A huge symbolic coup: The suave face of the regime is in US hands

Your support helps us to tell the story

Support Now

Find out moreClose

Our mission is to deliver unbiased, fact-based reporting that holds power to account and exposes the truth.

Whether $5 or $50, every contribution counts.

Support us to deliver journalism without an agenda.

Louise Thomas

Editor

He may not know, either literally or metaphorically, where all the bodies were buried. But the surrender of Tariq Aziz to American troops is perhaps the most dramatic symbolic proof of the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, short of the capture of Saddam himself.

As details filtered back to Washington last night, much remained murky about how the US laid its hands on the man who was the deceptively reasonable face to the world of one of the most brutal regimes on earth – though he did surrender, it seems. Word was that he had first tried to arrange his surrender through an intermediary on Wednesday.

Another possibility was that he had struck a deal beforehand, trading immunity from prosecution as a war criminal for information on the innermost workings of the regime – including the fate of the former President – and the existence (or otherwise) of secret chemical and biological weapon programmes.

But last night these details were secondary to the sheer symbolic impact of the event. For Iraqis in their own country, and for the world which had dealt with him, if even the suave, articulate and cigar-smoking Mr Aziz had passed into American hands, then truly the game was up.

But for all his evident ability, his near-flawless English and links with Saddam stretching back more than 40 years, Tariq Aziz was always an outsider, of value to Saddam as much for what he represented as for what he could accomplish.

For one thing he was not a Muslim, but a Chaldean Catholic from the northern oil city of Mosul. Born in 1936 as Michael Yuhanna to a family of modest means, he studied English at the Baghdad College of Fine Arts before becoming a teacher and a journalist. Aged 21, he joined the secular Baath party, where he worked to topple the British-imposed monarchy the following year.

By then he had changed his name to Tariq Aziz, meaning "glorious past" to make himself more acceptable to the overwhelming Muslim majority within the party. He launched a career as a journalist in 1958, working at several newspapers, serving as chief editor at al-Jamaheer and then atr al-Thawra, the Baath party's official organ. It was during this period that Mr Aziz first met Saddam Hussein.

Quickly Mr Aziz showed the quality that distiguished him until the very end of the regime: absolute loyalty to the cause and Saddam, by then its de facto if not de jure leader. His promotion was swift; by 1974 he was a member of the Regional Command, the party's highest governing unit, and by 1977 a member of Saddam's Revolutionary Command Council. Two years later he was appointed deputy prime minister, the post he would hold until Saddam was toppled.

But his primary role was as a diplomat, and for all practical purposes foreign minister. It was a clever choice; not only was Mr Aziz a nimble thinker and skilful defender of his country's interests (in English as well as Arabic), the fact he was a Christian enabled Saddam to present his regime as tolerant and open to minorities.

In 1980, on the eve of the war with Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran, Mr Aziz survived an assassination attempt, allegedly mounted by Teheran. Far more importantly, he succeeded in enlisting American support for Baghdad in the eight-year conflict while simultaneously forging strong economic ties with the Soviet Union – thus enabling Iraq to play off one superpower against another.

Inevitably, when the US and Iraq formally re-established diplomatic ties in 1984, Mr Aziz was the man Saddam sent to Washington to clinch the deal, meeting Ronald Reagan himself in the Oval Office. But it was the 1991 Gulf War which made Mr Aziz, with his thick white bair, bushy moustache and black-rimmed glasses, a household figure around the world.

Smoothly he made the untenable case that Kuwait alone, because of its decision to increase oil production and cut into Iraq's markets, was responsible for its misfortunes. As the coalition against Baghdad began to embrace Arab powers, Mr Aziz lambasted them for their "subservience to US hegemony in the Middle East" and later for their acquiescence in UN sanctions against Iraq.

Whenever Iraq needed to put its best foot forward, Saddam turned to his deputy prime minister. It was Mr Aziz who went to Rome to meet the Pope in the last public relations manoeuvres before the 2003 war – though he spoiled the effect by walking out of a press conference when an Israeli journalist tried to ask a question.

Behind the bonhomie and a face which at times resembled that of Groucho Marx lay a very shrewd political operator. For a non-member of Saddam's Tikriti clan, which ruled the country, absolute loyalty and a razor-keen sense of his master's feelings were essential.

Yet Tariq Aziz somehow managed it, displaying nerve and resilience. The paranoid, eternally suspicious Saddam launched purge after purge, but he always survived. Indeed, his durability has led many to wonder how privy he was to Saddam's darkest secrets. But he may be in a position to give precious leads, about the whereabouts of the inner leadership, and the illegal weapons programmes.

"I am 67 years old. I would prefer to die rather than be sent to Guantanamo Bay," he said before the war began. But those words may be no truer than most he uttered in defence of his government for 25 years. Even before his capture, many suspected that the deft Mr Aziz had struck a deal with the Americans he detested.