Iraqi children take great pleasure in stamping on a poster of Saddam
Posted on 04/09/2003 5:33:25 PM PDT by MadIvan
The plump, veiled woman rolled her brimming eyes towards the heavens, as if filled with ecstasy. "He is our leader, our beloved leader, our wise leader, the father of us all," she sang, clasping her face with open palms. "He wins victory after victory, he cares for us all, he is everything to us."
Iraqi children take great pleasure in stamping on a poster of Saddam |
Until allied bombs blasted Iraqi television off the airwaves last week, this praise-singing for Saddam Hussein - the Great Leader, President of Iraq, Commander of its Armies, Father of its People and Direct Descendant of the Prophet - occurred night after night.
It formed only a small part of a personality cult so colossal, oppressive and grotesque as to be unrivalled since the days of Stalin. For most Iraqis, Saddam's face and his distinctively nasal voice seemed as permanent a part of their lives as the solar system.
That explains the extraordinary atmosphere on the streets of Baghdad yesterday, when the city's five million people responded to the tyrant's downfall with a mixture of delight, disbelief, bewilderment and weariness.
More than half of all Iraqis are under 20. Most were not even born when Saddam became president with absolute power 24 years ago. The era before he began his ascent to dominance with the Ba'ath party revolution in 1968 is ancient history to most Iraqis. Like every caricature tyrant Saddam overwhelmed and suffocated the lives of an entire generation.
The news of his fall has not sunk in. There will be a profound sense of relief and joy, comparable to the atmosphere in the freed capitals of Eastern Europe in 1989. For the Great Leader was never popular with most of his people.
Saddam was painfully aware of this. "Don't think you will ever get revenge," he once told the relatives of an Iraqi general whom he had executed. "If you ever get the chance, by the time you reach me, there will not be a sliver of flesh left on my body."
Saddam ran one of the most repressive, murderous regimes in modern history for the good reason that without this apparatus of terror, Iraqis would tear him limb from limb. Unlike most dictators, he was not paranoid. He accurately judged that most of his people were out to get him.
Saddam was a Sunni Arab in a country where about 80 per cent of the population are either Shia Muslims or Kurds. He was, first and foremost, a tribal leader. Saddam's tribe and all of its traditional allies number no more than a few hundred thousand.
His life's mission was to raise this clique to dominance over a nation of 23 million. With remarkable political skill, Saddam achieved this. With complete ruthlessness, he maintained it at appalling cost.
So the overwhelming emotion that Saddam inspired was a deep, abject terror, almost incomprehensible to foreigners. One of the most obvious changes brought by his fall is that Iraqis feel able to refer to him by name. During his rule, most Iraqis were too afraid even to mention the words "Saddam Hussein".
They would talk of "the leadership" or "the rulers", or use exaggerated terms of respect. One Iraqi I knew in Baghdad - who loathed Saddam with a passion - would nonetheless refer to him as "His Excellency the President".
The reaction of each Iraqi to his downfall will depend on how close they were to Saddam's ruling clan. In his hometown of Tikrit, 100 miles north-west of Baghdad, and the nearby strongholds of his tribe in towns like al-Dour and al-Touz, there will be genuine grief.
The winners from Saddam's rule will mourn his passing and fear the consequences if their compatriots start settling old scores.
In Baghdad, inhabited by at least one million Shias and millions more members of clans traditionally hostile to Saddam, people are celebrating his removal.
In southern Iraq, dominated by the Shia majority, the news will bring joy. In the north, where the Kurdish people suffered more at his hands than anyone else, there will be ecstasy.
But Saddam differed from Stalin and Ceausescu in one crucial respect. His face was displayed on every street corner and stared from every wall, yet Saddam himself was almost never seen in public.
As long ago as the mid-Eighties, at the peak of his war with Iran, Saddam drastically curtailed his public appearances. From 2000 onwards, they stopped altogether.
When the nation celebrated Saddam's 65th birthday last April, the Great Leader did not even feel able to attend his own party. For years, the ostentatious presidential palaces lay empty, deserted by a leader who retreated further and further underground.
Saddam acquired at least three doubles and the suspicion remains that these hapless individuals were used for his recent television appearances.
If it was the real Saddam who walked the streets of Baghdad for the cameras last week, he was meeting ordinary Iraqis for the first time in about three years. What was remarkable about that swansong was how few people surrounded him.
Perhaps most passers-by could not comprehend how Saddam would ever walk the same streets as them. Perhaps they did not believe it really was him. Perhaps their fear prevented them from going anywhere near him.
Whatever the truth, they betrayed the mixture of terror and hatred with which Iraqis viewed their dictator who declined into a solitary, ghostly existence before American tanks sealed his fall.
Regards, Ivan
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Nice to hear Saddam was living like a rat or cockroach. He fit right in.
Now (hopefully) he's at the lowest levels of he11.
AP/John Moore
I was thinking - this is a good litmus test of determining what gov'ts should be gotten rid of. Any government that puts pics of it's still-living leaders all over the streets and buildings needs to go. Dead ones are ok, pics of live ones means that something is seriously wrong.
LQ
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