BAGHDAD, 1 July 2004 — The fate of Saddam Hussein, transferred to Iraqi custody yesterday, sparks controversy more than six months after his capture, as many Iraqis regard their foreign-bestowed sovereignty with mixed feelings.
The ferocious traffic that usually chokes the streets of Baghdad starting from the early morning hours was absent yesterday (June 30), a day decreed by the now-defunct coalition authority as a public holiday to commemorate the handover of power to the new caretaker government.
But the mood was anything but festive in the city that was the seat of power of the fallen dictator, who loomed large for 35 years over this country of some 26 million people.
On Tahrir (Liberation) Square a young man sits idly gazing out under the huge monument symbolizing the end of Iraq’s monarchy in 1958.
A defaced mural of Saddam Hussein stands nearby. “I am absolutely miserable!” said Uday Al-Obeidi, 30, a Sunni Muslim from Baghdad’s western Doura district. “Iraq’s dignity was trampled on with the fall of Saddam, but many fools do not realize this yet.”
In Adhamiya, a predominantly Sunni district north of the city and a bastion of Saddam loyalists, the mood was also downbeat as people worried about the increasing insecurity and the difficult economic and living conditions.
“I love Saddam. He did not hurt me or my family, he only hurt those who hurt him,” said a middle-aged woman, who did not wish to give her name, as she tried to fight back her tears. She explained that her husband, an officer in Saddam’s army, was sacked after the fall of Baghdad and has been jobless ever since as the couple struggle to support their three children.
“Our life is an absolute mess now,” said the woman standing on a curbside in Adhamiya’s main street. A man painting a shop nearby stops his work and cuts into the conversation.
“Of course she’s going to say that because she and her family benefited under Saddam. For the rest of us it was a nightmare,” said Rahim Mayah-Rabia, 43, who is originally from the poor southern Shiite city of Kut.
He said that he was forced to serve for 11 years in Saddam’s army, cringing as he recalled his experience during Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait in 1991 which led to the first Gulf War.
Under Saddam’s system of selective favoritism, members of his now-banned Baath party, as well as Sunnis, who account for about 20 percent of Iraq’s population, and fellow clansmen from his homeland of Tirkit were promoted and rewarded for their loyalty.
Across the river from Adhamiya lies the predominantly Shiite district of Kazimiya, where residents were basking in their newly found freedom to express their religious beliefs after years of repression under Saddam.
“Saddam is inhuman and deserves to die a million times,” said Sheikh Sultan Al-Kazimi, a poet. He said that he was often jailed under the previous regime and that three of his cousins were executed by Saddam’s henchmen. “Saddam is evil!” said Adel Al-Khazali, a laborer in his 40s.
