Why didn't Saddam Hussein come clean with WMD

On 28th January, during the hearing before the US Senate Armed Services Committee, the US chief arms inspector Dr. David Kay, after having spent nine months in Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction, summed up his findings in seven key words: " It turns out we were all wrong".

Saddam Hussein's behaviour was strange enough in hindsight. He always took a confrontational posture towards UN arms inspectors. His officers tried to prevent UN inspectors from going where they wanted to go and inspect what they wanted to see. In 1998, several times Iraq refused UN inspectors access to government sites and later to Presidential palaces. Iraq's continuing refusal in cooperating with UN arms inspectors led to a series of bombing attacks by the US under the Clinton administration.

Tap here to add The Daily Star as a trusted source

Thereafter Iraq expelled US arms inspectors from Iraq. In 2000 it was reported that he made the following statement: " We will destroy all the weapons, if they destroy their weapons." From the statement, the US and British intelligence agencies reportedly came to a view that Iraq had something to hide with respect to weapons of mass destruction.

Possible reasons
The pertinent question is: if Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, what was Saddam Hussein thinking? Many political and military analysts have searched for answers for his self-destructing behaviour. It seems that many factors -- both internal and external- could be responsible and a few of them are described below:

First, some say that Saddam Hussein thought that UN was run to the dictates of America and wanted to be defiant to the US. The role of Richard Butler, the former Australian UN chief arms inspector, did not help in this respect. Saddam Hussein doubted the impartiality and objectivity of UN inspectors. He might have believed that UN inspectors were nothing but spies of America to assess the situation for his overthrow or his assassination. Now as various sources have disclosed, the US did run a covert-action campaign against him, starting in 1991 and US intelligence did use UN operations without UN knowledge to gather intelligence for that campaign.

Second, his sense of false pride probably prompted him not to allow UN inspectors to visit his palaces. Hans Blix, the last Swedish UN chief arms inspector, came to the same view. Saddam Hussein wanted to be seen by Arabs as a strong political leader and Iraq to be perceived as regional power. The statements to US interrogators of former Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq, Tariq Aziz and other senior officials, captured after last year's war, revealed that Saddam Hussein was pretending to have weapons of mass destruction in order to enhance his prestige among other Arab nations. He garnered a great admiration from many Arabs believing that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction as against Israel (Israel has in possession weapons of mass destruction including nuclear bombs).

Third, his pretense could be ascribed to domestic politics. The weapons of mass destruction had been an important element of Saddam Hussein's political strategy and strength within Iraq. He used them against the Kurds in Halabja in 1988 and in 1991 during the Shi'ite revolt that broke out after the Gulf War (incidentally the Western powers including the US kept mute on the use of chemical weapons). There is a speculation that he might have feared that if his internal adversaries realised that he no longer had the capability to use these destructive weapons they would try to revolt against him. Thus open admission that he had no weapons of mass destruction could have jeopardised his political position in Iraq.

Fourth, until the Bush administration came to power in 2001, international environment was in his favour because UN sanctions had reportedly caused deaths of about one million Iraqi children from 1991 to 2000. The TV footage showing sick small children in hospitals without medicine and diagnostic equipment raised question of effectiveness of sanctions. Dennis Halliday, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq between 1997-98, resigned in disgust to see the adverse effects of sanctions in Iraq. Saddam Hussein hoped that in the not too distant future, sanctions would be lifted and he did not need to come clean with weapons of mass destruction.

Finally, Iraq was in a mess after the 1991 war and governmental machinery was believed to have not worked efficiently. Some say that there is a possibility that Saddam Hussein's authority was crumbling within his own government. Some Iraqi scientists told US interrogators they avoided or dragged their feet to manufacture weapons of mass destruction. There is a possibility that Saddam Hussein was probably not aware of this fact.

Conclusion
Saddam Hussein made a number of highly miscalculated foreign policy decisions. For example, he attacked Iran in 1980 thinking that Iran was weak after the 1979 Islamic revolution (Arab and Western nations including the US supported him against Iran). In 1990 he invaded Kuwait imagining that no country would come to assist Kuwait. Probably the same bent of mind was at work with him that American would not launch a war without UN approval.

For his colossal mistake, wrong judgment and unrelenting pride, Saddam Hussein is now a captive of the US-led Coalition Authority, reportedly moved to Qatar. His capture on 13 December by the US troops from a mud-hole, providing a sad image of the wild-eyed and unkempt former mighty dictator with disheveled hair and scraggy beard, is likely to remain the lasting memory of him in history. His situation is somewhat comparable to what Shelley wrote on King of Kings, Ozymandias:

"My name is Qzymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Barrister Harun ur Rashid is a former Bangladesh Ambassador to the UN, Geneva.