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4 Saddam's life after
death By Sami Moubayed
DAMASCUS - The Arab world is sharply
divided over the execution of Saddam Hussein on
Saturday, with many claiming that it was wrong to
kill him in the early hours of the Muslim Eid
ul-Adha holidays. Others say he was a symbol of
anti-imperialism who should be hailed for defying
the Americans in 2003.
I tried to
sympathize with Saddam as the hangman's noose was
being placed around his neck. I tried hard. I
could not find a single thing, however, worth
praising about Saddam, at least not after
1980.
Regardless of what his opponents think of him,
however, the fact that he was executed under the
watchful eye of the United States, at a time when
Iraq is occupied, makes him a national hero to the
Arabs.
The Saddam of 1968-80, or as some
called him back then "the Ataturk of modern Iraq",
was certainly better than the ruthless dictator
who emerged after the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88.
That Saddam, after all, was a ruthless leader. He
was terrible with those who opposed him. He
created a police state and monitored the lives -
and thought - of both his enemies and his friends.
He lived by the sword. And it is only just that he
should also die by the sword.
The only
regret is that the Iraqis could not topple and
kill him without help from the Americans. When
watching footage of Saddam being hanged, I
recalled every memory I had of the man. His
rhetoric during the Iran-Iraq War, his invasion of
Kuwait and the fiasco of 2003. His words in 1991,
on the eve of the US war for the liberation of
Kuwait, were ringing in my ears as he said: "The
Americans and we are at the tip of the pyramid. We
will see who falls first!" Saddam - clearly - fell
first.
Early years Saddam
Hussein was born on April 28, 1937, in the town of
al-Ajwa, 13 kilometers from the town of Tikrit,
currently a hotbed of opposition to the Americans
and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. The well-known
tale is that Saddam never knew his father, who
disappeared six months before Saddam was born. The
young boy was raised with his uncle, Khayrallah
Tulfah, and his mother remarried, bringing him
home to be raised with an abusive stepfather.
Poor, oppressed, neglected and vengeful,
Saddam confronted the hardships of life at a very
early age. This made him a stronger man when he
came to power. At the age of 10, he left the
family because of his stepfather, and returned to
live with his uncle Tulfah in Baghdad. Saddam went
on to study law in Baghdad, but dropped out in
1957 at the age of 20 to join the Ba'ath Party of
Michel Aflaq (based in Syria). It called for
unity, freedom and socialism - three ideas that
were appealing to the young Saddam and millions
like him throughout the Arab world.
Meanwhile, he worked as a secondary-school
teacher. This after all was the era of president
Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt, where only one year
earlier he had nationalized the Suez Canal,
survived a war with Britain, France and Israel,
and endeared himself to millions of Arabs. Nasser
remained a strong influence in the life of Saddam.
One year after Saddam joined the Ba'ath, a
group of Iraqi officers toppled the pro-Western
monarchy of King Faisal II and his prime minister
Nuri al-Said. The king was murdered, along with
his entire family, and the prime minister was
executed and then dragged through the streets of
Baghdad. The Ba'athists initially supported the
coup, but when they realized that its leader Abd
al-Karim Qasim was not planning to share power
with them, they tried to bring him down.
Saddam was involved in an assassination
attempt on Qasim in 1959. It failed and Saddam was
wounded, forcing him to escape to Syria, which at
the time was part of the United Arab Republic with
Nasser's Egypt. He tried to enroll at Damascus
University, but its president, Ahmad al-Samman,
turned down his application, saying he was
illegible for law school. Saddam argued that he
was "connected" to Nasser, but Samman replied,
"Then let him accept you at Cairo University."
Nasser did, and Saddam went to Egypt to
complete his legal studies, while back in Baghdad
he was sentenced to death in absentia. Eventually,
Qasim was overthrown and killed in a bloody coup
on February 8, 1963. The Ba'athists were rewarded
in the new regime with cabinet posts, but pretty
soon they fell out with the new Iraqi leader,
Abdulsalam Aref.
Saddam returned to Iraq
but was arrested by Aref in 1964. By that time he
had become secretary of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party,
appointed by Aflaq from Damascus, who knew him
since his brief exile in Syria in 1959. In 1968,
the Ba'ath toppled the government of Aref's
brother Abdul-Rahman, and appointed Saddam's
cousin Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr, another Aflaq protege,
as president. Aflaq himself visited Baghdad in
1969, and eventually resided in it, to give
legitimacy to Saddam after he was toppled from
power in Syria in 1966.
Saddam was
rewarded for 11 years of underground activity with
the post of vice president and deputy chairman of
the Nasser-style Revolutionary Command Council.
Bakr, however, proved to be no more than a
figurehead and it was clear that Saddam was the de
facto ruler of Iraq from 1968 until he finally
assumed full powers in 1979.
As early as
1969, the British Embassy in Baghdad reported to
London that Saddam was a "presentable young man"
with "an
