The World Was Going Our Way (33 page)
Read The World Was Going Our Way Online
Authors: Christopher Andrew
Tags: #Biographies & Memoirs, #True Accounts, #Espionage, #History, #Europe, #Ireland, #Military, #Intelligence & Espionage, #Modern (16th-21st Centuries), #20th Century, #Russia, #World
During the early 1970s the Soviet Union’s most reliable major ally in the Middle East increasingly appeared to be Iran’s main regional opponent, Iraq. The preoccupation of the Ba‘thist regime in Baghdad with plots against it, probably even greater than that of the Shah, was skilfully exploited by the KGB, which claimed much of the credit for alerting President Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr and other Iraqi leaders to a conspiracy against them in January 1970. The Iraqi government declared that the conspirators had been acting in collusion with ‘the reactionary government in Iran’, with which it had a serious border dispute over the Shatt el-Arab waterway, and expelled the Iranian ambassador. In December Iran in turn accused Iraq of plotting to overthrow the Shah. Diplomatic relations between the two states were broken off in the following year. The Baghdad residency reported with satisfaction that, as a result of its active measures, many ‘reactionary’ army officers and politicians had been arrested and executed - among them a former military governor of Baghdad whom it blamed for a massacre of Iraqi Communists seven years earlier.
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In 1972 another active-measures operation, codenamed FEMIDA, compromised further Iraqi ‘reactionaries’ who were accused of contact with SAVAK and SIS.
27
Simultaneously Moscow put pressure on a somewhat reluctant Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) to reach an accommodation with the Ba‘th regime.
28
In April 1972 the Soviet Union and Iraq signed a fifteen-year Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation. A month later two Communists entered the Iraqi cabinet. In July 1973 the Ba‘th and ICP joined in a Ba‘th-dominated Progressive National and Patriotic Front (PNPF).
29
26
In 1972 another active-measures operation, codenamed FEMIDA, compromised further Iraqi ‘reactionaries’ who were accused of contact with SAVAK and SIS.
27
Simultaneously Moscow put pressure on a somewhat reluctant Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) to reach an accommodation with the Ba‘th regime.
28
In April 1972 the Soviet Union and Iraq signed a fifteen-year Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation. A month later two Communists entered the Iraqi cabinet. In July 1973 the Ba‘th and ICP joined in a Ba‘th-dominated Progressive National and Patriotic Front (PNPF).
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Simultaneously the KGB maintained covert contact in northern Iraq with the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), Mullah Mustafa Barzani (codenamed RAIS), who had spent over a decade in exile in the Soviet Union after the Second World War. From 1968 to 1972 the KGB carried out twenty-three operations to pass funds to Barzani.
30
In 1973, after a series of clashes with Iraqi forces, Barzani publicly accused the Baghdad government of duplicity and double-dealing. Forced to choose between the Ba‘th regime and the Kurds, Moscow opted for the Ba‘th. Betrayed by the Soviet Union, Barzani turned instead to Iran, the United States and Israel, who provided him with covert support. In 1974 full-scale war broke out between the Kurds and the Ba‘th regime. At its peak, 45,000 Kurdish guerrillas succeeded in pinning down over 80,000 Iraqi troops, 80 per cent of the total. According to a UN report, 300,000 people were forced to flee their homes. The war ended in victory for Baghdad in 1975 when Iran and Iraq settled their differences and the Shah withdrew support for the Kurds. Barzani was forced into exile in the United States, where he died four years later. In July 1975 Iraq became the first Middle Eastern country to be admitted to Comecon with the status of observer.
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In 1973, after a series of clashes with Iraqi forces, Barzani publicly accused the Baghdad government of duplicity and double-dealing. Forced to choose between the Ba‘th regime and the Kurds, Moscow opted for the Ba‘th. Betrayed by the Soviet Union, Barzani turned instead to Iran, the United States and Israel, who provided him with covert support. In 1974 full-scale war broke out between the Kurds and the Ba‘th regime. At its peak, 45,000 Kurdish guerrillas succeeded in pinning down over 80,000 Iraqi troops, 80 per cent of the total. According to a UN report, 300,000 people were forced to flee their homes. The war ended in victory for Baghdad in 1975 when Iran and Iraq settled their differences and the Shah withdrew support for the Kurds. Barzani was forced into exile in the United States, where he died four years later. In July 1975 Iraq became the first Middle Eastern country to be admitted to Comecon with the status of observer.
31
Since 1969, the British embassy in Baghdad had correctly identified Saddam Hussein as President Bakr’s ‘heir apparent’. The embassy found him a ‘presentable young man’ with ‘an engaging smile’ who, despite his reputation as a ‘Party extremist’, might ‘mellow’ with added responsibility. Speaking ‘with great warmth and what certainly seemed sincerity’, Saddam assured the British ambassador that Iraq’s relationship with the Soviet bloc ‘was forced upon it by the central problem of Palestine’, and expressed an apparently ‘earnest’ hope for improved ties with Britain and the United States. The ambassador summed up Saddam as ‘a formidable, single-minded and hard-headed member of the Ba‘athist hierarchy, but one with whom, if only one could see more of him, it would be possible to do business’.
32
Moscow, however, was impressed by a quite different side of the Iraqi heir apparent’s devious personality. Saddam Hussein’s fascination with the career of Joseph Stalin appeared to offer an unusual opportunity to strengthen Soviet-Iraqi relations. Saddam’s henchmen had frequently to listen to his tedious descriptions of Stalin’s powers of dictatorial leadership. A Kurdish politician, Dr Mahmoud Othman, who visited his private apartments, was struck not merely by the crates of Johnnie Walker whisky but also by his bookshelf of works on Stalin translated into Arabic. ‘You seem fond of Stalin,’ Othman told him. ‘Yes,’ replied Saddam, ‘I like the way he governed his country.’ The KGB arranged secret visits by Saddam to all the villas which had been reserved for Stalin’s private use along the Black Sea coast. Stalin’s biographer, Simon Sebag Montefiore, has plausibly argued that among the qualities which Saddam so admired was Stalin’s sadistic pleasure in disposing of his enemies. ‘My greatest delight’, Stalin once admitted, ‘is to mark one’s enemy, avenge oneself thoroughly, then go to sleep.’ Saddam shared a similar mindset.
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Moscow, however, was impressed by a quite different side of the Iraqi heir apparent’s devious personality. Saddam Hussein’s fascination with the career of Joseph Stalin appeared to offer an unusual opportunity to strengthen Soviet-Iraqi relations. Saddam’s henchmen had frequently to listen to his tedious descriptions of Stalin’s powers of dictatorial leadership. A Kurdish politician, Dr Mahmoud Othman, who visited his private apartments, was struck not merely by the crates of Johnnie Walker whisky but also by his bookshelf of works on Stalin translated into Arabic. ‘You seem fond of Stalin,’ Othman told him. ‘Yes,’ replied Saddam, ‘I like the way he governed his country.’ The KGB arranged secret visits by Saddam to all the villas which had been reserved for Stalin’s private use along the Black Sea coast. Stalin’s biographer, Simon Sebag Montefiore, has plausibly argued that among the qualities which Saddam so admired was Stalin’s sadistic pleasure in disposing of his enemies. ‘My greatest delight’, Stalin once admitted, ‘is to mark one’s enemy, avenge oneself thoroughly, then go to sleep.’ Saddam shared a similar mindset.
33
Moscow’s hopes of turning Iraq into its major Middle Eastern bridgehead were reflected in its growing military investment. From 1974 to 1978 Iraq was the chief recipient of Soviet military aid to the Third World. The Soviet bridgehead in Baghdad, however, was always insecure. With Kurdish resistance apparently broken in 1975, the brutal Ba‘th regime had less need thereafter of Communist support and set about achieving the complete subordination of the ICP. Desperate to avoid an open breach with Baghdad, Moscow made no public protest at the open persecution of Iraqi Communists which began in 1977. The Iraqi leader most suspicious of the Soviet-ICP connection was probably Saddam Hussein, whose admiration for Stalin did not extend to sympathy for Iraqi Communists. Saddam’s suspicions of a plot to prepare a Communist take-over in Iraq were fuelled by Soviet support for a coup in Afghanistan in April 1978 which brought to power a Marxist regime headed by Nur Muhammad Taraki. The Ba‘th regime in Iraq swiftly denounced the ICP’s ‘subservience to Moscow’. Twenty-one Party members were executed on charges of ‘forming secret groups inside the Iraqi armed forces’. ‘The Soviet Union’, declared Saddam Hussein, ‘will not be satisfied until the whole world becomes Communist.’
34
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With the Party forced into an underground existence, an ICP Politburo member, Zaki Khayri (codenamed SEDOY, ‘Bald’), asked the KGB resident in Baghdad to take the Party archives into safe-keeping. In an elaborate operation on 18 August 1978 approved by the Centre, an ICP car containing three trunks of Party documents followed a pre-arranged route through Baghdad, kept under surveillance by KGB officers, to a secret rendezvous where the archives were transferred to a residency car.
35
In November, A. A. Barkovsky, the Soviet ambassador to Iraq, reported to Moscow that three of the seven-man Politburo, including the general secretary, Aziz Muhammad (codenamed GLAVNY, ‘Head’), had gone abroad some months earlier. According to the ambassador, their absence had aroused great suspicion within the Ba‘th regime, which doubtless suspected that a plot was being hatched.
36
Its suspicions would have been all the greater had it known that Muhammad was in exile in Moscow and communicating with the ICP via the Baghdad residency.
37
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In November, A. A. Barkovsky, the Soviet ambassador to Iraq, reported to Moscow that three of the seven-man Politburo, including the general secretary, Aziz Muhammad (codenamed GLAVNY, ‘Head’), had gone abroad some months earlier. According to the ambassador, their absence had aroused great suspicion within the Ba‘th regime, which doubtless suspected that a plot was being hatched.
36
Its suspicions would have been all the greater had it known that Muhammad was in exile in Moscow and communicating with the ICP via the Baghdad residency.
37
Early in 1979 the purge of ICP members intensified. Writing in the March issue of the
World Marxist Review
, the Iraqi Communist Nazibah Dulaymi declared that, in addition to executions of Party militants, ‘more than 10,000 persons have been arrested and subjected to mental and physical torture’. She naively expressed her confidence that ‘fraternal Communist and workers’ parties’ would demand ‘an immediate end to the repression against Communists and their friends in Iraq’. The Soviet Communist Party, however, remained silent. At a time when Iraq was at the forefront of the Arab campaign to prevent the Carter administration brokering a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, Moscow was cravenly anxious not to antagonize Baghdad. The torture and execution of Iraqi Communists counted for less in Soviet eyes than Iraqi attempts to disrupt the Middle Eastern peace process.
38
World Marxist Review
, the Iraqi Communist Nazibah Dulaymi declared that, in addition to executions of Party militants, ‘more than 10,000 persons have been arrested and subjected to mental and physical torture’. She naively expressed her confidence that ‘fraternal Communist and workers’ parties’ would demand ‘an immediate end to the repression against Communists and their friends in Iraq’. The Soviet Communist Party, however, remained silent. At a time when Iraq was at the forefront of the Arab campaign to prevent the Carter administration brokering a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, Moscow was cravenly anxious not to antagonize Baghdad. The torture and execution of Iraqi Communists counted for less in Soviet eyes than Iraqi attempts to disrupt the Middle Eastern peace process.
38
The brutal persecution of Iraqi Communists in 1978-79 coincided with the rapid decline and fall of the Shah in Iran. Like Western intelligence agencies, the KGB was taken by surprise. During Hoveyda’s twelve years as Prime Minister (1965-77), the Tehran residency had limited success in penetrating the regime. Its two most important Iranian agents during this period, General Ahmad Mogarebi, codenamed MAN,
39
and a relative of Hoveyda, codenamed ZHAMAN, had both been recruited, apparently as ideological agents, in the early years of the Cold War. Mogarebi was responsible during the final years of the Shah’s rule for arms purchases from the United States and other Western states. According to Vladimir Kuzichkin, who later defected from the Tehran residency, he was ‘regarded as the Residency’s best agent’ and had ‘innumerable connections in various spheres of Iranian life, including the court of the Shah, the government and SAVAK’.
40
Mogarebi became an increasingly mercenary agent whose growing importance was reflected in his monthly salary, raised in 1972 from 150-200 to 330 convertible rubles a month and in 1976 to 500 rubles. In 1976 he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. Because of the shortage of high-grade intelligence from other sources, in 1976-77 the residency breached normal security procedures by contacting Mogarebi every two weeks.
41
The habitual method of contact was by radio communication from a residency car, usually parked within 1,500 metres of his home.
42
For meetings with his controller, Boris Kabanov (remembered by Kuzichkin as ‘Everybody’s favourite, with a sense of humour, good natured, quiet, always smiling . . .’),
43
Mogarebi would leave his house and rendezvous with the nearby car. The fact that a residency car with diplomatic number plates was to be seen in the vicinity of Mogarebi’s house every fortnight might well have led to his arrest by SAVAK in September 1977.
44
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and a relative of Hoveyda, codenamed ZHAMAN, had both been recruited, apparently as ideological agents, in the early years of the Cold War. Mogarebi was responsible during the final years of the Shah’s rule for arms purchases from the United States and other Western states. According to Vladimir Kuzichkin, who later defected from the Tehran residency, he was ‘regarded as the Residency’s best agent’ and had ‘innumerable connections in various spheres of Iranian life, including the court of the Shah, the government and SAVAK’.
40
Mogarebi became an increasingly mercenary agent whose growing importance was reflected in his monthly salary, raised in 1972 from 150-200 to 330 convertible rubles a month and in 1976 to 500 rubles. In 1976 he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. Because of the shortage of high-grade intelligence from other sources, in 1976-77 the residency breached normal security procedures by contacting Mogarebi every two weeks.
41
The habitual method of contact was by radio communication from a residency car, usually parked within 1,500 metres of his home.
42
For meetings with his controller, Boris Kabanov (remembered by Kuzichkin as ‘Everybody’s favourite, with a sense of humour, good natured, quiet, always smiling . . .’),
43
Mogarebi would leave his house and rendezvous with the nearby car. The fact that a residency car with diplomatic number plates was to be seen in the vicinity of Mogarebi’s house every fortnight might well have led to his arrest by SAVAK in September 1977.
44
The KGB found ZHAMAN far less reliable than Mogarebi. When recruited as an ideological agent in 1952, he eulogized the Soviet Union as ‘the stronghold of progress in the struggle against Imperialism and Anglo-American dominance in Iran’. His KGB file, however, complains that he was sometimes ‘uncontrollable’. In 1956 he shocked his controller by condemning the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian Uprising. By the time his relative Amir Abbas Hoveyda became Prime Minister, ZHAMAN’s ideological commitment to the Soviet cause had faded away. Though his file claims that he adopted a more pro-Western outlook for careerist reasons, it also acknowledges that he became genuinely devoted to the Shah, to whom he owed his career in the official bureaucracy. The Tehran residency reported that, because of his personal wealth, it had no means of putting financial pressure on him. In the mid-1970s, ZHAMAN none the less took part in KGB active-measures operations, passing disinformation prepared by Service A to the Shah as well as to American, Egyptian, Pakistani and Somali contacts. In 1977 ZHAMAN was presented by the KGB with a thousand-dollar pair of cufflinks for his assistance in promoting Soviet active measures.
45
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In the summer of 1977 economic crisis and growing discontent at rising prices and daily power cuts in Tehran led to the resignation of Hoveyda as Prime Minister. Over the next year the newly arrived Soviet ambassador, Vladimir Vinogradov, formerly stationed in Cairo, paid regular calls on Hoveyda at home. SAVAK, predictably, took a close interest in his movements. On one occasion Hoveyda told Vinogradov that he had seen a SAVAK report to the Shah complaining that they were having ‘long political discussions’.
46
As unrest spilled into the Tehran streets, the slogans used by demonstrators were mostly religious rather than political:
Allahu Akhbar!
, then increasingly
Allahu Akhbar! Khomeini Rakhbar!
(‘God is Great! Khomeini is Our Leader!’). The Mujahidin and Fedayin, left-wing groupings who organized demonstrations and strikes, chose the same slogans to win popular support.
47
The KGB residency failed to take seriously the religious fervour of the Tehran demonstrations and pinned its hopes instead on the prospect of a left-wing revolution sweeping the Shah from power. The Centre was much less optimistic about the prospects of the Iranian left. ‘The most likely alternative to the Shah if he were to leave the political stage’, it believed, ‘would be the military. The opposition to the regime in Iran is weak and uncoordinated. In general the opposition in Iran is not a threat to the present regime . . .’
48
It did not yet occur either to the KGB or to most Western intelligence services that the seventy-five-year-old Shi’ite fundamentalist Ayatollah Khomeini, who had lived in exile for the past thirteen years, represented any serious threat to the Shah.
49
Gary Sick, the desk officer for Iran in the US National Security Council, noted in retrospect, ‘The notion of a popular revolution leading to the establishment of a theocratic state seemed so unlikely as to be absurd.’ On that point both the White House and the Kremlin were agreed. Visiting Tehran at the beginning of 1978, President Jimmy Carter declared in a New Year toast, ‘Iran is an island of stability in one of the more troubled parts of the world.’ Only a year later, the Shah was forced to abdicate.
50
46
As unrest spilled into the Tehran streets, the slogans used by demonstrators were mostly religious rather than political:
Allahu Akhbar!
, then increasingly
Allahu Akhbar! Khomeini Rakhbar!
(‘God is Great! Khomeini is Our Leader!’). The Mujahidin and Fedayin, left-wing groupings who organized demonstrations and strikes, chose the same slogans to win popular support.
47
The KGB residency failed to take seriously the religious fervour of the Tehran demonstrations and pinned its hopes instead on the prospect of a left-wing revolution sweeping the Shah from power. The Centre was much less optimistic about the prospects of the Iranian left. ‘The most likely alternative to the Shah if he were to leave the political stage’, it believed, ‘would be the military. The opposition to the regime in Iran is weak and uncoordinated. In general the opposition in Iran is not a threat to the present regime . . .’
48
It did not yet occur either to the KGB or to most Western intelligence services that the seventy-five-year-old Shi’ite fundamentalist Ayatollah Khomeini, who had lived in exile for the past thirteen years, represented any serious threat to the Shah.
49
Gary Sick, the desk officer for Iran in the US National Security Council, noted in retrospect, ‘The notion of a popular revolution leading to the establishment of a theocratic state seemed so unlikely as to be absurd.’ On that point both the White House and the Kremlin were agreed. Visiting Tehran at the beginning of 1978, President Jimmy Carter declared in a New Year toast, ‘Iran is an island of stability in one of the more troubled parts of the world.’ Only a year later, the Shah was forced to abdicate.
50
The well-publicized arrest of Mogarebi in September 1977 produced what Kuzichkin described as ‘an intelligence vacuum’ in the Tehran residency. As a security precaution, it was ordered to suspend agent operations and prepare a damage assessment. With ZHAMAN abroad, the residency had in any case no other agent capable of providing high-grade intelligence during this critical period.
51
The residency’s problems were compounded by the Iranian refusal to grant visas for a number of FCD officers whom the Centre had intended to station in Tehran. During a visit to Hoveyda’s house in February 1978, Vinogradov asked if he could intervene with the authorities to help obtain the visas. Hoveyda declined. ‘I will tell you frankly what is happening,’ he replied. ‘The point is that SAVAK does not want to let the KGB into Iran.’
52
By this time, operating conditions in Tehran had become so difficult and the surveillance of the Soviet embassy so tight that the residency appealed to the Centre to retaliate against the Iranian embassy in Moscow. Its suggestions for the harassment of Iranian embassy personnel included draining the brake fluid from their cars and slashing their tyres.
53
51
The residency’s problems were compounded by the Iranian refusal to grant visas for a number of FCD officers whom the Centre had intended to station in Tehran. During a visit to Hoveyda’s house in February 1978, Vinogradov asked if he could intervene with the authorities to help obtain the visas. Hoveyda declined. ‘I will tell you frankly what is happening,’ he replied. ‘The point is that SAVAK does not want to let the KGB into Iran.’
52
By this time, operating conditions in Tehran had become so difficult and the surveillance of the Soviet embassy so tight that the residency appealed to the Centre to retaliate against the Iranian embassy in Moscow. Its suggestions for the harassment of Iranian embassy personnel included draining the brake fluid from their cars and slashing their tyres.
53
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