Free The Weight of a Mustard Seed by Wendell Steavenson Page B

correct information.” The Istikhbarat chief’s face was lifeless, it was impossible to tell if he was angry or ashamed. Adnan Khairallah was calming the situation down, saying “you win some, you lose some,” that war was not all victories—Saddam responded slowly and with sarcastic venom and continued to stare at the Istikhbarat chief.
    Hamdani proudly pulled himself to attention and gave his first report to his president. He explained his unit’s position, pointing at the map tacked up on the wall of the bunker, the enemy’s line of supply and how the Joboura pass could be cut. Saddam nodded. Adnan Khairallah nodded. Then, just as hefinished, General Latif came in, wearing a military motorcycle helmet and a uniform (Hamdani noticed, slightly shocked) that was old with a frayed hem. Hamdani took the opportunity to salute and leave. He went out into another trench where an operations room had been dug out and lined with sandbags. Staff officers sat around its edges with radios, telephones, maps and radar equipment and gave him a cup of tea and pointed out topographies until he was called ten minutes later to come and have official photographs taken. Saddam, Adnan Khairallah, the lambasted Istikhbarat chief and Saddam’s bodyguard gathered together to commemorate the moment. Saddam was trying to be a little nicer to the Istikhbarat chief, perhaps regretting his earlier harshness, and called him an “old comrade,” but the Istikhbarat chief remained shocked and silent. Saddam continued talking, and ordered that the attack should be halted for a few days to allow more reinforcements to be brought up. “Let’s wait, prepare ourselves and then regain this lost ground.” General Latif, Hamdani was alarmed to notice, was unaccountably waving his Kalashnikov around, trying out different poses, and for a moment managed to point its barrel at Saddam. The bodyguard abruptly intervened, gripped the barrel of the gun and pointed it down to the ground. After the shutter click and formalities, Saddam and his entourage left by helicopter.
    So the fighting stopped for a few days and reinforcements were called. In those early months of war the Iraqi army was small and thinly stretched and the Iranians had American Cobra attack helicopters left over from the arms shipments to the Shah which devastated Iraqi armor with their rockets. The Iranians were emboldened and used the time to pull heavy guns up to the top of Seif Said and commence a distracting attack in the Kurdish mountains in the North.
    When the fighting resumed, Major Kamel Sachet’s Special Forces brigade, the heroes of Mohamara, were part of the 10,000-man assault General Latif sent, again in blunt fashion against Iranian machine guns, up the slopes. The battle continued for a month, with various offensives and skirmishes, but the Iraqi forces were unable to break through. When it was clear that the assault had failed Latif sent Kamel Sachet and a number of other commanders, under charge of dereliction, to a military tribunal in Baghdad. Hamdani’s version was that Saddam himself personally intervened in Kamel Sachet’s case, remembering his bravery at Mohamara and, impressed at how he defended his actions at Seif Said with an honest assessment, released him and a number of other officers.
    Whether this is what happened, or some approximation, is not perhaps as important as the idea of this episode as a template for the war, and for Kamel Sachet’s place in it, that followed. Seif Said was the first Iranian attack of the war, the first Iraqi defeat (the Iranians maintained a force at Seif Said until the end of the war in 1988 and when they left, they withdrew unilaterally), and the first battle in which commanders were shot for failure. Thereafter, battles were often pointlessly bloody, directed by orders that could never be questioned and the death bullet could come from in front or from behind. For Kamel Sachet