Future Unclear as Hussein’s Son-in-Law Returns to Iraq

CAIRO —  The Iraqi opposition in exile is saying good riddance to Saddam Hussein’s prodigal son-in-law, who led the Iraqi regime’s secret weapons program before dramatically defecting to Jordan six months ago but who now has returned to Baghdad.

Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel Majid, husband of President Hussein’s eldest and favorite daughter, Tuesday loaded his family and an entourage of about 30 fellow defectors into cars packed with furniture and documents, drove out of Jordan and crossed back into Iraq to face the Iraqi leader’s legendary wrath.

There has been no news of him since, although an Iraqi diplomat in Amman, the Jordanian capital, predicted Majid “will be safe and welcomed in his country and will not be punished for his misdemeanor.”

Many outside observers doubted that. “I’d have thought his life expectancy has dropped dramatically,” said Michael Barron, a Middle East analyst at the Control Risk Group consulting firm in London.

The larger issue--what effect this murky episode will have on Hussein’s hold on power five years after his Persian Gulf War defeat--left analysts divided. Some dismissed the idea that it would have any impact on Hussein’s situation, while others felt the latest turn has left the Iraqi leader even more discredited in the eyes of his people.

Majid’s return was not entirely unexpected. For weeks he had been telling various intelligence sources that he might go back, according to U.S. sources. His welcome by Jordan’s King Hussein, who last year gave Majid use of a royal mansion, was wearing thin. And the fractured exile factions opposing Saddam Hussein from Europe to Kurdistan to Syria apparently had found in Majid at least one thing to agree upon: No one trusted him.

“He was intensely disappointed from Day 1 that he was not ushered into the inner sanctum of every country and greeted as the savior and alternative to Saddam,” a senior U.S. official said.

Nevertheless, Majid’s decision to go home was an incredible turnabout by a man who, when he defected Aug. 8, announced to the world that he meant to topple his father-in-law’s “treacherous and oppressive regime,” which had “betrayed the country and squandered its wealth.”

He had hoped to become a champion around whom anti-Hussein opponents could unite, but his own history as a powerful member of his father-in-law’s inner circle and the questions surrounding his flight made governments and opposition groups wary.

“We knew from the outset that Hussein Kamel defected from Iraq not for moral or fundamental reasons but because of . . . family feuds related to grabbing power,” Eyad Allawi, a leader of the anti-Hussein Iraqi National Accord, said in Damascus, the Syrian capital.

Others suggested the defection was nothing but an elaborate scam meant to allow the regime to contact or even subvert its foes abroad.

“Their [the defectors’] return I don’t think alters Saddam’s power in any substantial way,” said Barron of the Control Risk Group. “Certainly I don’t think it shows any weakness.”

But opposition politicians abroad argued that Hussein loses face in accepting back a relative who publicly labeled him a tyrant and whom he had accused of being a thief. “Nobody in the country supports [Hussein] now,” said Hamid Bayati, the London representative of the Supreme Council for Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an opposition group.

Majid had provided only a fragment of the wealth of information expected by foreign intelligence agencies. He never gave up valuable information on the inner workings of the regime, nor did he offer critical insights into Iraq’s money sources abroad.

His contribution was mostly indirect.

“His defection so shook up Baghdad that Saddam ended up giving the United Nations much more information about weapons of mass destruction than Hussein Kamel ever did,” the senior U.S. official said. “He spooked Saddam into giving millions of pages of documents.”

Because of the country’s steady economic decline under the weight of oil sanctions, Hussein is now faced with a dwindling set of options.

The Iraqi leader appears poised to accept U.N. Resolution 986, which allows limited Iraqi oil sales under strict international supervision.

But U.S. intelligence and U.N. monitors claim Iraq still has not provided all basic data on its weapons of mass destruction--a requirement before sanctions can be lifted.

Daniszewski reported from Cairo and Wright from Washington.