Posted on 04/07/2003 5:50:35 PM PDT by MadIvan
THE militiamen and Baath Party members have hidden or fled and yesterday the legacy of fear and hatred which they left behind in Basra was beginning to emerge.
For Hashim Hamin, taking part in chaotic celebrations outside Iraq’s naval academy, the arrival of the British has come as a relief.
Gaunt and wrinkled, he stood out among the throng of young men.
"I have come to help the British catch every single Baath Party member," he said.
For five years Mr Hamin, an English teacher at a local secondary school, was held in an Iraqi prison and tortured. He said his scarred arms were the result of being strung from the ceiling and beaten by the Iraqi secret service men.
"I had refused to join the party. They hit me a great deal and I was made to eat my meals like a dog with my hands tied behind my back. But I knew I could never join the Baath Party. How could I and keep my conscience clean?" he said.
"If you want to stay out of trouble you have to join and then you could be promoted in the party from the street level to representing the city. But then you would take part in beatings and the burning of property of the people they don’t like. I was one of the people they didn’t like."
There was a particular reason why Mr Hamin had gone to the naval academy.
"They stopped beating me after the first year but then every so often they would take me to the academy and attach electricity to my groins. The people who did this were young officers that Saddam liked."
The offices within the marble academy conference centre were disturbingly homely given this information.
Among some of the items saved from the looters by British soldiers in Z company of the Royal Fusiliers, was a sextant in a glass case built in London in 1945 and a brochure entitled 60 Years of the Iraqi Armed Forces: 1921-1981.
Inside the booklet were picture of smiling officers training in gyms, pointing weapons in different directions.
"Watching vital targets with alertness and surveillance," the caption read.
"That was when they were at their peak before all this began," said Major Duncan McSporran, standing before a row of seats with microphones.
"You could just image Saddam sitting in the chair over there, and pressing a button to send the officers he didn’t like plummeting to their deaths in pits below the seats."
He added: "We haven’t found any torture chambers under here yet. But all you need is a pair of electrodes to inflict real damage."
Outside the compound Mr Hamin was adamant.
"You must help me find the people who tortured me," he said.
In the newly liberated Basra University, it was clear that even in higher education, Iraqis could not escape the clutches of the Baath Party or the military.
Secured by the recce group of the 1st Regiment, Royal Fulsiliers, newly liberated Basra University resembled more a paramilitary training camp for the party than a centre of academic excellence.
On the walls of the building, between oil paintings of a studious looking Saddam Hussein, were charts listing lecturers, scholars and the armoury of each faculty, promising the day "manhood" would come soon.
"Agricultural department," read one. "Senior Lecturer, Major Hamid Jalabi, 196 students, 200 AK47s, 20 rocket propelled grenades and ten hand guns."
"We knew that the university was a militia stronghold," said Captain Ed Pugh.
He stood before a placard which read in Koranic script, "To be loved by the people is to be a member of the Baath Party."
"I never realised until now how deeply Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party had got into peoples lives," Capt Pugh said.
Baath Party ideology had clearly reduced the academic curriculum to a form of state flattery.
Though the looting had left most rooms bare, the library itself had been left untouched, whether as an indication of the fear with which Saddam Hussein is still held by the population or through a degree of discernment on the part of the looters.
The shelves were filled with scholarly tomes written by the dictator.
Revolution and national education, read one book with a picture of Saddam on the front cover.
Others were: Socialism: Our own private way and a collection of speeches entitled The Mother of all Speeches and Speeches of Revolution and Victory.
Stapled to a thesis on the was a hand-written letter to the Iraqi leader.
"To our beloved president Saddam Hussein, on the occasion of his Birthday I would like to give as a present my thesis on the reproductive patterns of Iraqi beetles," the letter read.
The agriculture college at Univ. of CA, Davis doesn't have that kind of equipment. Novel kind of research, maybe?
Not quite, sad to say. Castro and Kim Il Jong come to mind, and others whose names I do not remember.
Well, that certainly sounds like the time that I spent at the US Naval Academy as well.
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