| Isabel Vincent | |
| National Post |
Friday, March 21, 2003
Saddam Hussein's chances of surviving the U.S. bombing assault on his capital may depend on an elaborate series of underground tunnels and bunkers built for the Iraqi leader, mostly by Yugoslav engineers in the 1970s and 1980s.
Although little is known about the fabled and labyrinthine network of underground tunnels that stretches for kilometres under the streets of Baghdad, and even out into the Iraqi desert, Western military analysts believe they can comfortably accommodate thousands of people and even house military command posts and hospitals.
Many of the Iraqi bunkers and tunnels were built by Aeroinzenjering, a Serbian engineering firm that used to be under military control in the former Yugoslavia.
The firm, which is now privately owned and based in Belgrade, also built airports in Iraq.
With a few other Serbian construction companies, it accepted numerous contracts from Saddam Hussein's government in the 1970s and 1980s to build a network of interlinked tunnels and bunkers for the dictator's protection in the event of a war, and possibly to hide weapons.
The Serb companies also worked on palaces and mansions for Saddam Hussein and important members of his inner circle.
The Iraqis reportedly paid for these massive construction projects, which cost several billion dollars, with oil that was shipped to the regime of former Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic.
The Iraqi leader enjoyed close relationships with Yugoslav dictators, including Josip Broz Tito, the Communist leader, and the now-deposed Mr. Milosevic, with whom he forged a secret military alliance just before NATO bombed Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999.
According to some of the Yugoslav engineers who worked on the tunnels and bunkers, they are virtually indestructible.
"Saddam's shelters can resist a direct hit by a 2,000-kilo TNT bomb or a 20-kiloton explosion as close as a kilometre away," a Yugoslav engineer told London's Guardian newspaper.
Recently Resad Fazlic, a retired colonel of the former Yugoslav People's Army, told a local television network in Bosnia that Yugoslav military officials supervised the building of two fallout shelters in Baghdad for Saddam in the late 1970s.
The same group was also responsible for a few smaller facilities elsewhere in Iraq modelled after a huge bunker built in 1969 for Tito near the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo.
Saddam's most lavish and well-equipped bunker is said to be buried 90 metres underneath the main presidential palace in Baghdad.
By some accounts, this subterranean structure is an impressive feat of engineering, equipped with walls almost three metres thick, reinforced with steel. It is reached through a secret passageway leading from the basement of the palace.
According to a recent report in the German magazine Focus, the bunker under the Baghdad palace is the work of the same construction company that built air-raid shelters for Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. Duesseldorf-based firm Boswau & Knauer began construction in 1982 when the Iraqi leader feared a nuclear attack from neighbouring Iran.
The bunker, which is thought to have cost US$90-million, is said to be equipped with a swimming pool, a gourmet kitchen, a recreation room and nursery for Saddam Hussein's grandchildren and children of key members of his inner circle. His bedroom is decorated in a Napoleonic motif, with a tent-style king-sized bed on a wood inlay frame.
There is also a "war room," where the Iraqi dictator can monitor events above-ground using state-of-the-art technology.
The bunker is reportedly able to withstand fire, bombs, gas attacks and missiles. It has its own air-filtration system that screens out poisonous gases, and stores of food and water to last a year.
A British MP who visited Saddam Hussein in one of his Baghdad bunkers last year said the Iraqi leader appeared to spend much of his time living underground.
"We were so deeply underground, my ears were popping," said George Galloway, a member of the Labour party.
According to Con Coughlin, a British journalist who has written a biography of Saddam Hussein, another of his personal bunkers was built beneath a cinema in the basement of the Al-Sijood administrative complex close to the presidential palace.
"Small by Saddam's standards [it is about nine metres by five metres] it nevertheless contained enough electronic equipment, computers, teleprinters and fibre-optic communications links for Saddam to maintain contact with his troops throughout the country," Mr. Coughlin writes in his book Saddam: King of Terror.
http://www.nationalpost.com/world/story.html?id=7FAA30D0-6E93-4CBA-9C95-DFA99A4280B1
