As the United States moves closer to using force to achieve “regime change” in Iraq, one question must be posed: do the American know enough about Saddam Hussein?
Although he seems to have edged Osama Bin Laden one notch down the list of the “most hated” of demons for Americans, the Iraqi dictator is an enigma to most Americans. Some describe him as a megalomaniac in the lineage of comic-strip baddies. Others have tried to dig into his childhood as an orphan to explain his politics in pseudo-Freudian terms.
A simpler way may be to try to study his political vision within the framework of his logic and on the basis of his words and actions.
What is Saddam’s vision?
It is based on a perverted understanding of nationalism as applied to Iraq. His basic assumption is that there is a single Arab nation stretching from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. At different times, history, which determines the fate of nations, chooses part of this mythical nation to assume leadership. As things stand today, it is the Iraqi part of the Arab nation that has been chosen by history to assume leadership.
It was here that Saddam ran into his first big problem. Although all the people of Iraq do feel that they are Iraqis, not all regard themselves as Arabs. As early as 1969, Saddam spoke of his determination to strengthen Iraq’s “uruba” (Arabness). This was no easy task.
Historically, only a fraction of the 7,000-year biography of the land that is Iraq could be described as “Arab”. The rest is covered by Sumerian, Assyrian, Akkdaian, Babylonian, Elamite, Urartan, Persian, Byzantine, Mongol, Mameluke, and Ottoman periods among others.
The Iraqi way of life, architecture, music, cuisine and daily rituals reflect this rich diversity. The very word Iraq is Persian (it means Lowlands), as is Baghdad, which means God-given. The words Euphrates (it means euphoric) and Tigris, which means tiger-like, the names of Iraq’s two great rivers, are both Greek.
Iraq is also the home of 11 living languages some of which, like the Elamite, are twice as old as Arabic. An estimated 25 percent of the population are ethnic Kurds of different origins, speaking two different languages (Surani and Bahdinani), and following a variety of religions, including Islam, Zoroastrianism, and esoteric faiths. Then there are Assyrians, Chaldaens, and Sabaeans, most of them Christians, and Turcomen who are all Muslims.
Arabic is the mother tongue of some 68 percent of the population, providing a strong linguistic bond. But the ethnic Arabs are divided by religious faith between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. Thus, while the concept of Iraqitude (uruqua) is inclusive because it covers all Iraqis regardless of linguistic, ethnic and religious differences, the concept of “uruba” excludes those who do not feel they are Arabs.
Saddam, however, does not tolerate hyphenated identities. Under him no one can be Kurdish-Iraqi or Izadi-Iraqi. You have to be Arab, period. His problem was how to “Arabize” Iraq.In 1970, Saddam opened the Ottoman archives in which Iraqis were classified as either “Ottoman” or “Persian” subjects. He prepared a policy of mass expulsion against the “Persians” regardless of the fact that many prominent Iraqis, including Rashid Ali-Gilani, the father of Iraqi nationalism, and Al-Jawaheri, the greatest Arabic poet of the 20th century, had been classified as “Persian subjects” during the Ottoman rule.
The mass expulsion of the “Persians” was implemented from 1972. By 1980 nearly a million had been driven out. Needless to say, the overwhelming majority of those expelled had been born and raised in Iraq, regarded themselves as Iraqis, and spoke Arabic as mother tongue. To replace them, Saddam decided to “import” a million “authentic Arabs”, especially from Egypt. Very soon, however, he decided that the imported Egyptians, far from being ideal Arabs, were “lazy layabouts” who cared little about his dreams of empire and conquest.
In 1980 he decided to “Arabize” the Kurds. Over the next 10 years, more than 4,000 Kurdish villages in the north of the country were razed, their inhabitants transferred to southern Iraq, and scattered among the Arabic-speaking majority. For Saddam this was a double coup. The newly transplanted Kurds were Sunni Muslims while the Arabs among whom they would live were Shiites.
By 1990, having imported part of the manpower he needed from Egypt, Palestine and other Arab lands, Saddam realized that he could also find the money he required for his empire-building project in an Arab country. The obvious choice was Kuwait that Saddam, in private, often described as “a bank safe, not a state
To sum up, Saddam’s vision runs something like this: It is time that history chose the Arabs once again to lead the world. The only “branch” of the Arab nation capable of fulfilling the “will of history” is Iraq. So Iraq must be fully Arabized, by force, and, if necessary, through the genocide of minorities. Iraq must also secure control of the principal source of Arab wealth: oil. And that means either the direct conquest of the Gulf states or their indirect domination.
Saddam knows that his vision leads to war, both at home and in his neighborhood, and then, in time, beyond the region. This is why he has been preparing for war, and has already fought it on four occasions, since 1968. His quest for nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction is not the caprice of a mad dictator. He knows that if he acquires such weapons he could dominate the region, seize control of almost 50 percent of the world’s known oil reserves, and be treated as an equal by the major powers.
One people, one state, one leader — this is Saddam’s motto. Sounds familiar?
Saddam’s vision suffers from a fundamental flaw: He holds the Arabs, including the people of Iraq, in contempt. In a speech in 1977 he said: “There are times in history when the leadership of a nation is small. There are other times when the nation is smaller than the leadership. A great nation with a small leadership gets nowhere. But a great leadership can drag a small nation along to greatness.”
Saddam has dragged the people of Iraq, and to some extent the rest of the Arabs, into several tragic adventures in the past three decades. Soon, he may drag them into yet another — one that may turn out to be his last.
