energy, which Cheney believed would be better spent campaigning for reelection. He’d counseled the President to wait until his second full term, then he would have all the time in the world to try and broker peace. If he lost the election, there was no telling that the results of the talks would be implemented by his successor anyway. But Bush stubbornly refused, insisting that if he did not act swiftly, then the situation in the Middle East could shift and he would lose his opportunity to craft a meaningful peace. He would spend the summer of 1976 brokering with Sadat and Rabin, then campaign twice as hard in the autumn to make up for lost time. Cheney respected the Commander in Chief’s decision, but was disillusioned with his boss’s new attitude toward politics. Cheney felt that Bush had been neglecting the worsening Great Recession at home, leaving economic policy to Treasury Secretary Friedman so that he could tilt windmills and chase a Nobel Peace Prize in the Middle East. With their approval numbers sinking by the day, and more and more Americans turning to the Democrats for answers to their woes, Cheney feared that the Bush Administration may have been a sinking ship. When he received an offer from the Republican Party of his home state of Wyoming to seek the Congressional seat for the state’s at-large district in the House, a safe ride toward a congressional career, Cheney gave them his assent, and spoke to President Bush just before the new year to tenure his resignation as White House Chief of Staff. Bush was sad to see a talented political mind like Cheney go, but if he couldn’t get on board with the White House’s diplomatic, foreign policy focused direction, then perhaps it was for the best. They parted ways amicably and the President would campaign vigorously for his former Chief of Staff come Autumn. Cheney was replaced by his Deputy, a longtime Bush loyalist from Texas, Jim Baker.
As Rabin, Sadat, Bush and their aides converged on the Bush Compound, The American President expressed “high hopes” in his diary and to Babs. These would be tested and strained almost immediately. Bush’s advisers began the talks by insisting on the establishment of an Egyptian-Israeli agreement which would lead to an eventual solution to the issue of Palestine, preferably a two state solution. Led by newly minted Chief of Staff Jim Baker, they favored short, loose, and overt connections between Egypt and Israel, which would, eventually, be made stronger by bringing Jordan and the other Arab nations into a larger settlement.The President felt however, that they would not be "pushing hard enough" and was interested in the establishment of a written "land for peace" agreement with Israel returning the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. Sadat and the Egyptian delegation were also demanding the return of Gaza, but Rabin and the Israelis refused to let the territory onto the table. Bush believed that his deal could serve as a compromise and keep the talks going. Several times throughout the tumultuous two weeks in Maine, both the Egyptian and Israeli leaders wanted to scrap negotiations altogether, only to be lured back into the process by personal appeals from the good natured Bush, whose religiosity played a role in his commitment to bringing peace to the Middle East. Biographers also believe that Bush’s guilt over his affair with Jennifer Fitzgerald, and his feelings of gratitude for having survived the attempt on his life the year before both played a role in his fiery passion for peacemaking, as he sought redemption and validation through his work.
Considered an excellent, patient, and wise mediator who arbitrated concessions with confidence, President Bush made an indefatigable commitment to find formulas, definitions, and solutions to the many complex variables at play, regardless of the perceived or real political limitations on the situation. Despite high tensions and personal animosity between Rabin and Sadat, Bush was capable of soothing fears and anxieties, always with the goal of keeping the negotiations going. As long as everyone was talking, they weren’t shooting at each other. Bush gradually understood the importance historical events had upon determining personal ideology, but he would not allow it to constrain his political options, and he did not want them to limit the options of those with whom he was negotiating, either. George Herbert Walker Bush was above all else, a pragmatic statesman. Rabin and Sadat had such mutual animosity toward one another that they only seldom had direct contact. As a result, Bush had to conduct his own miniscule form of what former NSA Kissinger called “shuttle diplomacy” by holding solitary meetings with either Sadat or Rabin in one part of the family compound, then returning to the wing of the third party to relay what had been discussed with the first. Rabin and Sadat were "literally not on speaking terms," and "claustrophobia was setting in”, according to several White House aides. A particularly vexing situation arose on the tenth stalemated day of the talks. The issues of the withdrawal of Israeli settlements from the Sinai and the sovereignty status of Gaza created what seemed to be an impasse. This left Bush with a difficult choice. He could attempt to salvage the agreement by conceding the issue of Gaza to Rabin, while supporting Sadat's less controversial position on the removal of all settlements from the Sinai Peninsula. Alternatively, he could have refused to continue the talks, leaked the reasons for their failure to the press, and put the lion’s share of the blame on Rabin. The latter of these however, was not in the President’s nature. Bush chose to press on and for three more days, the leaders negotiated. During this time, Bush believed that a change in scenery from the Maine resort might prove helpful, and so brought both Rabin and Sadat to the Gettysburg National Military Park, to speak to them and use the American Civil War as a simile for their own situation. “Here, we Americans fought brother against brother for our own definitions of freedom.” The President explained. “In the end, we were reconciled and made the stronger for it.” Rabin and Sadat, it turned out, were both moved by Bush’s gesture. This, combined with Bush’s decision to not allow the media into Walker’s Point contributed to the talks’ ultimate success. Because Sadat and Rabin did not have the opportunity to relay what was happening behind closed doors to their people directly during the summit, walking away from the talks by either of them would have laid the blame for their failure solely on the dissenting leader’s shoulders. They would rather walk away with a victory than total defeat. The leaders agreed to accept the negotiated concessions demanded by either side, and spent the following four days hashing out the details of an Israeli retreat from the Sinai and Egypt renouncing any territorial claims on Gaza. It was a true watershed moment in American foreign affairs of the 20th Century and beyond.
The resulting “Walker’s Point Accords” marked a turning point in the Middle East Peace Process as Egypt became the first Arab nation to recognize Israel as a legitimate state, and realigned itself more closely with the western camp in the Cold War. The Arab League, increasingly led by the power hungry Saddam Hussein, would ban Egypt as a member beginning in 1977, though the Arab World was beginning to split over its unilateral opposition to Israel, and the PLO began floating rumors to Washington and Tel Aviv that it would also be willing to enter talks to end the Palestinian conflict. The Accords were also a desperately needed show of strength, grit, and determination by the Bush Administration, which proved to the American people that it was ready, willing, and able to face any challenge the world might throw at it, no matter how large or seemingly insurmountable. As Rabin and Sadat shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 for their efforts, President Bush saw a massive upturn in support, just in time for him to ride the wave all the way to the August Republican National Convention in Kansas City, where he and Vice President Reagan were handily renominated for a second full term on the first ballot. The Accords also secured George H.W. Bush’s historical legacy as one of America’s finest diplomatic leaders, a status he would cherish, and tout all across America on the campaign trail, as he sought to counter claims that his domestic policies proved him to be an “out of touch, indecisive” leader.
Next Time on Blue Skies in Camelot: More Events in the Middle East
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Waiting on tenderhooks on the next update!
