Saddam Hussein is our generation’s Adolf Hitler. In the 22 years since he took total control of this ancient land of 22 million people, he’s conducted a war with Iran, invaded Kuwait, and waged a genocidal campaign against his own people. Saddam’s reign of terror, however, may be coming to a close.
Last year Asharq al-Awsata, an Arab newspaper, reported that the Iraqi leader is terminally ill with lymph cancer. Like Hitler, Saddam has killed every real or imagined rival. Who could possibly succeed one of the most feared men on earth?
The two men maneuvering to rule Iraq are virtually unknown outside the Middle East. They are the two brothers who underwent their bloody rite of passage more than 20 years ago. Uday (“you-die”), 37, and Qusay (“coo-sigh”) 34, are scions of a criminal enterprise masquerading as government. In Iraq it’s called the Issaba. In Sicily it’s called the Mafia. Uday and Qusay are the sons of its don of dons.
The Party Animal
By 1984 disturbing stories of the 20-year-old Uday’s violent behavior were leaking out from his inner circle. There was the time Uday made a group of gypsy singers stand in a line, drop their pants, and sing while he fired a machine gun over their heads until they urinated from fear. Others whispered of the time Uday and his cronies had ridden to the resort town of Habanniya on their BMW 1000 motorcycles, abducted a newlywed off the street, and raped her. Afterward the disgraced girl threw herself from the seventh-floor balcony of Uday’s hotel room and died at her husband’s feet. When he cursed Uday, he was arrested for treason and executed.
Uday was spinning out of control. There was no mistaking him in the clubs and hotels of the city. The muscular six-foot psychopath with the Miami Vice stubble favored gold-rimmed, mirrored Ray-Bans, seven-inch Cuban Montecristos, and jewel-encrusted Rolex watches.
It was the look he was sporting on a crisp, dry winter day in 1987 when he drove around the campus of the University of Baghdad looking for action. He caught sight of Nahle Sabet, a pretty architecture student from a respected middle-class Christian family he’d noticed when he occasionally attended classes. He cruised past her slowly now, honking, trying to get her attention. She refused to even look in his direction.
Two days later Sabet was a few blocks from her family’s home in a Baghdad suburb when a Mercedes sedan screeched to a halt on the sidewalk in front of her. Two men in dark suits got out and identified themselves as secret police. They told her she was wanted at headquarters for questioning and led her into the car.
Headquarters turned out to be a farm Uday owned several miles from Baghdad. The frightened girl was hustled into a drawing room, where Uday sat at an antique desk. “You’re very lucky,” he said. “I’ve chosen you as my new girlfriend.”
“You’re insane,” Sabet stammered. “I want to go home!”
“Strip her,” Uday ordered his guards. The burly men pounced on her and ripped at her clothes until she was cowering naked on the floor. Uday towered over her, unrolling his favorite wire cable. “First I will beat you. Then, if you’re good, I’ll allow you to please myself and my men.”
It took Uday and his men almost three months to break Sabet’s spirit. Then Uday tired of her. Her face was ruined; her body was a mass of bruises. He had the guards take her out to the kennels where he kept his attack dogs—Rottweilers, Dobermans, and great danes. He’d told the keepers several days before to stop feeding them.
Nahle Sabet was then smeared with honey and tossed into the kennels, where all evidence of the crime disappeared.
Uday dragged his girlfriend into his math class. The professor was outraged at this lack of decorum but could say nothing. He’d heard about the elderly professor who gave Uday a low mark and the next day was dragged out of class by the teenager’s bodyguards and beaten with cricket bats.
The professor started the class. Within a minute, Uday was up, walking his girlfriend to the door. “For the offense of boring me,” Uday warned the teacher as he reached the door, “when I become the ruler of Iraq, I’m going to have you shot.”
