SHEIKH MOHAMMED OFFERED SADDAM ASYLUM IN A BID TO PREVENT THE INVASION OF IRAQ
▶ In further revelations from his new memoir, details have emerged of the Ruler of Dubai’s extraordinary journey to meet the Iraqi leader in a Basra safe house. Rory Reynolds and James Langton report
As war loomed in early 2003, speculation rose of a possible peaceful settlement that could prevent the US invasion of Iraq, with Saddam Hussein voluntarily going into exile.
Now the full story of what took place, and the details of the UAE’s desperate attempt to head off yet another conflict in the Middle East, is told in the new autobiography of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai.
Sheikh Mohammed, who was the UAE negotiator, paints a vivid and troubled portrait of the Iraqi dictator, paranoid about his own safety and apparently unconcerned or unaware of the disaster that was about to engulf his people.
The two had already met near the end of the 1980 to 1988 Iraq-Iran War. Sheikh Mohammed was on a mission from Sheikh Zayed to try to improve relations between the countries.
Instead, he was lectured and harangued by Saddam over the UAE’s friendly relations with the West. The Iraqi even accused him of supporting Iran.
“At the time, Saddam was at the peak of his pride and glory,” Sheikh Mohammed writes. “I still remember how he frankly expressed his reservations against me to Sheikh Zayed. He said I leaned too much to the West and did not treat Arabs properly.”
Sheikh Mohammed told Saddam that the only aid given to Iran by the UAE was food and pointed out that similar shipments were being sent to Iraq.
“Saddam was shocked at my words because they were bold,” Sheikh Mohammed writes. “He was used to hearing what he wanted to. Perhaps my response was surprising to him because he had formed a weak impression of me.”
While relations between the two men later improved, the attempt to head off the Second Gulf War reinforced the difficultly of dealing with Saddam.
He describes how an agitated Saddam repeatedly moved between chairs for fear of being hit by a sniper’s bullet during their meeting in Basra, weeks before the US-led invasion.
Sheikh Mohammed writes that the Iraqi leader was ground down by his failures over the Iran War, the invasion of Kuwait, and having “suffered successive defeats, slept with one eye open”.
In a tense conversation that lasted more than five hours, Saddam left the room five times before he finally rejected an offer of exile.
“I told him that if he was ultimately forced to leave Iraq, Dubai was his second city and he was always welcome there,” Sheikh Mohammed writes.
“He said: ‘But Sheikh Mohammed, I am speaking about saving Iraq, not myself.’ I held him in much higher regard after he said this.”
At the same time, the UAE was trying to persuade the US and President George W Bush to consider alternatives to war as the American government reshaped its policies in reaction to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
“I knew that the invasion of Iraq was among President Bush’s goals,” Sheikh Mohammed writes. “We tried to dissuade him against invading Iraq.
“I asked him to maintain his efforts to support the Iraqi people by building schools and hospitals, and paving roads. I knew, however, that he had already made up his mind to resort to force.
“I asked the Americans to give us a chance to act accordingly. I then asked them: ‘What do you want from Saddam?’ I sensed that the region was on the verge of war and I was prepared to do anything to avoid it for the sake of the people.
“The Americans replied that they wanted to search for weapons of mass destruction. I knew that the consequences of the war would be felt in the entire region, especially Iraq. It would be destructive.
“I tried to convince them to task Emiratis to carry out negotiations. We Arabs are alike in our traditions and understand how Saddam and his like think.”
This was not the first, nor would it be the last attempt by the leaders of the UAE to try to resolve the conflicts and offer support to the people of the Middle East.
Sheikh Mohammed’s memoir includes his impressions of the massacres of Palestinians carried out by militia close to the right-wing Christian Kataeb party, in which the Israeli army was complicit by allowing the gunmen access to the Palestinians, then failing to intervene.
The massacre, he says, was something he could see coming.
“I had kept in touch with all partners in the region,” Sheikh Mohammed says. “I knew that a massacre was going to happen. When I saw the images of the victims, especially the women and children, I realised that our efforts have been in vain.
“I managed personally the Emirati initiative following the directives of the supreme leader Sheikh Zayed. S130 jets were loaded with tonnes of humanitarian aid in one of the major organised operations in the Gulf.”
Syria and Libya are more recent examples of the destructive nature of conflicts in the region and the failure of their leadership.
Before becoming president, Bashar Al Assad spoke with Sheikh Mohammed about his hopes for Syria.
On a visit to Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed drove Mr Al Assad around the city and they eventually strolled around one of the city’s department stores.
“No one bothered us,” he writes. “We spoke of the future of technology and its role in development. He showed great interest in investing in technology for serving his country. “He assured me that he would make changes in Syria. I forged a good relationship with him after that day.
“A few years later he again visited Dubai, this time as President Bashar Assad. He asked me how the government of Dubai rules its city. He had a great desire to develop the administration and government in Syria.
“I spoke to him a lot about Dubai and its openness, and how our governance focuses on the private sector. He expressed his deep admiration for Dubai, saying that he wanted to replicate the experience in Syria.”
Then, as the civil war deepened, Mr Al Assad “started living in a different world as he watched his country drown in blood and destruction that had befallen on Syria and oversteered thousands of years of history”, Sheikh Mohammed writes.
The result, he says is more than 400,000 dead, mostly civilians, more than 10 million refugees and up to US$4 billion in destroyed infrastructure.
Sheikh Mohammed says it is his great wish that Syria will “regain its history and its culture”.
“I still have hope and I am certain that the Syrian people, who were able to build 40 civilisations on their land, would be able to build a new one,” he writes. “This is my conviction.”
Muammar Qaddafi of Libya was another dictator who believed he could adopt the Dubai model for success.
“I remember how he once called me to tell me that he wanted to build a new Dubai in Libya and for it to act as the economic capital of Africa,” Sheikh Mohammed writes.
“After the US invasion of Iraq in search of weapons of mass destruction, which it alleged that Saddam possessed, Qaddafi came out before the world to declare that Libya had a nuclear programme.”
He asked that it be removed, paving the way for prosperity in his country.
“We were among those whom he approached,” Sheikh Mohammed writes. “He asked me to help him build a new Dubai in Libya as part of his drive to become open to the world.”
The then head of the Dubai Executive office, Mohammed Al Qarqawi, was sent to Tripoli.
“There, he saw the Libyan leader sitting in a large office and surfing the internet in a way that showed that he had little knowledge of what he was doing,” Sheikh Mohammed shows.
“After his little show, Qaddafi told him that he greatly admired what Sheikh Mohammed has done in Dubai. ‘I want to do the same thing in Libya. I am asking you to invest in Libya’.”
The reality, says Sheikh Mohammed, is that many leaders who seek to replicate the Dubai model do not understand what it involves.
“There’s a huge difference between what you wish for and what you do to fulfil your wishes and dreams. Wishes and reality are widely spread apart.
“The space between them needs to be filled with much determination, persistence and follow-up in addition to plans, money and men. It needs constant work.
“I kick off my day at 6am. I know what all my plans are. I follow my plans. We build, with projects, men and leaders who will lift their work up and drive it forward to become global.
“Each day, we delegate power to young men and women to enable them to lead their country and be engaged. This is how we build the Dubai of today.”
I told him that if he was ultimately forced to leave Iraq, Dubai was his second city and he was always welcome there
Rare are the moments when the curtain that conceals the machinery of state is pulled aside, affording tantalising glimpses of the everyday realities and challenges of power and responsibility. The publication of the autobiographical My
Story – 50 Stories in 50 Years by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai, is one such moment, and it offers a fascinating glimpse of a life of service lived with courage and imagination.
As a document of record, this is an important book that adds crucial detail to pivotal moments in national and regional history. Doubtless, it will have historians racing to revise accounts of some of the most tumultuous events of the past half-century. The revelation that in 2003 Sheikh Mohammed flew to Basra to offer Saddam Hussein asylum in a bid to avert the invasion of Iraq casts the subsequent tragedy in a new light and reinforces the reputation of the UAE as a force for peace and stability.
In these pages we follow in Sheikh Mohammed’s steady footsteps through history. We are present in a tent on the Dubai-Abu Dhabi border in 1968, as Sheikh Mohammed’s father declines the presidency of the future UAE in favour of Sheikh Zayed. We bear witness to ultimately futile efforts to encourage the newly elevated President Bashar Al Assad and the Libyan ruler Muammar Qaddafi to usher their nations down paths that might have led not to war and destruction, but to peace and prosperity.
But the true power of this book lies in the thoroughly human, and humane, perspective of its narrator, a man unlike any other who, with humility and humour, shares the lessons life has taught him. This is the tale of a leader whose passion and vision transformed Dubai from the small, creekside settlement of his youth to the mighty metropolis of today, and has helped to cast the UAE as a major player on the world stage. But it is also the story of a man who has shouldered great responsibility for the sake of his people.