Arabs Shocked, Relieved at Baghdad's Fall
April 9, 2003
By DONNA ABU-NASR Associated Press Writer
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) -- The fall of Baghdad provoked shock and disbelief Wednesday among Arabs, who expressed hope that other oppressive regimes would crumble but also disappointment that Saddam Hussein did not put up a better fight against America.
"Why did he fall that way? Why so fast?" said Yemeni homemaker Umm Ahmed, tears streaming down her face. "He's a coward. Now I feel sorry for his people."
Arabs clustered at TV sets in shop windows, coffee shops, kitchens and offices to watch the astounding pictures of U.S. troops overwhelming an Arab capital for the first time ever.
Feeling betrayed and misled, some turned off their sets in disgust when jubilant crowds in Baghdad celebrated the arrival of U.S. troops.
"We discovered that all what the (Iraqi) information minister was saying was all lies," said Ali Hassan, a government employee in Cairo, Egypt. "Now no one believes Al-Jazeera anymore.
In a live report from Baghdad, correspondent Shaker Hamed of Abu Dhabi Television said:"We are all in shock. How did things come to such an end? How did U.S. tanks enter the center of the city? Where is the resistance? This collapse is puzzling. Was it the result of the collapse of communications between the commanders? Between the political leadership? How come Baghdad falls so easily."
Mohammed al-Shahhal, a 49-year-old teacher in Tripoli, Lebanon, said the scenes reminded him of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
"Those who applauded the collapse of Lenin's statue for some Pepsi and hamburgers felt the hunger later on and regretted what they did," al-Shahhal said.
However, Tannous Basil, a 47-year-old cardiologist in Sidon, Lebanon, said Saddam's regime was a "dictatorship and had to go."
"I don't like the idea of having the Americans here, but we asked for it," he said. "Why don't we see the Americans going to Finland, for example? They come here because our area is filled with dictatorships like Saddam's."
Tarek al-Absi, a Yemeni university professor, was hopeful Saddam's end presaged more democracy in the region.
"This is a message for the Arab regimes, and could be the beginning of transformation in the Arab region," al-Absi said. "Without the honest help of the Western nations, the reforms will not take place in these countries."
The overwhelming emotions for many Arabs were disbelief or disillusionment after weeks of hearing Saddam's government pledge a "great victory" or fight to the death against "infidel invaders."
"We Arabs are clever only at talking," Haitham Baghdadi, 45, said bitterly in Damascus, Syria. "Where are the Iraqi weapons? Where are the Iraqi soldiers?"
Many resorted to conspiracy theories to explain the rapid collapse.
"There must have been treason," said Ahmed Salem Batmira, an Omani political analyst.
"It seems there was some deal. Saddam has put himself ahead of his people," said Yemeni government employee Saad Salem el-Faqih, 50.
Three men having tea and smoking in a coffee shop in Riyadh were unsettled as they watched the TV - even though they said they were against Saddam and felt sorry for the long-suffering Iraqis.
"I can't say that I'm happy about what's going on because these are non-Muslim forces that have gone in and I hope they will not stay," said Mohammed al-Sakkaf, a 58-year-old businessman.
Many said they were disturbed by images of U.S. troops lounging in Saddam's palaces or draping the U.S. flag around the head of a Saddam statue.
"Liberation is nobler than that," said Walid Abdul-Rahman, one of the three Saudis. "They should not be so provocative."
In Jordan, hotel receptionist Wissam Fakhoury, 28, said he was disappointed in the Baghdad crowds.
"I spit on them," he said. "Do those crowds who are saluting the Americans believe that the United States will let them live better?" Fakhoury said. Americans "will loot their oil and control their resources, leaving them nothing.
Bahraini physician Hassan Fakhro, 62, said he was saddened.
"Whatever I'm seeing is very painful because although Saddam Hussein was a dictator, he represented some kind of Arab national resistance to the foreign invaders - the Americans and the British," Fakhro said.
After an anti-war march in Khartoum, Sudan, lawyer Ali Al-Sayed said U.S. troops should not misinterpret the relief as an invitation to stay.
"Those people under oppression will not have any national feeling, so they will be happy to see someone removing a dictator and liberating them," al-Sayed said. "But the moment they feel free and liberated, they will not tolerate a foreign presence."
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, an uncomfortable U.S. ally in the war, said the quickest way to achieve stability now would be for U.S. troops to withdraw. "Iraqis must take control over of their country as fast as possible," Mubarak told Egypt's official news agency, MENA.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud, looking upset at a news conference, called for a quick end to Iraq's "occupation." In a rare departure from diplomacy, Saud responded to a question about Arab anger toward the United States with: "I don't want to talk about anger if you don't mind today."
Arabs Shocked, Relieved at Baghdad's Fall
April 9, 2003
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
AMASCUS, Syria, April 9 - It was a day of raw emotion across the Arab world, a historic day with elation, sadness, disbelief, anger and shock all blending as the government of Saddam Hussein seemed to come crashing down with barely a whimper. The moment was marked not as in previous decades by a coup and glorious anthems booming out of the radio, but by American troops, foreigners, pulling down a statue in a main Baghdad traffic circle.
Many felt that the first overthrow of a major Middle Eastern government in at least a generation would rank among other momentous changes in the region's history like the Arab's sudden, bitter defeat in the 1967 war with Israel, or perhaps the assassination of President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt. This time, however, the memories would be etched more vividly because millions of Arabs watched events broadcast live from the legendary city of Baghdad.
Some, especially Iraqis in exile, were overjoyed that they might return home to a country freed from a brutal dictator. But there was also almost universal sadness and unease that it came at the hand of American troops. Audiences recoiled in horror when for a few brief moments one of the soldiers dismantling the statue of Mr. Hussein covered its face with a small American flag.
There was also utter disbelief at the absence of any Iraqi resistance in Baghdad, when just weeks ago the tiny port Um Qasr down south held out for days against a coalition onslaught.
``It is an earthquake, not just for Iraq, but for the whole region,'' said Qasem Jaafar, a political commentator on Al-Jazeera network, which interrupted its regular news programs to broadcast continuous live images of American soldiers rolling unimpeded through central Baghdad. ``We don't want to believe what happened, we don't want to believe what we saw. American tanks are creating changes in the Arab world.''
The American role undoubtedly inspired the most ambivalence, the fact that an uncertain future would be determined mostly by the same Americans held responsible for afflicting the Palestinians with a seemingly endless Israeli occupation.
``We are all betwixt and between, suspended between the hope for freedom and the danger of occupation,'' said Sayyid Abu Murtadah Al-Yasiri, 45, an Iraqi cleric who fled the southern city of Najaf 23 years ago after Mr. Hussein's goons murdered the grand ayatollah who was his religious mentor. ``We are happy to be rid of injustice, but we fear the Americans' intentions.''
Mr. Yasiri then began musing aloud about how he might travel home given that he no longer owned passport. Around him, in the Damascus suburb that has grown up around the shrine to the prophet Muhammad's granddaughter Zeinab, many Iraqi exiles were shouting excitedly about the same thing.
They swamped a reporter inquiring about their mood, quieting suddenly when a small, elderly woman shrouded in traditional black pushed her way through the crowd, shaking her finger in the air to emphasize her point. ``It's not over yet,'' she cried. ``We still don't know.''
The crowd guffawed at her concern, just as they jeered ``Saddam is gone'' at those who hesitated to attach their full names to their statements of happiness at his apparent demise. But one young man wearing a flowered Hawaiian shirt confessed that the fear would take years to recede. ``Even if we see him in his tomb, we will still be afraid.''
After all the bluster and bravado from Mr. Hussein and his officials about how they would make Iraq a graveyard for the Americans, there was much disbelief that Baghdad folded so easily. Arabs fantasized that the Iraqis would hold out just long enough to burnish some of the Arab honor tarnished by repeat ignominious defeats at the hands of Israel and others.
At the Abu Sayef Roasted Chicken Restaurant in Ruwaishad, Jordan, a no-stoplight town 50 miles from the Iraqi border, drivers and waiters sat around on plastic chairs spellbound by images from Baghdad.
For Mohamad Ma'abreh, 28, the worst part of watching was the embarrassment of an Arab nation apparently suffering yet another defeat.
``As an Arab, I find this tragic,'' he explained. ``I wish that all the Arab nations had stood by Iraq. ``Children, women, old men - so many of them were killed.''
Indeed, the images of dead or maimed Iraqis that dominated the coverage of the the past three weeks tempered much joy. ``I feel a little bit happy, but still you see all the civilians who have died and that is still in our hearts,'' said Yassin Mohammad Al-Alwi, a businessman in Rafha, a small Saudi Arabian town near Iraq.
Some felt pangs that Baghdad, the historic capital of the caliphs of Islam when it dominated the world before the 13th Century, had again fallen to foreign troops.
``When we talk about Arab civilization, we talk about Baghad because it was there that the Arab enlightenment started,'' said Adnan Abu-Odeh, a former adviser to the late King Hussein of Jordan. ``It makes us sad to see Baghdad under occupation because it reminds of us the time that the Mongols burned all the manuscripts and threw them into the Tigris and they destroyed the irrigation network.''
This being the Arab world, there were immediate and widespread suspicions of a conspiracy. The idea that the United States kept Mr. Hussein in power to cow the region and to sell a lot of weapons has long held some currency, especially since men like Donald H. Rumsfeld, the American secretary of defense, are on the record lauding him in the early 1980's.
Why were the streets of Baghdad so empty, many Arabs asked, if they were so happy to be liberated why weren't they like Berliners who turned out by the hundreds of thousands to bring down the wall? Some suggested the crowd tearing down the statue of Saddam were just American agents brought in for the day.
The sight of American soldiers roaming freely with nary an Iraqi soldier in sight fed the widespread belief that it was all a charade, a nefarious deal worked out long ago that Mr. Hussein could depart for some comfortable exile. Airwaves filled with reports that he had sought refuge in the Russian embassy, reports denied in Moscow.
There was little official reaction from Arab states, although a few senior officials weighed in with statements of concern that American and other alllied troops in Iraq were not doing enough to prevent the looting that plagued Basra and began to erupt in Baghdad.
Given that Mr. Rumsfeld again criticized the Syrian government under President Bashar Assad for aiding Iraq, there was much speculation that other Arab regimes were likely unnerved by the sudden disappearance of one of their own.
``Some of them are probably shaking,'' said Sawsan Shair, a columnist for Al-Ayam newspaper in the Gulf kingdom of Bahrain. ``Somebody like Bashar is probably locking his door right now.''
It is impossible to gauge the public mood in a place like Syria, where undoubtedly the ideal runs strong that a unified Arab world should prevail and that Israel lurks behind all the region's ills, including the attack on Iraq. But there were also at least hints that what was happening next door was not entirely unwelcome.
``Just concentrate on the statue,'' said one Syrian man, grinning. ``We have a lot of statues here.''
