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4 Saddam's life after
death By Sami Moubayed
Kuwait in February and permanently
defeated, although he claimed that his ability to
stand up to the international coalition was a
victory in itself, calling it "the mother of all
battles". The war led to the death of 20,000 of
Saddam's men. The US claims that the number was
closer to 100,000, in addition to the 300,000
killed during the Iran-Iraq War. Another 100,000
Kuwaitis were killed in the war. The Shi'ites,
encouraged by the US, rebelled
against Saddam, and 30,000 of
them were killed in 1991.
Wrapping up, to
remind the world what kind of man Saddam was, one
remembers the events of August 1995 when his two
daughters, Rana and Raghad, fled to Jordan with
their husbands, both of whom were cousins of
Saddam and members of his entourage.
One
of them, Husayn Kamel al-Majid (married to Raghad)
had been the minister of military industries and
head of the Military Industrialization Committee
in the 1980s. While the UN was searching for
Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, Saddam's
son-in-law came to Amman and offered his services
and testimony to the United Nations Special
Commission (UNSCOM) and the International Atomic
Energy Agency.
In September 1995 Majid
spoke to CNN, saying: "This is what made me leave
the country, the fact that Saddam Hussein
surrounds himself with inefficient ministers and
advisers who are not chosen for their competence
but according to the whims of the Iraqi president.
And as a result of this the whole of Iraq is
suffering."
He provided UNSCOM with a lot
of information, along with location of Saddam's
arms. Saddam claimed to pardon his sons-in-law,
calling on them to return to Baghdad. Foolishly,
they did. On arrival they were ordered to divorce
Saddam's daughters, then declared to be traitors.
Three days after their arrival, on February 23,
they were both killed by Saddam's security. These
were the fathers of Saddam's grandchildren.
True, they may have been traitors, but
Saddam could have done many things to punish them
without resorting to murder, if not for their
sake, then at least for the sake of his daughters
and grandchildren. Raghad and Rana forgave their
father, as any obedient daughters would, and when
asked about him after his arrest in 2003, Raghad
told CNN, "He was a very good father, loving, has
a big heart." She sent him a message through CNN
saying: "I love you and I miss you." Her sister
Rana added that "he was very tender with all of
us".
Saddam's daughters, as well as most
of the millions of Arabs who watched his execution
in disbelief on Saturday, have also forgiven
Saddam, not because he was a good man - on the
contrary, he was a ruthless leader, and everyone
(including his daughters) knew that - but rather
because he transformed himself and was transformed
by the Americans into a symbol of anti-Americanism
and resistance to the occupation of Iraq.
It has become a social taboo in most of
the Arab world to be supportive of his elimination
by the Americans. Even the newly turned
pro-American leader of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi, who
went to great lengths to mend his relations with
the US after the Iraq war, condemned the hanging
of Saddam. Gaddafi, a former friend to the late
Iraqi president, declared a three-day mourning
period in Libya and showed a popular Hollywood
movie on Libyan TV hours after the execution. It
was the story of famed Libyan resistance leader
Omar al-Mukhtar, an icon in Arab history, who was
hanged by the Italians during the occupation by
Italy, in September 1931.
Mukhtar was a
resistance fighter indeed - brave and selfless -
who spent 20 years in the underground working for
the liberation of his country. He certainly was no
Saddam, who was supported by the Americans, then
toppled and killed by them as well. Before being
executed, Mukhtar told Italian officer Rodolfo
Graziani that he would "live long, longer
certainly than my executioner".
And to the
Arabs who mourned Saddam, he, too, will live
longer than his executioners - regardless of his
brutal history. Others in the Arab world are
comparing Saddam's execution to that of Benito
Mussolini, the Italian dictator who was executed,
along with his mistress, on April 28, 1945, in the
small Italian village of Giulino di Mezzegra. He
also had a daughter whose husband rebelled against
his dictator father-in-law, and like Husayn Kamel
al-Majid, he was killed on Mussolini's orders.
Mussolini's body was hung upside down on
meat hooks, along with the bodies of other
Fascists, to show the world that the dictator was
dead. Saddam's body did not receive the same fate.
The question remains: Is Saddam an Omar Mukhtar or
a Benito Mussolini?
Sami
Moubayed is a Syrian political analyst.
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