With the death or capture of Saddam Hussein a large number of government jobs will become vacant in Iraq.

Saddam and his family, including his eldest son Uday, are also major shareholders in over 100 companies dealing with a variety of businesses, ranging from oil to real estate to travel and tourism. They also own a number of front companies in several Arab and African countries as well as India, France, Germany, and Austria.

Key posts in most of them will now become vacant.

Saddam ruled Iraq as a family enterprise. His close relatives accounted for a majority of the members of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), the regime’s highest political organ. In the Council of Ministers, Saddam’s relatives held five key portfolios, including that of defense.

A few weeks before the fall of is regime, Saddam divided Iraq into four regions. His younger son Qusay was put in charge of the central region, including Baghdad. His cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid (the notorious mass murderer known as “Chemical Ali”), assumed control of the south. Another cousin Mazban Hadi was put in charge of the Shiite regions in the Iraqi heartland while Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, an uncle of Saddam’s through marriage, became ruler of the northern region.

Each of Saddam’s relatives held numerous government t jobs while controlling private businesses as well. “Chemical Ali,” for example, held a monopoly agency for French-made cars in Iraq. Al-Duri owned numerous dairy and chicken farms while also representing more than a dozen Austrian companies in Iraq.

Uday Hussein owned two private television channels, including one on satellite, plus four football teams, eleven hotels, and four of the country’s biggest shopping malls. Uday had also run lucrative business smuggling oil out of Iraq via Syria, Turkey, and Iran.

There many different estimates of Saddam Hussein’s personal wealth, much of which was handled by his half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti until the latter’s reported, though unconfirmed, disgrace earlier this year. But Arab and Western sources agree that the fallen despot had amassed a fortune worth at least $4 billion.

By one count the Iraqi dictator, known to his people as “al-Saffah” (The Vampire), held 53 posts.

Here are some of them:

1. president of Iraq

2. prime minister

3. chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council

4. commander-in-chief-of the armed forces

5. chairman of the High Council of National Defense

6. president of the National Security and Intelligence Council

7. supreme commander: the Republican Guards Corps

8. supreme commander, the Popular Guard (Haras al-Shaabi), the ruling party’s militia

9. chairman of the National Budget Allocation Committee

10. president and secretary general of the Pan-Arab Baath Socialist party

11. president and secretary general of the Iraqi Arab Baath Socialist party

12. chairman of the central committee of the Arab Socialist Baath party

13. chairman of the political bureau of the central committee of the Arab Socialist Baath party

14. president of the National Front (a grouping of the Baath, the Iraqi Communist party, and two small Kurdish groups)

15. chairman of the High Council of the Judiciary

16. president of the National Council for Economic Planning and Development

17. chairman of the National Council for Petroleum and Energy

18. president of he Central Council of Iraqi Trade Unions and Syndicates

19. chairman of the National Council for Natural Resources and Minerals

20. chairman of the National Council for Water Resources and the Environment

21. chairman of the National Council for Religious Affairs

22. chairman of the National Council for Cultural Affairs

23. chairman of the National Currency Board

24. chairman of the Iraqi Military Industries Corporation

25. chairman of the board of trustees of the National Iraqi Petroleum Company

26. chancellor of the Universities of al-Mustansariyah (Baghdad), Basra, Mosul, and Tikrit

27. chairman of the National Trust for Religious Sites and Shrines

28. president of the All-Iraq Endowments Trust

29. president of the National Committee on Women’s Affairs

30. president of the Board of Trustees of the Baghdad National Museum

31. president of the Committee for Senior State Appointments

32. chairman of the National Council for Honors and Decorations

33. chairman of the National Council for Sports and Physical Fitness

34. chairman of the National Council for the Guidance of the Youth

35. chairman of the editorial board of al-Thawrah (“The Revolution”) the Baath party’s main daily newspaper)

36. president of the Iraqi Association of Intellectuals and Thinkers

37. chairman of the High Council of the Media

38. president of the Association of the al-Mustansariyah University Alumni. (He won a BA honors from that university in 1977 when he was vice president of Iraq)

39. president of the Iraq-France Friendship Association

40. chairman of the National Association for Heritage and Antiquities

41. president of he National Association for the Protection of Wild Life and Natural Beauty Spots

42. chairman and CEO of the Iraq Distribution Company (Among other things it handles the Iraqi side of the oil-for-food program sponsored by the United Nations)

43. chairman and CEO of the General Imports Corporations

44. chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Iraqi Aviation Corporation

45. president of the Board of the Iraqi Academy of Science and Technology

46. chairman of the Committee for the Liberation of Jerusalem

47. chairman and CEO of Al-Nasr Holding, a business conglomerate with banking and insurance interests

48. president of the Baghdad Equestrian Club

49. chief, the Abu-Nasar tribe based in the Tikrit region

50. chairman of the Iraqi Arts Council

51. chief editorial writer for the monthly magazine Alephba

52. chair of modern Arab history, University of Baghdad

53. chair of the Greater Tikrit Council

— Amir Taheri is the Iranian author of ten books on the Middle East and Islam. Taheri is reachable through www.benadorassociates.com.