Nigel Cawthorne: Sex Lives of the Great Dictators

In July 1977, Princess Mishaal and Muhammad Al Shaer were dragged out into a dusty square on the outskirts of Jeddah. Against all precedent, Mishaal was shot while Muhammad looked on. He was then beheaded and his body dismembered. Two days later, the story was released that Princess Mishaal had died in a drowning accident.

Unfortunately, Princess Mishaal’s German nurse, Rosemary Beacheau, knew the whole story. It was leaked to a TV producer in Britain who made Death of a Princess. There was huge pressure not to have it shown. Mobil Oil suspended its sponsorship of the Public Broadcasting System in America, fearing the film’s effect on the Saudi-American relationship; Saudi tourists to London dropped by 70 per cent; and the Saudi government spent $500 million on a damage-limitation exercise.

Princess Mishaal was not the only one to suffer such a (ate. Eight months after the airing of Death of a Princess, another prince asked King Khalid to execute his adulterous daughter. Nervous of another international scandal, the King suggested that his brother handle the situation himself. He did. He took his daughter to the swimming pool in his palace and drowned her. Again the announcement was made that it was an accident. The father had been married thirty-six times.

There can be little doubt that Saddam Hussein is a monster, but there are, apparently, a number of women who find a bushy macho moustache, olive green fatigues, an iron fist and a carelessness with the lives of others, irresistibly sexy.

Saddam’s sex life began conventionally enough. After taking part in the assassination of President Qassem of Iraq — he only provided covering fire for the assassins though his semiofficial biography says that he did the deed single-handed — he escaped to Syria, then moved on to Egypt where he enrolled as a law student at the University of Cairo.

While he was there, he decided to marry his cousin Sajidah Talfah. They had known each other since childhood and had been brought up as brother and sister. Following tradition, he wrote requesting her hand in marriage. It was granted. The couple were engaged in Egypt and married shortly after their return to Iraq in 1963. A year later, their first son Udai was born.

Sadly, Saddam Hussein did not have time to finish his law studies in Cairo. Not a man to be disappointed, in 1972 he strode into Baghdad University with a pistol in his belt, surrounded by bodyguards, and was awarded a law degree. Four years later, he got his M.A. the same way.

There have been numerous reports of Saddam Hussein’s marital infidelity. One report states that the wife of an Armenian merchant was his mistress for a while. Another says that his girlfriend was the daughter of a former Iraqi ambassador. There were rumours that Saddam’s trusted bodyguard and presidential food taster, Kamel Hanna Jejjo, fixed him up with women. Usually this was handled discreetly, but as Saddam became increasingly bored with his wife, he began to be seen around Baghdad with Samira Shahbandar, the ex-wife of the Chairman of Iraqi Airways — though the opposition suggested that Samira was not actually a member of the respected Shahbandar family at all, but the family cook who had borrowed the name.

Samira became pregnant, rocking Saddam Hussein’s marriage and damaging his carefully nurtured “family man” image. For a time, the story went, Saddam was considering either divorcing Sajidah or taking Samira as a second wife, which is acceptable under Islamic law but against Ba’ath Party policy.

A son was born. The opposition say he was named Ali. This would mean that Saddam was “Abu Ali”, literally “father of Ali” but also an Arabic idiom for a trickster.

Saddam’s first son, Udai, had grown up to be fiercely protective of his mother and not a man to take things lying down. He had already killed an army colonel who tried to prevent him seducing his teenaged daughter, and an officer who took exception to the pass Udai had made at his wife in a Baghdad disco.

Udai knew that the presidential food-taster Jejjo had introduced Samira to his father and had acted as go-between during the affair. In a drunken rage, Udai beat Jejjo to death. There followed the mother of all family rows. Saddam had Udai thrown in jail. Sajidah immediately jumped to her son’s defence.

“Why arrest him?” she asked her husband. “After all, it is not the first time he has killed. Nor is he the only one in the family who has killed.”

Saddam relented and Udai was sent into luxurious exile in Switzerland. This was done at the request of the Jejjo family, Saddam announced publicly. They had accepted that what had happened was “the will of Allah”, he said.

In 1995, the deep divisions in the family surfaced again, when Saddam’s two daughters and their husbands ran off to Jordan. In 1996, they returned to Iraq. Within hours of crossing the border, Saddam’s sons-in-law were murdered by Udai. That helps confirm Saddam’s position as a bloodthirsty dictator. Few doubt that his womanizing will continue too until, like so many dictators this century, Saddam Hussein is driven from power.