SADDAM'S FAMILY DESERTS

Shorn of its outward trappings, the adventure might have been woven a thousand years ago under the caliphate of Baghdad: back-corridors palace intrigue; the mysterious wounding at a festival; a headlong flight across the desert by the ruler's beloved daughters and his sons-in-law, one of them the land's chief armorer; their reception by a friendly monarch who shelters them in a palace. Finally, the betrayed ruler's son, who has wormed his way to grand vizier, leads a pursuit attempting to retrieve the fugitives. In a fury he denounces them before the neighboring king, who rebuffs the mission coldly.

It might have been a Thousand and One Nights romance, that is, had this story not played out last week--as fully modern Middle East politics, in deadly earnest and to spectacular international effect. For the Baghdad caliphate, read Saddam Hussein's Iraq; as the fugitives' vehicles, replace camels with Land Rovers and Mercedes sedans; and, in lieu of swords, understand the fleeing armorer's specialty as ballistic missiles, warheads and lethal toxins. Whatever the reasons for it, the overland escape into Jordan by Lieut. General Hussein Kamel al-Majid, his brother and their wives--both daughters of Saddam's--resounded as a signal blow to the Iraqi regime's inner fortifications.

Hussein Kamel, 47, who is also a relative of Saddam's, figured as a pillar of that edifice. Since the 1980s he has overseen procurement of the nightmarish weaponry that variously made his boss a hero in the eyes of some Arabs and an outlaw menace to most of the world. Meanwhile, Hussein Kamel's younger brother, Colonel Saddam Kamel al-Majid, headed the President's elite corps of personal bodyguards. The U.S., thirsting for what a Pentagon official called a potential "intelligence bonanza," pledged at once to defend Jordan against any reprisals and sent Arabic-speaking CIA specialists to Amman in hopes of debriefing the defectors. A senior Administration official exulted, "Outside of Saddam's two sons, there is probably no one closer to him. This could be the most serious setback he's suffered since the mutinies immediately after the Gulf War."

Washington's hopes could still prove to be wishful thinking. Even as President Bill Clinton portrayed Saddam as a failing despot, "out of touch" with his closest aides, even as Hussein Kamel called for Saddam's overthrow into "the garbage heap of history," the brothers may not want to deal--or to be seen dealing--with the West. In any case, neither fits anyone's idea of a flower-power liberal. They rose by nepotism, survived by cunning and thrived by doing their leader's most morally questionable will. However quickly Saddam might replace them, though, Iraq's slow strangulation under U.N. economic sanctions since 1990 continues to make life hard for the strongman's subjects. If his relatives' flight was not fatal, it at least displayed publicly some crucial flaws. Said Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon: "It's clearly a vote of no confidence in Saddam Hussein."