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Saddam Hussein; The End of the End, But is it? |
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Wednesday, 10 January 2007 |
Saddam Hussein died during the early hours of Saturday, December 30, 2006. The condemned ex-president arrived at the site were he would be executed, a military complex which housed during his reign the offices of the military intelligence the complex is located in a dominantly Shia district, al-Kadhimia. Saddam was wearing a black suit under a black overcoat. He has been delivered to the custody of the Iraqi authorities by the Americans few minutes earlier and was led to the execution chambers by three masked men in the presence of few authorized men. The death penalty which was delivered late November has been verified by the special appeals court on Tuesday November 26, 2006, it was final and stipulated that the execution had to be done within a month, the appeals court's decision stirred a fevered speculation as to when it would be conducted but on Friday, December 30th, the speculation reached a very high pitch and many people were claiming that it was very imminent. Saddam was hanged Saturday December 30, 2006 at 6:10 AM, Saddam had finally gone, and we were promised that his end would usher in a new beginning and the end of the torture of the country and the nightmare of its people. But...
Saddam was born April 28, 1937, in Al-Awja, a small village situated at a bend of the Tigris [awja, means a bend] 8Kms south of Tikrit in a poor peasant family, an orphan, his father has died few months earlier but his mother was already re-married to his uncle as custom in those areas dictate. During his early years he sojourned between his stepfather's and maternal uncle's house in Tikrit. His early years were not easy, the stepfather was a rough ignorant peasant, and for his part Saddam was a loner famous for carrying an iron bar wherever he went. The maternal uncle was at that time a junior army officer who has spent the last few years of the Second World War in a British prison, because of his strong undisguised Nazi sympathies. After his imprisonment he was very bitter and frustrated, but these feelings found a very good outlet, Saddam, a curious and an already pretty confused mind the two made an amazing couple. The uncle's education was a very important lesson in the meaning of power, Saddam Hussein grew up convinced that only his iron bar would protect him.
By age ten the boy has become totally alienated to his life in the constricted environment of al-Awja so one dark night when everybody was asleep he fled the stepfather’s house towards his uncle’s in Tikrit, the uncle had a son who was starting school who convinced his cousin to attend with him, Saddam was not interested in formal education, but he managed with difficulty to finish the first six years, the second phase is called the secondary and because there was no such level in Tikrit the uncle's family moved to Baghdad to allow their son to continue his studies Saddam followed them.
As the Second World War was impending, the Arabs were stirring against their British and French domination, but they lacked properly formulated ideas only Nazism and Communism offered an ideological and organizational options, but both were unacceptable to he Arabs, the communist model was too international and against religion and Nazism was too extreme and its methods harsh and inhumane. Enter Michelle Aflaq a thin slight Syrian, a teacher who was studying in Paris has tampered at one time or another with the two philosophies and was convinced of their unsuitability to the Arab world, he began preaching a marriage of the Marxist philosophy with the Nazi’s nationalism, so and upon his return to Syria he was able to form in 1947 a party which encompassed his ideas, The Ba'ath. The party arrived in Iraq during the early fifties and by the middle of the fifties it become a very serious power in spite of the small number of its membership which was mainly located in Baghdad and which coincided with the arrival of Saddam in the city. Saddam was enrolled in a secondary school called al-Karkh" which was a very active center of the budding Ba’ath, an activity into which he immersed himself at the expense of his studies, he was greatly impressed by the Ba’ath with its strong emphasis on discipline, its organizational skills and the aura of secrecy surrounding it, which greatly appealed to him. He joined the party in 1957.
Saddam's position in the Ba'ath when he was enlisted was a humble and a very insignificant one, but he managed with a little more than ten years to ascend with a great deal of cunning, stamina and intrigue to the top of the party's organization a position from which he was able with the help of a handful of relatives, some members of his tribe and very few very intimate friends to lead a coup on July 17, 1968 against the vestiges of the Aref regime thus the second Ba'athist Regime was installed. Saddam was from the very beginning the real power behind the new government but he preferred to rule from behind the back of a titular head of state, a distant uncle, a blank and ignorant retired army general, Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, Saddam held in his own hands the three most important elements of government, intelligence, finance and the propaganda apparatus. But finally al-Bakr was kicked out to open the way to Saddam to assume openly the leadership of the country now holding in his own hands all the number one portfolios in the party and the government, al-Bakr was confined to his own house in Baghdad to die a bit later from thallium poisoning.
The story of Saddam and his three decades on top of this country has been told a thousand times but suffice to say now that it was tyrannical a crazy dictatorship which resulted in a terrible suffering and destruction, remember the images of the mass graves and those of the people who were buried alive, the pilfering of the wealth of the nation on his maniacal programs to acquire weapons of mass destruction and atomic bombs and the futile wars which he fought against his neighbors all of which finally convinced the Americans that it was time for him to go, so the Bush administration claiming that he was becoming a menace to his people and a threat to international peace and stability unleashed their military against him March 19, 2003 and by April 9 his regime has collapsed and he vanished, that was supposed to be his end but he escaped until he was captured by the Americans 8 months later and was kept in their custody until he was finally brought to a trial in 2005 in front of a special court for his part in the murder of 182 Shiites who were accused of organizing and executing the attempt on his life which took place in the small town of Dujail in 1982, the trial lasted for almost a year and a half which ended towards the end of last November. Saddam was found guilty and he was condemned to death, the verdict was confirmed by an appeals court on the 26th of last December whose decision was final.
Saddam Hussein was delivered to the Iraqi authorities few minutes before his execution, the authorities promised to conduct the procedure with dignity and full attention to the condemned's legal and human rights in the presence of a doctor, a Sunni cleric, a member of the prosecution, the national security adviser and three masked guards. The execution was supposed to be documented by an official photographer but two days later few clips of TV pictures and sound which were taken by one of those who were present showed in the words of one Arab leader ghastly images and sound, the opposing camp accused the authorities of being merciless and revengeful which created a huge controversy which is threatening the attempts at national reconciliation and increasing the already dangerous polarization of the Iraqi society. Apparently the end of Saddam which did not materialize with his fall down from power and which people were hoping that it will come with his execution is threatening to the beginning of a new and a more deadly chapter in the ongoing saga of Iraq and the nightmare of its people.
Najeeb Hanoudi
Baghdad, Iraq
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
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