True, there is a difference between human rights organizations which oppose capital punishment on moral grounds but have no doubts about Saddam's guilt, and the Russian politicians who came out in his defense. Human rights champions were much more enthusiastic in defending Saddam's victims. The Russian politicians, outraged by the dictator's execution, did not protest when he killed Iraqi communists or Kurd peasants.
Saddam started his rule with an order to execute two dozen party and government leaders in front of city residents and journalists who had been driven to a square. All in all, he killed 15,000 communists. But the Soviet leaders forgave him these deaths. What mattered to them was that he was an enemy of the United States, Israel, and the quitter Egyptian President Anwar Sadat - in a word, a promising politician who deserved support.
In May 2003, General Secretary of the Iraqi Communist Party Hamid Majit Musa said bitterly to a Vremya Novostei correspondent: "In 1980, our party declared armed struggle against Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. But the Soviet Union considered him a friend, a fighter against imperialism. This is ridiculous and tragic. Support for Saddam was a mistake. Russia was talking about democracy and exposing Stalin's crimes, while backing the world's worst dictatorship. This is a black spot on Russia's foreign policy. We were particularly disappointed with the position of the Russian communists. How could they hush up Saddam's crimes against communists? This is a shame, comrades..."
For some reason, it is the Iraqis that are demonstrating some aggravated cruelty, which is not typical of other Arab nations. A Soviet diplomat who worked in Iraq recalled watching the murder of Gen. Kasem, one of Saddam's predecessors on Baghdad television: "An unmasked soldier approached him, took out a knife from his belt, and started cutting the former leader's mouth up to his ears. Having done this, the soldier grabbed the general's jaws, opened them wider and started spitting into his mouth.
"They also showed what was done to the former government's ministers - they were tied to a tank by their feet and drawn along a stone paved road until their heads and bodies became a mess of blood and guts..."
When Saddam's Baath party came to power, public executions were staged in the streets of Baghdad. With shouts of joy, multi-thousand crowds passed by the gallows with swinging corpses. Several thousand people were hanged, having been subjected to medieval tortures at the National Guards special investigation agency.
But Saddam Hussein was far ahead of his predecessors. Dressed in military uniform, he tore up the text of a treaty with Iran at the National Assembly session on September 17, 1980. This was a de facto declaration of war. He wanted to realize his long-standing dream - to make Iraq an absolute regional superpower. This was a classic example of an aggressive war for territories and resources. But old disputes imbued the war with a national and religious aura - Arabs against Persians, Sunnites against Shiites.
Saddam's war against Iran lasted for eight years and had a zero result, except for casualties. About 300,000 Iranians and some 120,000 Iraqis are believed to have perished in the war. However, the losses must have been much higher than that. Iraq spent all its petrodollars on the war with Iran, and its foreign debt reached an astronomical figure. Saddam decided to improve Iraq's financial status at the expense of neighboring Kuwait. Incidentally, Iraq owed 18 billion dollars to Kuwait, which had helped it in the war against Iran. Saddam followed the logic of a criminal offender - it's easier to kill the creditor than pay him back.
Saddam suffered a setback in Iran, and did not dare attack Syria, knowing that the Soviet Union would come to its help. This is why he made up his mind to attack the tiny, defenseless, but oil-rich Kuwait in the hope that nobody would come to its aid. He proved to be wrong.
Saddam waged three wars. The war with Iran produced no result, if not a defeat. The war in the Gulf ended in a rout and humiliation. Usually, a defeated leader is toppled down, but Saddam was hailed as a brilliant military leader. It was the third war that eventually led to his regime's collapse. How did he keep absolute power in the country until the American invasion?
Iraq's system is familiar to us - the party machine, secret service men, and the brass had huge privileges and knew that their prosperity depended on their favorite leader. Saddam woke up a feeling of national superiority in the Iraqis. They were applauding him when he attacked Iran in 1980, or annexed Kuwait in 1989, or threatened the Americans. Saddam instilled in his nation the confidence that they are the best Arabs in the entire Arab East.
Attitudes in South West Asia are very different from those in Europe. Foreigners are always amazed how much local politicians lie without any fear of being caught. Lying is not regarded as a sin here. The Iraqis themselves admit that they perceive the world through the nomadic eyes of the Bedouins, who had a clan system and a custom to bow to their superiors.
Massive burial places were discovered after Saddam's overthrow in April 2003. A common grave with about a thousand of the regime's victims - mostly young men - was found at a prison cemetery near Baghdad. They had no names, only numbers. Later, many more mass graves were located, and it became clear that Saddam had destroyed hundreds of thousands.
In October 2004, two mass gravesites were found in the village of Hatra not far from Mosul in northern Iraq. Mothers and children with toys, shot dead, were in one of them, and Kurd men in the other. In 1989, Saddam ordered punishment of the Kurds, and more than 100,000 were murdered in Iraqi Kurdistan. The town of Halajba was destroyed from the air - 5,000 died from the nerve gas.
For all his atrocities, Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, regional head of the Party of Arab Socialist Rebirth (Baath), and Iraqi President Marshal Saddam Hussein was the most popular Islamic politician. There were smarter Arab ministers, and better educated presidents, but none of them had inspired such adoration in the man-in-the-street as Saddam did. The Arabs admired Saddam as the U.S. and Israel's invincible and irreconcilable enemy.
He ruled Iraq single-handedly for a quarter century, and had selfless admirers in other countries. These facts alone speak volumes about the world, where a man like him can make such a fantastic career.
Nevertheless, there are people who do not justify Saddam's death sentence on the grounds that life was stable and there were no terrorists when he was in power.
This was stability of a totalitarian regime, when the state kills. Now Iraq is a scene of bloody war between the privileged Sunnites and the oppressed Shiites. The Sunnites are attacking Americans to make Bush withdraw his troops. They hope that without the U.S. they will easily deal with the Shiites, though the latter are more numerous.
Many hoped for instant relief after Saddam's downfall, but Iraq has sunk into chaos. The old system has collapsed, and for lack of self-organization skills, the Iraqis are waiting for someone to bring their country back to normal.
Importantly, after Saddam's overthrow, the Iraqis have received a chance to decide their destiny themselves for the first time. They have already acquired the rights they did not have under Saddam - the Shiites can freely visit their shrines, and all Iraqis have the right to vote and openly express their opinions, for example, to demand U.S. troop withdrawal. If they fail to organize their life, who can they blame except themselves?
Leonid Mlechin is a popular political writer, historian, TV journalist, member of the RIA Novosti Expert Council.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and may not necessarily represent the opinion of the editorial board
