Ignominious end of Saddam

-By Pritam S Rana

Published in The Kathmandu Post, January 2, 2007, Tuesday

During Saddam Hussein's rule in Iraq, posters often compared him with Babylon's ancient rulers, Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar. Saddam considered himself all powerful - able to make any decision, eliminate any opposition and rule with absolute impunity just like the ancient emperors. But on the fateful day of December 30, 2006, he was hanged after he was found guilty of crimes against humanity. He was sentenced to death by an Iraqi court for ordering the 1982 killing of 148 Shiite villagers in Dujail, Iraq, which was only a small part of his long catalogue of deaths and sufferings he caused among Iraqis and people of other neighboring countries.

By 1968, Saddam had become number two man in Iraq after pan-Arabist Baath party solidified its grip into that country. Previously Iraqi politics had been rather volatile with coups and counter-coups, assasination attempts against incumbent leaders. As Saddam was consolidating power within the Baath party leadership hierarchy, the 1973 oil crisis helped him generate massive revenues from an unprecedented rise in fuel prices then. Saddam was able to expand his agenda with the money into various social, agrarian, and other development works in his country. He provided free education, and health care which helped him gain countless well-wishers in his country.

In 1979, Saddam forced ailing Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr from power and assumed presidency for Iraq for himself, formally becoming Iraq's all-in-all. Saddam's first step after becoming president was the mass purging in the ruling Baath party. In a party assembly called by him in the same year, Saddam expunged 68 other Baathists among which 22 were reportedly executed. This was how Saddam solidified his power base, eliminating any possible threat to his one man rule. Saddam's foreign policy was even bloodier. Saddam closely remembered waht he thought was unequal agreement with Iran in the 1970s, which was then ruled by the Shah and was a close ally of Washington. As revolution swept away the Shah and the US leverage in Iran, Saddam grew suspicious of Iran's new Islamist revolutionary government. Fearing that Iran's Shiite leadership might incite Iraq's own sizeable number of Shiites to rebel against his regime, Saddam ordered invasion of Iran in 1980. The war with Iran lasted for 8 years and it killed nearly two million people from the two countries. During the war, Iraq acquired modern arms from primarily Soviet Union, China and France. Some analysts have pointed out that US shared intelligence to Saddam's regime during the war. Iran-Iraq war was marked by barbaric bombings of civilian targets and of attacks against neutral shipping. Also in 1988, the Saddam regime demonstrated that it was prepared to violate all international agreements on using banned weapons. Having already used chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers, Saddam's air force bombed the town of Halabja with nerve and mustard agents, killing about 5,000 Kurdish civilians and maiming another 10,000. Saddam's lust of conquest was not lost for long. After two years of the end of the costly war with Iran, Saddam began quarrels with a tiny but affluent oil rich Kuwait. He invaded Kuwait in 1990 and claimed "Kuwait was an Iraqi province." The whole world led by US quickly condemned Iraq's latest aggression and US led coalition massed combat troops in Saudi Arabia ostensibly to prevent any Iraqi move against Saudi Arabia, world's leading oil producer. Saddam was foolish enough to think that he could challenge the US military power. On clear skies of the open desert terrain of the region, US airpower paralyzed Iraqi military and other important targets within days of hostilities in 1991. As Saddam refused to pull out from Kuwait, a largest armored force ever assembled since World War II entered Kuwait, decimated Iraqi resistance and liberated Kuwait within days. The cease-fire agreement allowed Iraq to enjoy its sovereignty but it had to pledge to give away its weapons of mass destruction. It also imposed no fly zones over Iraqi airspace to protect Iraqi minorities from air raids by Saddam's air force. Another phase of bloody events followed the 1991 Gulf War. Encouraged by Iraq's defeat in Kuwait and prodded by US administration to rebel against Saddam, the Shiite population in the south and the Kurds in the north of Iraq challenged baghdad's authority. As no help came from Washington, Saddam's remnant troops massacred tens of thousands of would be resistance fighters and their families. Thus Saddam remained unchallenged. The 2001 World Trade Center attacks profoundly influenced the Americans to believe that all anti-US regimes in the world could have links with Al Qaida and Osama bin Laden. Saddam, an old time foe who had been challenging UN arms inspectors was the prime target for the Bush administration in its global war on terror. US intelligence analysts possibly calculated that Al Qaida's elusive organization married to Saddam's purported arsenal of chemical, biological and nuclear would pose a lethal threat to Washington and its allies. So in 2003, the US military invaded Iraq. After facing an array of resistance within Iraq, the US military captured Saddam on December 2003. After a long series of trials marked by assasination of lawyers and other hindrances, Saddam was finally sentenced to die on November 5, 2006 as ther verdict was upheld by Iraq's highest appeals court. Saddam paid for his life for his hands were bloody. Many opposed Saddam's hanging while others spoke against death penalty. Saddam had done many positive things to his country. He modernized his country, gave his people free health and education and oil subsidy, tax breaks, etc. But, he allowed his two sons to go on a killing spree in his country. He himself ordered killings of his closest aides, his own people and people of his neighboring countries. After all, he also ordered the murder of his own son-in-laws. So how do we remember Saddam? Do we forget his crimes and suffering he caused to so many families? If we end up supporting dictators and still say we support democratic values, I think it would be a great contradiction.