Her brothers Uday and Qusai are dead.
Her father is imprisoned by Americans and facing trial for mass murder.
Her country is under occupation and bleeding because of incessant terror attacks on oil pipelines, new leadership and the power grid.
But none of that seems to concern Saddam Hussein’s favorite daughter, Raghad Hussein, who is living what many consider to be the good life in neighboring Jordan.
“Saddam’s favorite daughter is living a materialistic life in neighboring Amman,” said a recent report in the Arabic publication Albawaba. “A fortunate life is not a new concept to the daughter who was brought up in a privileged household – but as her own nation suffers immensely on a daily basis – her ravishing life style is all the yet more aggravating and incomprehensible.”
 Raghad Hussein |
The mother of five has undergone cosmetic surgery, works out several mornings a week at a ladies’ gym and is often seen in Amman’s leading jewelry and fancy clothes shops, according to reports.
As her father’s successor as Iraqi president was being announced in Baghdad, Raghad was at her favorite hairdressing salon, spending the equivalent of ?100 on highlights, and a cut and blow-dry, the London Telegraph reported.
Her sister, Rana, and her four children are also living in Amman, where they fled before the war. King Abdullah of Jordan granted them sanctuary.
A third daughter, Hala, is married to General Jamal Mustafa Abdallah Sultan al-Tikriti, who surrendered to U.S. forces last May. He was No. 10 on the U.S. occupation’s list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis.
Raghad and Rana had been estranged from their father for some time. In 1995, they defected to Jordan with their husbands – Hussein and Saddam Kamal. From Jordan, the brothers called for overthrowing the dictatorship, and Saddam Kamal revealed Iraqi weapons secrets to U.S., British and Jordanian officials.
Six months later, Saddam Hussein lured them back to Baghdad with promises of forgiveness. After they arrived, however, they were killed in a 13-hour shootout at a house near the capital.
After that, Raghad and Rana were held under house arrest in Iraq until their escape to Jordan last summer. A spokeswoman for Jordan’s King Abdullah was quoted as saying that the kingdom had agreed to host them and their children for “humanitarian reasons.”
The family is still struggling to recover what it believes is rightfully theirs. Raghad and her mother, Sajida, recently appointed an international team of more than a dozen lawyers to defend Saddam when he comes before Iraq’s newly-created war crimes tribunals.
But their own interests seem to be of primary concern, according to Albawaba. One of their first instructions to the leading Jordanian lawyer, Mohamed Roshdan, was that he should write to John Ashcroft, the American attorney-general, requesting the return of jewels from the former presidential palaces, and even the wads of dollars found with Saddam at the time of his arrest.
These were the family’s personal wealth, they said, and not state property.
According to the London Telegraph, Jordanians who visited the Amman Surgical Hospital last summer were told that Raghad had undergone cosmetic surgery on her breasts, and possibly also a tummy tuck last August, shortly after her brothers Uday and Qusai were killed in a shoot-out with U.S. forces in northern Iraq.
Raghad, 36, while in Jordan, has also reportedly had operations to reduce the width of her nose and reduce the bags under her eyes.
And that has the Arab press steamed.
“The injustices of the war the West has embarked on against the people of Iraq are intolerable,” reported Albawaba. “The endless killings, tortures and miseries are inexcusable. The brutal occupation of Iraq by Washington and its allies is unbearable. All this Western behavior is not new to the Arab nation. However, the lavish lifestyle Raghad has adopted in Jordan is no other than a direct blow to the Iraqi nation and to the Jordanian hosts.”
