Kuwait Diary

Kuwait Diary -- April 10th, 2003

Day 22 of the second Gulf war.
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Three things were simultaneously taking place in Iraq yesterday. A group of Iraqis helped by US marines brought down the statue of Saddam Hussien, and then dragged it down the streets of Baghdad; an act of great symbolic value. US marines had first put the US flag covering the face of Saddam. Better sense prevailed and this was quickly replaced by the pre-gulf war (1991) flag of Iraq. In another part of the city and in Northern Iraq, fierce fighting raged, killing at least one US soldier. In Southern Iraq, the coalition struggled with the distribution of humanitarian aid that was coming in through the port of Umm Qasr. Rumsfeld put out a word of caution saying the war was not over yet.

U.S. forces continued to battle holdout fighters at a palace and a mosque in Baghdad; in the north, America's Kurdish allies achieved a major breakthrough, entering the city of Kirkuk near some of Iraq's most productive oil fields. Both skirmishes and widespread looting continued in Baghdad, a day after U.S. officials declared that Saddam Hussein’s regime was no longer in control. That engagement aside, the largely one-sided battle for Baghdad appeared nearly over, and U.S. commanders were focusing on plans to oust pro-Saddam forces from their handful of remaining strongholds in the north , including Saddam's heavily defended hometown of Tikrit and the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk near the northern oil fields.

Many people embarked on a new wave of looting, setting fires to some Interior Ministry buildings and making off with carpets, furniture, TVs and air conditioners from government-owned apartments, abandoned government offices and the police academy. Also looted was the German Embassy . In Saddam City, a densely population Shiite Muslim district in Baghdad, some residents set up roadblocks, confiscated loot being brought back from the city in wheelbarrows and pushcarts, and sent the booty to a nearby mosque.

Vestiges of the old government were vanishing rapidly. Statues and portraits of Saddam were toppled and defaced in Baghdad and other cities, while Iraqi diplomats at some embassies abroad shredded or burned documents. Iraq's U.N. ambassador, Mohammed Al-Douri, told reporters "the game is over, and I hope peace will prevail."

Arabs responded to the sudden collapse of Saddam Hussein’s government with anger, shock and even disbelief. One newspaper refused to acknowledge that Baghdad had fallen.

"We discovered that all that the (Iraqi) information minister was saying was all lies," said Ali Hassan, a government employee in Cairo, Egypt. The entire front page of the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat was devoted to a photograph of the pulling down Saddam's statue in Baghdad. Above it, the headline: "And Saddam's regime fell — Shock in Arab capitals, joy in Baghdad, destruction of statues and the looting of official buildings."

Many Arabs, even those who saw Saddam as an oppressive dictator — had viewed the war as the struggle of an Arab underdog against foreign invaders interested in Iraqi oil. Most Egyptians, for instance, do not believe that Saddam had terrorist connections or weapons of mass destruction.

People across the Arab world clustered around TV sets in shop windows, coffee shops and homes to see the pictures of U.S. troops driving from one side of an Arab capital to the other.
Some painted Iraq’s defeat as another Arab humiliation caused by U.S. military technology, and recalled the Middle East war of 1967 when Western-armed Israel thrashed numerically superior Arab armies. Arabs are very much aware that the Apache helicopters and other weapons used in Iraq are the same ones that Israel is using against the Palestinians.
Doubts persisted about the United States' intentions and Iraq's future. Mohammed al-Shahhal, a teacher in Tripoli, Lebanon, recalled the poverty and political turmoil in Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
"I don't like the idea of having the Americans here, but we asked for it," said Tannous Basil, a cardiologist in Sidon, Lebanon. "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."

"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," he said.

After an anti-war march in Khartoum, Sudan, lawyer Ali al-Sayed said U.S. troops should not misinterpret the rejoicing in Baghdad as an invitation to stay.

"Those people under oppression ... 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."

Arab allies of the US, notably Kuwait which had been invaded by Saddam in 1991, were positive about the developments. The former Kuwaiti ambassador to the US, Mr Al Sabah welcomed the downfall of the dictator and said that his country would continue to try and locate the 600 Kuwaiti POWs who are believed to be in Iraqi custody 10 years after the first gulf war.

So, after three decades in power, Saddam Hussein has disappeared into the dustbin of history. Saddam, the poor boy born in a mudhut village who came to live in the grandest of palaces, dared to defy the US hyperpower one time too many. He paid the ultimate price in defeat and disgrace.
His last audacious act was played out on the streets of Baghdad a few days ago when he went walking on the streets before the cameras of state television in a propaganda stunt he had not dared to try in years. People saw the humor in his act of picking up a small child in his arms. Two days later, in Northern Ireland, President Bush picked up two small children.

The years after he seized absolute power in 1979, saw the cradle of civilization and a modern Arab power transformed into an impoverished, outlaw state that had squandered fabulous oil and human wealth. At first supported in his military adventures when Iran's mullahs were the target, the tide turned against him in the West when thousands of Kurds were gassed to death 15 years ago.

Saddam guided Iraq through the 1980-1988 bloodbath with Iran and the rout of the 1991 Gulf War over Kuwait, emerging each time to claim victories astride the corpses of his people. A lust for power matched only by a ruthless streak brought Saddam to the helm he determined never to leave, whatever the cost. In 1968 he took part in the coup which brought the party to government, marking the start of Saddam's affair with brute power. He was already considered the regime's real force in the shadow of President Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr.

Saddam seized the crown on July 16, 1979, becoming State President, general secretary of the party and the revolution command council. He brooked no dissent, extending frequent purges of senior figures to family and friends. Even potential opponents seldom lasted long. Those who failed to find exile lie buried. The cruelty of the state is amply documented by rights groups. Informers were encouraged, the media muzzled and few if any dared voice criticism. "He who inspires fear", but once failed to win a place for officer training, assumed all the trappings of state, taking the title of field marshal and commander-in-chief of an army he led to decimation. For the first time in years, there will be no celebrations in Iraq this April 28 to mark his birthday.

The Bush administration are no angels either, though in the euphoria of a military victory people will surely overlook the real reasons for this war. President Bush’s primary aim had always been ‘regime change’, an agenda that one could not take to the United Nations, as it is against the UN charter and enshrined in international law including US law. There are many despots and tyrants in the world. Will the US go against all of them? Definitely not. The preemptive strike against a sovereign nation (irrespective of the distasteful dictator) had to have very good reasons. Indeed there were and a complex number of them too.

Once a war starts, it doesn’t finish in 21 days even though it appears to do so at the moment. The effects of Afghanistan started with the cold war and the US arming the Taleban to take on the Soviets. The result of that was openly visible and the genie unleashed became an uncontrollable monster and the country a terrorist training base for the whole world. Saddam may have gone, but his army of 450 000 has melted into the population. The number of Iraqi prisoners taken numbers 7300, so where are the rest? They have an immense amount of weapons and can easily damage any nascent political process. Any government, whether US led, UN led or Iraqi, will be faced with the strong possibility of continuing armed insurgency. This may be the legacy of the Saddam years and also of this war.

I will end today with the famous pronouncement of Winston Churchill, "Never, never, never believe that war will be smooth and easy or anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter."

"The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events."

These events will keep on unfolding well after the military victory, well beyond the days when the coalition soldiers are back home in the arms of their friends and families.