Informant Is Focus of Tribal Speculation

AL AUJA, Iraq — It starts with a few whispered words over tiny cups of bitter black coffee, a narrow sidelong glance or two -- and then comes the torrent of talk about betrayal and blood revenge.

The village of Saddam Hussein’s birth, home to some of the captured ex-leader’s closest kinsmen, is looking inward these days, watchful for signs of complicity in what is regarded here as the ultimate crime: helping the Americans find Hussein.

U.S. military authorities have not named the informant who provided them with the final piece in a tantalizing puzzle, leading American special forces to the very spot where the fugitive had gone -- literally -- underground. They have said only that the informant was a close tribal relative of the deposed dictator, a member of the tight-knit network of clans in and around the town of Tikrit, north of Baghdad.

But officials have dropped sufficient hints about the informant’s background to set off a frenzy of finger-pointing and rumor-mongering among some close to Hussein. This fever of speculation is running particularly high in Al Auja, where the blood ties are so strong that many of the men bear a marked resemblance to the captured leader.

The village is considered such a potent breeding ground for the anti-U.S. insurgency that, for nearly two months, U.S. troops have kept it sealed off with rolls of razor wire and armored patrols. Males older than 15 can come and go only by showing newly issued identity cards at a U.S. checkpoint, and all vehicles are searched.

But internal strictures on movement and behavior are just as great, and any villager who is suspected of helping the U.S. risks calamity.

Under the rigid tribal code, disloyalty toward even an ordinary fellow tribesman -- let alone one as revered as Hussein -- stains not only the wrongdoer’s honor, but also that of his entire family.

Hussein’s Albu Nasir tribe, like most in Iraq, has a complicated family tree consisting of more than a dozen large clans and hundreds of smaller interlocking family branches, with indirect ties through marriage to other tribes and clans.

The closer the connection to Hussein, the greater the fear of being implicated in his betrayal.

“How could anyone think it could be anyone in our family?” said Muwafak Haddoshi, 26, a third cousin of Hussein with excitable eyes and an edge of panic in his voice. “That is impossible! We are loyal to Saddam and will stay loyal even for a thousand years -- we would defend him with the last breath we have in us.”

Haddoshi’s proclamation of innocence -- delivered on a dusty side street of Al Auja with a cluster of anxious relatives waving, gesticulating and chiming in -- was delivered preemptively, not in response to a question about any possible role a member of his family might have had in Hussein’s capture. But like many in town, he had reason to be nervous.

One of the town’s powerful sheiks, Haddoshi said, had been speaking against a member of his family who once oversaw security at Hussein’s palaces, accusing him of being the informant. (The sheik, questioned later, declined to repeat the accusation.)

“We are frightened that there are falsehoods being spread about us,” Haddoshi said, his eyes darting. “So we feel threatened, very threatened.”

Family members said they had not seen the relative in question, Mohammed Rajab Haddoshi, since June but said they were certain he was innocent of providing any information that could have helped the U.S.

“He would never, never say anything against Saddam, our beloved one, the father of us all,” his 45-year-old sister, Samia Rajab Haddoshi, said, weeping.

The identity of the informant who led troops to where Hussein was hiding is not the only thing in question. Over the months, U.S. interrogations and investigations of thousands of other former Hussein associates, some of them his tribal kin, have yielded crucial information that propelled the hunt, officials said.

That leaves families such as the Haddoshis in a difficult spot. Almost every adult male in the clan has been picked up and questioned at some point by the Americans, they said, and they have no way to prove that one of them did not reveal, even inadvertently, some detail that helped the U.S. investigators.

In Al Auja and surrounding villages, there is a strong sense that tribal authorities -- who oversee what amounts to a parallel judicial system -- will deal as they see fit with anyone who is deemed guilty of helping the Americans find Hussein.

When an offense is committed, tribal elders hear everyone’s side, then decide on innocence or guilt, mercy or punishment. Under the tribal code, the heaviest penalties are often administered by the offender’s family, in order to restore its honor.

On Tikrit’s main street, where a bleating goat was tethered in front of an Internet cafe, a group of loitering young men, all from tribe-connected families, agreed that in such an instance, blood ties inexorably dictated blood revenge.

“It is an absolute necessity -- for such an act of betrayal, blood would have to be shed, no matter how much time had gone by,” Bassam Fayik, an unemployed 26-year-old, said flatly.

“And it would be the responsibility of his family,” said Ali Mamari, who said he had once served in Hussein’s bodyguard corps. “Otherwise, they are tainted forever as well.”

Al Auja, like many of the villages surrounding Tikrit, long benefited from Hussein’s lavish patronage, but more so because of its status as his birthplace.

Men of the village were prominent in the armed forces and the vast Iraqi security apparatus, and reaped the rewards. Overlooking the Tigris River, Al Auja, with its wide paved streets, neat sidewalks and large homes, is measurably wealthier than surrounding areas.

Even with the American lockdown, there are ample signs of continuing loyalty to Hussein. Giant portraits of him hang on the walls of homes, and slogans like “Yes, yes, yes to Saddam!” adorn walls, visible under new coats of paint.

To those with allegiance to the tribe, the betrayal of Hussein is all the more shocking because it violates the custom of giving shelter to anyone who seeks it, and of protecting a guest, even an unwanted one, by whatever means necessary.

“If Saddam had walked into my house, even if I knew there were American soldiers waiting outside to come in and kill us, I would have said ‘Welcome,’ and shown him to the place of honor,” said Rashid Mohammed Tikriti, 42.

Tikriti’s nearly blind mother, Madiyeh Saleh, 78 -- who knew Hussein when he was a child and said he called her “Auntie” -- raised her trembling voice to be heard above the rumble of a passing U.S. armored vehicle.

“If he had done us the honor of taking refuge in our home, I would die before allowing anyone to come near him,” she said.

Al Auja’s most powerful tribal elder, Sheik Mohammed al Nida, said he still held out hope that the culprit or culprits who aided the Americans were outsiders.

The hamlet outside Tikrit where Hussein was caught, Ad Dawr, lies at the outer limits of the tribe’s geographical boundaries, he said. And not all of Hussein’s closest confidants, he argued, were fellow tribesmen.

But if the informant turned out to be someone from within the tribe, “he would most certainly have to be punished,” the sheik said.

“That is our tradition -- there are no exceptions, none,” he added. Other sheiks, sitting on rugs and cushions around a hissing woodstove in the tribal elder’s reception room, nodded.

“The secret of our strength is in our code, our way of doing things,” said Sheik Ahmed Ghazi, another prominent tribal elder. “And nothing, not even a catastrophe like the one that has befallen us all, can change that.”