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C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 JEDDAH 000385 
 
NOFORN 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR NEA/ARP, NEA/I 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/11/2029 
TAGS: IR IZ KIRF KISL KU OFDP PGOV PHUM SA
SUBJECT: "SITUATION CATASTROPHIQUE MAIS NON SANS ESPOIR": 
DEPARTING IRAQI CONSUL GENERAL DISCOURAGED BUT NOT HOPELESS 
AS HE MOVES TO KUWAIT 
 
REF: JEDDAH 0368 
 
JEDDAH 00000385  001.2 OF 002 
 
 
Classified By: Consul General Martin R. Quinn for reasons 1.4 (b) and ( 
d) 
 
¶1. (C/NF) SUMMARY.  During October 10 farewell dinner at CG's 
residence, Iraqi Consul General Dr. Ajwad Sheikh Taha Hamad 
(strictly protect) had more to say about his posting as 
Charge d'Affaires in Kuwait. Departing Jeddah and arriving in 
Kuwait on October 11, Hamad expressed displeasure at the 
level of his appointment in Kuwait and referred to the 
possibility of his running as a Parliamentary candidate in 
the upcoming Iraqi elections. Recalling his family's 
hardships during the Saddam Hussein era, he expressed 
sympathy with Kurdish aspirations and longing for a secular 
Iraqi leader, such as Ayad Allawi, with the ability to keep 
damaging Iranian influence in Iraq firmly in check. END 
SUMMARY. 
 
 
AN APPOINTMENT FOR WHICH HE IS QUALIFIED 
---------------------------------------- 
BUT WHICH FRUSTRATES HIS AMBITION 
---------------------------------- 
 
¶2. (C/NF) He expounded at somewhat greater length than in our 
previous meeting (reftel) on his displeasure at being 
appointed Charge instead of Ambassador in Kuwait, but did 
note that in recent years all Iraqi COMs in Kuwait were at 
the Charge level. Nevertheless, he remains convinced that MFA 
Shia bureaucrats moved against him to downgrade his 
appointment because he is a Sunni.  Hamad said that he had 
personally informed Iraqi FM Zebari that he could only 
guarantee that he would remain in Kuwait for a month "to see 
how things went," lamenting that he could be far "more 
effective" and do more for Iraq, with better access as 
ambassador.  Since Kuwaitis in common with other Gulf Arabs 
are highly conscious of rank and status, he felt handicapped 
from the get-go. 
 
¶3.  (C/NF) Aside from the sectarian issue, Dr. Hamad 
speculated that one reason Zebari himself might not want to 
see him as an ambassador in Kuwait is that in 2005 he (Hamad) 
had been a Tawafuq candidate for Deputy Prime Minister and 
thus might be perceived by Zebari as a politically ambitious 
underling who should be kept out of mainstream politics. 
Hamad admitted he had no specific evidence that Zebari wished 
to keep him down; it was "just a feeling."  Hamad said he is 
toying with the idea of running again for Parliament in the 
upcoming Iraqi elections and had told Zebari he would be 
happy to serve back at the Ministry in Baghdad, but the FM 
insisted, "in his very pleasant manner," that Hamad was 
"needed in Kuwait." Hamad's second wife is Kuwaiti, and three 
of his children were born there. 
 
 
SADDAM THE PSYCHOPATH 
--------------------- 
 
¶4.  (C/NF) During the Saddam era Hamad spent several years as 
the Iraqi technical expert for OAPEC (Organization of Arab 
Petroleum Exporting Countries), headquartered in Kuwait. 
Claiming to be well plugged-in with the Kuwaiti power 
structure at his next post, he anticipated that Iraq's 
relations with Kuwait, especially the border dispute and oil 
field issues, would be especially tough.  He recounted at 
length his version of the background for Iraq's invasion of 
Kuwait in 1990, especially Saddam's pique at the Kuwaitis' 
crassly "mercantile attitude" about their support for Iraq 
during the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s -- emphasizing that 
none of this justified the invasion.  Saddam, he said, was "a 
psychopathic sadist" who hardly needed any excuse to react 
with brutal force.  Hamad recalled that at one time Saddam 
wanted to appoint him Minister of Petroleum, but he confessed 
he was afraid to accept the position because of the 
dictator's penchant for elevating officials only to have the 
greater pleasure of bringing them down with violence: 
"Saddam took less delight in eliminating nobodies." Later 
 
JEDDAH 00000385  002.2 OF 002 
 
 
Hamad's family, including his mother, were arrested in an 
effort to pressure him to return to Iraq from his Jordanian 
exile; they were released after he was eventually granted 
residency in Canada.  Hamad recalled that at one stage he had 
to admit the fact that he could do nothing for his family and 
to accept the possibility they might already be dead -- and 
thus act to save himself. 
 
 
DISPLACED IRAQIS 
---------------- 
 
¶5.  (C/NF) A French-educated economist, Hamad spoke briefly 
of the dismal state of the Iraqi economy, citing figures of 
"50% unemployment" and the lack of foreign investment, 
especially from Gulf countries.  Most manufacturing, he 
claimed, remain shut down with factory owners living in 
exile. In common with many Iraqis with the financial means, 
Hamad sends money on a monthly basis to displaced members of 
his family in Jordan and in Syria.  The better-educated, more 
affluent Iraqis, engineers, doctors, industrialists and 
businessmen, sought refuge in Jordan, where King Abdullah 
recently allowed Iraqis to send their children to Jordanian 
public schools.  Formerly, he said, the Iraqi expatriates 
were restricted to fee-paying private schools in Amman, which 
for many, deprived of regular income, had created enormous 
hardship.  In Syria, on the other hand, life is much cheaper, 
and Iraqi families from the less privileged echelons of 
society manage to eke out an existence on as little as $400 a 
month. Hamad estimated the total numbers of displaced Iraqis 
in Jordan at half a million and in Syria 700,000. 
 
 
KURDISH AUTONOMY 
---------------- 
 
¶6. (C/NF) Hamad spent time in the Kurdistan area before 
leaving Iraq and indicated that, as a civilized person with a 
sense of history, he fully sympathized with the Kurds' 
aspiration for nationhood, and had no problem with a Kurdish 
President of Iraq (Talabani) as long as the Kurd was himself 
consciously an Iraqi nationalist.  He commented that Kurds in 
Iraq had never been discriminated against to the extent that 
he discovered on visiting Turkey, where "in the 1980s Turkish 
Kurds were afraid even to speak their language." Nothing like 
that, he said, ever existed in Iraq. Nonetheless, when he 
visited Kurdistan from Jordan, Hamad said that he had been 
issued an iqama (residence permit for a non-national). The 
only problem now is that the Kurds could become greedy 
concerning the oil and unwilling to relinquish the autonomy 
enjoyed since the no-fly zone was imposed.  Hamad believes 
the Kurds are better off remaining part of Iraq since 
otherwise they would be "surrounded on every side by enemies: 
 Turkey, Iran, Syria, and southern Iraq." 
 
 
ALLAWI AS ANSWER TO IRAN 
------------------------ 
 
¶7. COMMENT. (C/NF) Vehement concerning the negative Iranian 
influence in Iraq, the need to curb sectarian bias, and the 
urgency of installing Iraqi leaders (including Shia) who are 
strong enough to keep Iran in its place, Hamad spoke 
approvingly of former interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's 
leadership prospects as a secular Shiite and candidate in the 
coming elections.  As for the fate of Iraq itself, he summed 
it up in French: "situation catastrophique mais non sans 
espoir" (situation catastrophic but not without hope.)  END 
COMMENT. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
QUINN