(Saddam POV)
Red Adair. A helluva man. Tall, broad shouldered, nonchalant air. He walked off the twin propeller plane at Kirkuk airport. I met him directly on the tarmac itself. There was no time to waste. The city was covered in thick smoke and moreover my precious oil was being burned up. I wanted the fires capped yesterday.
He didnt acknowledge anyone else. Just looked at the smoke for a moment grunted and headed directly for me.
He grabbed my outstretched hand in his meaty paw and said a gruff "Hello."
No 'Your Excellency' no pandering. Just hello. And he had me at hello. I'd like to say that this was the beginning of a torrid gay love affair but unfortunately I was straight in my last life and in this one. Saddam was violently straight as well.
No, not a love affair but it was impossible for any self respecting red blooded male in the eighties not to see Red Adair and recognize a super alpha.
"Mr Adair, I'm glad you were able to come so quickly. We really need your help," I said in greeting.
He just nodded, loosened his tie and said, "I wanna see the fires."
And before I knew it we were sitting in the back of an army jeep and racing off to the Kirkuk oil field.
I had based myself in the city since the initial attack by the Kurds. Two weeks now. The city was heavily fortified and curfew was in place. My Lt. Generals had followed through on their initial plans and we had bombed the border roads around Kurdistan to nothingness and our Air Force did daily sorties at random times in hopes of catching Kurdish supply mules unawares.
On the Western front, we had quickly moved to capture key peaks, roads and power stations near Kirkuk so that any counteroffensive by the Kurds would be a foolish endeavour. From the war perspective it was now a simple case of attrition doing our job for us.
Adair and I reached the outskirts of the oil field. The air above us was dark from the thick hydrocarbon smoke. We both wore gas masks by then.
"Hmmm," my gruff companion said. "This ain't close enough." And without another word that big beautiful man strode into the oil field alone.
I exchanged an incredulous look with Kamal. 'What the actual fuck' was going through his mind as well I imagined.
I sent a few of the oil well workers scurrying after the American in case he needed help. And then we simply waited by the jeep. No one who say me playing with a pebble would have imagined I was the ruler of a nation.
Adair returned half an hour later, taking off his mask. Except for his eyes and mouth the rest of his head was black from soot as were his previously impeccable clothes.
"We'll need a helicopter, some welding tools, an electrical cutter, cement and a big disc of metal," Red Adair told me without preamble.
I was in love with the man but I was hardly about to be his errand boy. "Kamal!" I barked. "Make it so."
And then I hopped into the jeep and went back to the provisional army headquarters. I had so many other projects to keep track of...I couldn't afford to be too arsed about just one.
(Break)
My stay in Kirkuk came to an end within the month. Nothing much was happening really. The intelligence we had from in and around Erbil suggested that the Kurds had not been expecting such a placid response from the Iraqi Army and were essentially waiting on tenterhooks for what would come next. I mean what would come next would be a slow squeezing of the Kurdish economy. I had no plans to starve the Kurdish population. I would make foodstuffs available near the border posts that my army held with no preconditions. This would be the first step towards sowing resentment towards whoever authorized the terrorist attack. But yes, the Kurds would have no avenue to sell their own goods.
There were only a few half hearted attempts by Kurdish guerilla warriors to bring the fight to us. But as I said we had already hemmed them in by capturing strategic heights all along the Kurdish border and by placing artillery on those heights.
So it became....quite boring actually. Red Adair had corralled quite a number of people who became his unofficial team and seemed to be in his thrall. Based on my historical knowledge I trusted him to close the fires within a matter of weeks. And close them in style might I add.
But things were happening in the rest of the world and in the rest of Iraq that demanded my attention for which I returned to Baghdad.
Because of my failed diplomacy in Iran, the Argo caper went ahead per the original timeline and the Canadians were able to aid in the rescue of the 6 Americans who had evaded capture by the Iranians. After that, the US became more and more bellicose towards Iran. I knew sanctions were around the corner.
Anwar Sadat of Egypt broke ranks from the Arab nations and signed a peace treaty with Israel. I admired Sadat...an empiricist if there ever was one. He knew his prime role was as the leader of Egyptians and he was accountable to them for their betterment. I didnt agree with what had happened in Palestine but the continued Arab belligerence and the inevitable Islamisation of the struggle would be a pain for decades.
Dickman called upon me many times at the Baghdad Palace to strongly urge me to consider my own peace treaty with the Israelis. I politely told him to fuck off. Sadat would soon be assassinated over the issue and I didnt want to follow him into an early grave. Status quo was perfectly fine by me.
No, what concerned me the most was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. This would be the beginning of the end of the cold war. This is the period in which in the original timeline the Reagan administration happily funded the 'resistance' in Afghanistan otherwise called...the Mujahideen. Remember those guys? Remember Osama? Fuck those guys and their crazy disgusting beliefs.
I warned Dickman and I warned whichever American official I could not to support the Mujahideen. That there were worse enemies than the Soviets, but this was 1980, American triumphalism was rife. It put me under a whole lot of pressure to modernize, educate and insulate my own country as soon as I could so that when the Saudis eventually began exporting Salafist - Wahabbi ideology worldwide it wouldn't take root in Iraq.
And to that end I passed (i.e. steamrolled the parliament) a bill that limited foreign funding into non government and non government approved organizations by magnitude of frequency of transactions.
The problem is essentially one of the framing the statement of the policy. If I outright identified religious organizations as beneficiaries to whom this limitation would apply, people would either be up in arms or would find ways to circumvent the rule. But as it was a positive limitation that is to say there was a transparent process for applying to be an approved beneficiary, my guess was that organizations and their people would spend their time trying to become approved.
My ultimate plan was to remove the ability of religious organizations and their proponents from achieving any economies of scale which throughout history has always been the point at which religions become political.
Baby steps Saddam, baby steps.