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WASHINGTON and Baghdad will be tempted, with the adoption of a new Constitution and the election on Thursday for a four-year government, to declare victory in Iraq. In one sense, they are right to do so. The emerging Iraqi polity undoubtedly represents a radical break not only with the country's past but also with the whole Arab state system established by Britain and France after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. But in the larger sense, such optimism is misguided, for none of the problems associated with Iraq's monumental change have been sorted out. Worse, profound tensions and contradictions have...

David Rose talks to Kanan Makiya, the exile analysing three million documents to bring Baghdad's butchers to justice Like George W. Bush, the Iraqi writer Kanan Makiya - the man who first drew the world's attention to the extent of Saddam Hussein's crimes in his seminal 1989 book, Republic of Fear - was woken at 5am last Sunday by a phone call from Baghdad. Makiya was in America, where he made his home as a professor at Brandeis University during his long exile, and was staying with his family in Massachusetts when he heard Saddam had been captured. 'I jumped...

Like George W. Bush, the Iraqi writer Kanan Makiya - the man who first drew the world's attention to the extent of Saddam Hussein's crimes in his seminal 1989 book, Republic of Fear - was woken at 5am last Sunday by a phone call from Baghdad. Makiya was in America, where he made his home as a professor at Brandeis University during his long exile, and was staying with his family in Massachusetts when he heard Saddam had been captured. 'I jumped up and woke the kids. We put our arms round each other and for a long time, just...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - "Republic of Fear," the chilling portrayal of Saddam Hussein's brutality, was a landmark in its exiled author's long intellectual journey of discovery. Now, Kanan Makiya has returned to an Iraq his words helped expose and says he finds it a vexing and complex landscape. Makiya returned to Baghdad on April 21 for the first time in 34 years. He said the return has been an exhilarating ride - meeting long-unseen relatives, old friends, reclaiming the family's Baghdad home on the Tigris River and negotiating access to government documents in now in U.S. hands. The 54-year old...

Paper Trail Shows Saddam's Baath Party Fueled By Money By JOEL BRINKLEYPublished on 11/24/2003Baghdad, Iraq — In the end, after the secret investigations, the middle-of-the-night arrests, the obsequious genuflections to Saddam Hussein, a common passion drove these members of Iraq's Baath Party to excel at their special occupation. It was all about the money. Just as soon as any of them apprehended a malefactor and saw to his execution — or immediately after rounding up an army deserter, amputating his ears and arranging to have food rations denied to his family — Baath Party functionaries filled out forms in triplicate...

After 32 years in exile, the author, a well-known Iraqi dissident, returned home on Monday night to meet with fellow Iraqis on determining an interim authority for his country. - - - I entered Iraq from Kuwait City about two hours ago. Some comrades and I are riding in a convoy, accompanied by a former Navy SEAL from Jay Garner's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, en route to the Free Iraqi Forces camp outside of Nasiriya. Our vehicles are carrying cash, equipment and supplies for the 800 or so Free Iraqi Forces and others at camp with Ahmed Chalabi....

KANAN MAKIYA'S WAR DIARY April 10 Only at TNR Online Post date: 04.10.03 Baathism died in Iraq yesterday. The sight of the oversized bronze head of Saddam rolling in the dust and being beaten with shoes by exuberant Iraqis is perhaps the most important image of Iraqi politics of the last 50 years. It was the end of the republic of fear. Two Iraqis with whom I was camping out in Washington, D.C., woke me up at 5 a.m. yesterday so we could watch the images of a free Iraq. Tears rolled down our cheeks uncontrollably. The greeting we had...

KANAN MAKIYA'S War Diary Only at TNR Online Post date: 04.03.03 Iraqis in the diaspora--friends, colleagues, refugees from the 1996 debacle in the north--are at this moment packing their bags, gathering at collection points, and returning to northern and southern Iraq. Some are en route to Kuwait and other countries within or near the "theater of operations"--the Pentagon lingo by which they are learning to refer to their home. The mechanics and specifics of their movement I am not at liberty to disclose. Suffice it to say they should have made their move months ago. The enemies of the Iraqi...

KANAN MAKIYA'S WAR DIARY March 27 Do not believe any commentator who says that a rising surge of "nationalism" is preventing Iraqis from greeting U.S. and British troops in the streets with open arms. What is preventing them from rising up and taking over the streets of their cities is confusion about American intentions and fear of the murderous brown-shirt thugs known as the Fedayeen Saddam, who are leading the small-arms-fire attacks on American and British soldiers. The coalition forces have an urgent need to send clear and unmistakable signals to the people of Iraq that unlike in 1991, there...

KANAN MAKIYA'S WAR DIARY March 26 A new word has entered the English language: de-Baathification. Originally coined by Ahmed Chalabi, and honed by Ali Allawi, myself, and other Iraqi contributors to our Transition to Democracy report, the word has become part of Bush administration's vocabulary as it prepares to overhaul the state set up by Saddam Hussein's Baath Party in 1968. If you think about it, this is a very big victory for the democratic wing of the Iraqi opposition as it fights to make its case for what needs to be done the day after the shooting stops in...

The bombs have begun to fall on Baghdad. Iraqi soldiers have shot their officers and are giving themselves up to the Americans and the British in droves. Others, as in Nasiriyah and Umm Qasr, are fighting back, and civilians have already come under fire. Yet I find myself dismissing contemptuously all the e-mails and phone calls I get from antiwar friends who think they are commiserating with me because "their" country is bombing "mine." To be sure, I am worried. Like every other Iraqi I know, I have friends and relatives in Baghdad. I am nauseous with anxiety for their...

KANAN MAKIYA'S WAR DIARY March 24 The bombs have begun to fall on Baghdad. Iraqi soldiers have shot their officers and are giving themselves up to the Americans and the British in droves. Others, as in Nasiriyah and Umm Qasr, are fighting back, and civilians have already come under fire. Yet I find myself dismissing contemptuously all the e-mails and phone calls I get from antiwar friends who think they are commiserating with me because "their" country is bombing "mine." To be sure, I am worried. Like every other Iraqi I know, I have friends and relatives in Baghdad. I...

The world is now getting acquainted with the Fedayeen Saddam, the thugs who are keeping Iraqi citizens in check, most vividly right now in the cities of the south. They were created by Saddam's elder son Uday in 1991 with the specific purpose of countering any future intifada, especially in the predominantly Shi'ite south. (Saddam has since given control the Fedayeen over to his more stable son Qusay.) According to a former Iraqi intelligence officer who worked for the opposition while he was still in the security services and only made his (narrow) escape when his activities were uncovered, the...