After Saddam's Capture the Crowns Sit Lightly

December 24, 2003
By Hussain Hindawi and John R. Thomson

There was dancing and singing in the streets of Baghdad and giddy jubilation in the holy Shiite city of Najaf to the south.  Even in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown, the citizenry seemed to heave a collective sigh of relief.  Yet, despite the almost universal Iraqi euphoria, the longer term impact of Saddam’s capture remains uncertain, both at home and throughout the Muslim world.

Saddam, the dreaded, despised and deposed president of Iraq, on the lam since US forces liberated Baghdad on April 19, had been arrested.  “Caught” better describes the bizarre conditions in which units of the U.S. Army’s 4^th Infantry Division captured the man who, at 66, had been involved in Iraqi politics for half a century, his country’s tyrannical dictator for 35 years and star-crossed commander of Iraq’s armed forces through four horrific wars. 

Baghdad observers, Sunni and Shiite alike, were aghast at Saddam’s performance, on emerging from his rat-like lair.  Disquieting as his disheveled looks and disoriented expression were, the pacific, pathetic way in which he surrendered shocked Iraq’s 25 million citizens.  In quavering tones, Saddam, the man who often bragged about knowing no English, said “Don’t shoot!  I am the President of Iraq....  I am ready to negotiate.”

Fittingly in his home town of Tikrit, Saddam ended his political career at an even lower point than he had launched it: a fugitive lying on his back in a stinking underground lair, given over to the Americans by family and friends thoroughly disillusioned with the man who had been their despotic leader for what seemed an eternity.  Saddam had launched his political career with a bang in 1954 by committing his first murder and in 1959, in a humble hut, he conceived his initial plans to take over power.

He had disguised himself in a beard once before.  Sporting fake whiskers and dressed like a shepherd he fled to Syria in 1959, having shot and wounded the revered Iraqi leader Abdul Kareem Qassem, in an abortive attempt by the Ba’ath party to assume power.  At the time of his arrest last week, the beard was real and the formerly sham shepherd looked the part of a genuinely defeated, tired old man.

This time, there was no disguising it: Saddam Hussein was finished.

Local Arabic language newspapers waxed jubilant at Saddam’s capture.  Baghdad, published by the Iraqi National Accord Movement, said, “Following Saddam’s arrest, there are calls for making December 14 a national holiday.”  A separate article noted that “Saddam ruled the country with an iron fist, then fell, humiliated,” noting further that, “At the end, the symbol of dictatorship was captured, creating relief for the Americans, support from the French, congratulations from the Germans and a welcome from the Kuwaitis.”

Writer Mahdi al-Hafiz in Al Nahdah, published by the Iraqi Independent Democrat Group, observed in an article entitled The End of a Dark Chapter: “Sunday marked the end of the kingdom of fear … unique in its ugly crimes of terrorism, violence and mass murder.”  Another article by journalist Sadiq Bakhan was titled “And the Monster Fell Into the Trap,” also noting numerous calls for observing December 14 as an Iraqi national holiday.

In a telephone interview with a leading Cairo radio station, the official spokesman of Iraq’s Islamic Al-Dawah Party, Jawad al-Malki, said, “… We have suffered painful wounds inflicted by Saddam.  For example, he signed a decree on 31 March 1980 ordering the execution of all Al-Dawah Party members, and all people promoting our party’s ideas or concealing our secrets.”

The radio interview with Al-Malki was one of the few public reactions in Egypt’s tightly controlled press.  The leading newspaper Al-Ahram, for example, simply ran a front page photo of the captured Saddam under the headline: “Arrested.”  The virtually non-opinionated nature of Egyptian media coverage was seen by Cairo observers as a sign of President Hosni Mubarak’s difficult position.  In nominally democratic control of the Arab World’s largest country for 22 years, the autocratic Mubarak must balance his concern for the longevity of his government in the face of mounting popular unrest, at the same time as he fears offending his financial angel, the United States.  The interim solution: direct the muzzled press to report the fact blandly, with no interpretation, whatever.

The fall with a mighty thud of the Middle East’s most notorious despot and the possibility of a serious democracy replacing him, is terribly unsettling to despots as diverse as those residing in Cairo, Damascus, Riyadh and Tripoli, as well as in Yasser Arafat’s corrupted Palestinian satrapy based in Ramallah.  The dictators running Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Libya have run their countries as if they owned them.  Moreover, they are so enamored by the treasure and trappings of power that they either have or are seeking to create family dynasties to rule their nations.

Not unreasonably, this tendency is increasingly unpopular in the street.  Thus, each of the governments [barring Palestine’s Arafat, whose wife and daughter reside in Parisian splendor] is faced with the same dilemma: how to reform, without being resoundingly sacked by their restive citizens. 

An American expert on Islam, Robert Spencer, author most recently of “Onward Muslim Soldiers”, described the regional impact of Saddam’s capture as one of “shock, disbelief, shame and anger, no matter what they may say for public consumption.”  He noted that the London-based pan Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat [funded and owned by members of the Saudi royal family and previously anti-Saddam], reflected its owners’ fears as well as the hypocritical attitude of a many Arabs with its headline announcing Saddam’s arrest: “Insult to Arab Honor.”

The Saudi royal family is clearly being pulled in several divergent directions.  The old guard somehow believes it can hold on, all the while sequestering substantial sums in offshore safe havens.  Other members seek to continue their dictatorial way by buying off the murderous Al Qaeda and nominally opening the government at the local level.  Still others seem to think the Al Qaeda represents the wave of the future and are paying huge amounts of save-their-hides hush money.

No one in Saudi Arabia to whom we have spoken believes the vaunted electoral reform, in which half the seats on municipal councils are to be popularly elected, is anything but a meaningless sop by the conflicted and confounded Saudi royal family.  One business leader put it this way: “Congratulations to you Americans.  The royal family is in its last days, and no one expects anything but chaos when they fall from power.  At least you’ve got Iraqi and Kuwaiti oil plus Qatari gas, to replace ours.”

Muammar Qadhafi’s acquiescence to US-UK pressure, following ignominious admission and expensive settlement of the 1988 Pan Am 103 sabotage, reflects the mercurial strongman’s political sensitivity, key to his holding on to power for nearly 35 years.  Advanced chemical and biological WMD programs plus nuclear research – always denied – are being dismantled and opened for surprise inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency.  It is clear that Qadhafi’s second son, Seif Al Islam, is trying to steer his father to enough détente with Europe and the United States to give him a chance to establish a family ruling dynasty in Libya.

In Damascus, the shaky rule of Bashar Al-Assad is under pressure from two sides.  Holdovers from his late father’s regime fill virtually all major government and military positions and halted Bashar’s initial efforts to modernize government, society and relations with Israel and the United States.  Old line Ba’athists, they have no interest in anything beyond continuing the fascist status quo, maintaining power and wealth for a select few and grinding poverty for the masses.  Externally, an increasingly bold Israel appears to be seeking armed confrontation with Syria, secure in America’s frustration with a regime that refuses to arrest Iraqi Ba’athist thugs living in splendid exile.

Egypt’s president for 22 years, Hosni Mubarak at 76 is in failing health and anxious that his son Gamal succeed him.  This controversial attempt to install a ruling family dynasty finds Mubarak caught between continuing a political process that is democratic in name only and maintaining good relations with Washington, his government’s prime financial benefactor.  Gamal’s recent appointment as political secretary of the ruling National Democratic Party, is considered a clear signal of the family’s Pharaonic ambitions, anathema to the vast majority of Egyptians.  With upwards of 40% unemployment, the fellah in the street is more than restive: he and his family teeter on the brink of starvation.  Allowing free electoral choice would almost surely result in the regime’s end.

Perhaps the most content Islamic government is the mullah-run regime in Iran.  The hated Saddam, responsible for an estimated 600,000 Iranian casualties in the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war, is finally gone.  Moreover, the Shiite government in Tehran sees sweet revenge for its fellow Shiites in Iraq, so brutally subdued by the ancien regime, as well as potential Iranian hegemony over what will assuredly be a Shiite controlled government in Baghdad.  The Coalition Authority has additionally agreed to extradite Iraq-based elements of the renegade Mujahideen-e-Khalq militia to Tehran.

Only time will tell the ultimate impact of the capture of Saddam Hussein, both at home in Iraq and abroad.  It is significant that in the Tikrit area alone, there were an average of 22 guerrilla incidents daily in November; while to date in December, there have been an average of just six such daily dustups.  If Coalition, principally American, armed forces can maintain the momentum of capturing, killing and otherwise subduing guerrillas and jihad terrorists, Saddam’s arrest will be seen as the beginning of the end of hostilities in Iraq.

As for Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Syria on the other hand, Saddam’s final fall could well be seen to have been the beginning of the end of four long-standing, repressive, “family-oriented” regimes.

Dr. Hussain Hindawi has just completed a five week fact finding trip to all areas of his native Iraq following 32 years in exile.  John R. Thomson draws on three decades’ living and working in Beirut, Cairo and Riyadh as businessman, diplomat and journalist.