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My Book: Part Three - The Prelude to Saddam |
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Saturday, 08 March 2008 |
My Book: Saddam, the Roots, the Rise and the fall
Today’s piece is the third and last part of the introduction to my book on Saddam Hussein. The first two pieces were two essays on two very important periods in the history of Iraq, this one is a discussion of the period which preceded Saddam and has been a very good foundation for his arrival. Next week I am going to install pieces from the story of Saddam which is also divided into three sections each one of which is again divided into three parts. The first section of the book is entitled: “The origins of a tyranny” and the first part of it that I have here today is called the formative years.
Introduction: Iraq in History
Part Three – The Prelude to Saddam
FOR the next four centuries Iraq was the center of major conflicts between states surrounding it until the Ottoman Empire, this Empire was created by Turkish tribes under Othman, a nomadic Turkmen chief who founded a dynasty and an Empire about the 16th century which lasted for more than 400 years and came to an end in 1918. The Ottoman Empire at its highest included most of southeastern Europe and the middle east including Iraq, but as we have already seen and as a result of its dismemberment following its defeat in the first world war [1941-1918] Iraq was placed under league of nations mandate and was administered by the British and the British in attempt to lighten their hold on the country ruled through the local tribal leaders who were granted very special privileges. But the tactic backfired and in fact helped fuel a very serious resistance to their presence in the country resulting in increasingly very serious insurrections which by 1920 developed into full blown revolt which the British tried to quell by bombing and machine gunning the terrorized natives which resulted in hundred of thousands of Iraqis dead and few thousand killed from the ranks of the British military. The occupation of Iraq was proving to be a very expensive adventure to the British Empire, they were in dilemma they were unable to accept the cost, but they were also unable to relinquish the place with the potential of huge reserves in it especially Mosul. The fertile mind of the then secretary of states for colonies, Winston Churchill the created in 1921 a new state on the British style, a monarchy and called it Iraq the name which has been used by the Arabs since the sixth century and brought Faisal one of the sons of the Sharriff of Mecca and installed him as a king in recognition of his father’s support to the British against the Turkish brothern during the last war. Everybody including the king himself knew that the whole thing was no more than a charade so he was trying very hard to convince his people that he was ruling with their interests in his heart but the British were not helping him in his predicament nevertheless he persevered but it was a very difficult dance. Faisal the First died in 1933 during a holiday in Switzerland, we are told from a heart attack. Faisal was succeeded by his son Ghazi who was killed after a very short time in a car accident which was almost certainly engineered by the British, for his alleged Nazi sympathies. Ghazi was succeeded by his son Faisal the Second who was very young and the country was ruled in his name by his uncle Abdul Illah - as a regent until 1953 when he assumed powers for only five years to be murdered with all his family during the early hours of July 14th 1958 when the Hashemite monarchy was toppled by a group of young middle class officers under the command of Brigadier Abdul-Karim Qassim. Qassim who abolished the monarchy and the constitution and declared the country a republic with a committee of three at its head, a ceremonial body with the real power in his hands as prime minister.
BRITAIN’S years in Iraq were not a picnic. It was at the start of World War I that Britain first occupied Mesopotamia, then part of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans had allied themselves with Germany and Britain justified its 1914 invasion as a move to protect its oil interests in neighboring Iran and its access to the gulf’s shipping lanes to India. Many Iraqis welcomed the British troops with open arms to court Arabs throughout the Middle East the British vowed to end three decades of Ottoman rule which had grown corrupt repressive and economically stifling, “our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies but as liberators proclaimed General Stanley Maude the commander of the British forces as his troops marched into Baghdad in 1917”. The honeymoon did not last long, the British had very soon a full blown revolt against them, which was organized and executed by the Shiites in the southern part of the country which lasted for few years and coasted the British Empire a lot of blood and fortune. Britain’s experiment in nation-building in Iraq failed for many reasons, some blame Britain’s failure on geography pointing out that Iraq which covers some 168,000 square miles has only one and a mere 12 miles of shoreline to the gulf making it practically land locked. Others tie Iraq’s turbulent history to its ethnic and religious diversity creating the plethora of groups inside it vying for power; the Iraqi population which was about 17 million at that time is mainly Muslim Arabs with an abundance of ethnic and religious minorities. The Muslims themselves are divided into Sunnis and Shiites with a fairly substantial Christian minority and few much smaller religious minorities, the ethnology of the country is even more diverse and complicated the people are mainly Arabs with again a very substantial minority of Kurd who are found mainly in the mountainous north and other much smaller minorities. Others ascribe the failure of the British to other reasons all of these factors tend to make Iraq a very difficult place to govern and the British experiment failed and its end came on the 14th of July 1958 at the hands of Brigadier Abdul-Kareem Qassim.
QASSIM’S years in power were chaotic. The man was sincere, simple and decent but politically naïve and was unable to cope with the complicated politics of Iraq. His slightly less than five years in power were characterized by huge upheavals and turmoil, the first major episode was his fight with his second in command col. Abdul-Salam Aref, which led to a total polarization of the country. I am coming back to this story very shortly, but I would like to emphasize now that this quarrel was a very important factor in his final fall, he was overthrown and killed during a bloody revolution which was led by the Ba’ath party in 1963, the Ba’athists remained in power for six months only, their regime was plagued by terrible internecine quarrels and very severe divisions, they were replaced by Colonel Abdul-Salam Aref who was second in command to Qassim, he had opposed his chief’s Communist’s inclinations. Aref was a stout Nasserite but he in turn was killed in a helicopter crash in 1966 and was replaced by his brother Abdul-Rahman who was chief of staff of the armed forces at the time and who was unceremoniously removed from office by what is becoming increasingly accepted as a conspiracy which was engineered by Saddam Hussein in 1968 which was shamelessly claimed by Saddam and his cronies as the white revolution. This became famously known as the 17th-30th July revolution of which Saddam was from the first day the real power. Ahmad Hassan Al-Baker, a semi educated, colorless, retired officer from his own city was made president who was nothing but a front for Saddam to be kicked out and poisoned to death in due course.
SADDAM was born April 28, 1937, in a small village call Awja near Tikrit in a poor family of crooks and petty thieves. The stepfather was known as Hassan the liar, the boy was showing a clear evidence of anti-social behavior from his earliest years, which didn’t endear him to the rough ignorant uncle who was finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet for a rapidly growing family and the boy was not helping. Saddam used to leave the house in the early evenings and wander in the silent harsh desert carrying a metal rod which he would heat and attack with it the unfortunate animals who were unfortunate enough to come near him, and when he would come back home during the early hours of the day his stepfather would beat him very severely for his refusal to share in the burdens of the family. At age ten he fled the house in Awja to Tikrit to his maternal uncle’s house on his way he met a group of villagers guarding an old building which belonged to the British, the villagers were greatly impressed by his courage and daring and gave him a gun, which started his longtime association with death and its weapons. During his stay in Tikrit he was exposed to a lot of fantasies and delusions from his uncle, a primary school teacher recently released from a British jail were he was incarcerated during the war years for his Nazi sympathies. The uncle moved with his family to Baghdad in 1952, his nephew accompanied him and settled in an area inhabited mainly by Tikrities which was a hot bed of the budding Ba’ath party into which he immersed himself at the expense of his studies in which he never excelled. His already confused mind was attracted to the Ba’ath’s ideas on pan Arabism socialism and freedom which he finally joined in 1957. Saddam is often called mad; Saddam was not crazy, he was a malignant narcissist totally absorbed in his own-self and immune to the suffering of everybody else.
THE history of Iraq under Saddam is a real tragedy. There is nothing like it in Man’s recent history. The death and destruction this creature has wrought on his country its people and on Iraq’s neighbors is unimaginable. I very sincerely hope that the following chapters would shed some more light on this tragedy now that he has been finished and to hopefully learn some lessons from it. Saddam Hussein is an anomaly, a gross psychological aberration a narcissist, a developmental and a cultural monstrosity. Saddam Hussein is the product of an extraordinarily complex set of intertwining biological and environmental factors. Very little is known about his first years of life, nevertheless a few hard facts are known and are enough to explain his behavior and the kind of tyranny he was able to exhibit during his rule.
Najeeb Hanoudi
Berkley, Michigan
Monday, March 3, 2008
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