"After working for Ted Bates Advertising in America, Aburish returned
to Beirut to report for Radio Free Europe, where monitoring Arab radio
broadcasts allowed him to break a number of stories; he was also hired
by his father's former employer, the Daily Mail. He then moved to
London, where he became fascinated with the British aristocracy – and
they with him. He lived in a world of wealth, gossip, journalism and
dinner parties.
He agreed to become an adviser to the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, nominally on "American affairs" but in reality as an adviser on arms. He agreed to help build up Saddam's weapons capacity, he said, as a conscious decision motivated by Arab nationalism; he said that if others had the bomb, so should the Arabs – both on the principle of parity, and as a deterrent. He eventually broke off relations with Saddam in the early 1980s, because of Saddam's human rights abuses, particularly his use of chemical weapons.
When he realised that acting to advance his cherished Arab nationalism, a source of great personal pride, had inadvertently led him to betray the Arab people, he retreated to work in long hours of solitude – relieved only by his active social life in London – to explain what he had seen and learned in nearly a dozen books written in English and addressed primarily to a Western audience, but also scrutinised by the Arab world. All his books, he maintained, "have been critical of all Arab governments". One of his final books, Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge (2000), was, he said, written as an act of atonement." (thanks Marian)
He agreed to become an adviser to the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, nominally on "American affairs" but in reality as an adviser on arms. He agreed to help build up Saddam's weapons capacity, he said, as a conscious decision motivated by Arab nationalism; he said that if others had the bomb, so should the Arabs – both on the principle of parity, and as a deterrent. He eventually broke off relations with Saddam in the early 1980s, because of Saddam's human rights abuses, particularly his use of chemical weapons.
When he realised that acting to advance his cherished Arab nationalism, a source of great personal pride, had inadvertently led him to betray the Arab people, he retreated to work in long hours of solitude – relieved only by his active social life in London – to explain what he had seen and learned in nearly a dozen books written in English and addressed primarily to a Western audience, but also scrutinised by the Arab world. All his books, he maintained, "have been critical of all Arab governments". One of his final books, Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge (2000), was, he said, written as an act of atonement." (thanks Marian)
