Der Spiegel 's Markus Deggerich has some very interesting reports from Baghdad these days. I translated the following report on Saddam's Baath Party, titled "The Dictator's Pool of Cadres". I add some comments of my own at the bottom
Baghdad-- In the Baghdad slum called "Saddam City", there are only two places with any color: the market place with the fruit that most people can at best walk past with longing glances, and the freshly painted local Baath Party headquarters. Saddam's Baath Party: omnipresent as its secret agents that have inflitrated the society down to the last village. The modest prosperity that Saddam once bestowed upon his people was bought through the abandonment of freedom.
In every neighborhood the Party installs its administrators and inspectors. The "Mukhtar" serves as a kind of precinct captain. He is appointed by the Party. Necessary qualifications: He must have a good reputation in the neighborhood and at least a mid level education and be without a criminal record. Sama Heram is one such Mukthar, who sits in his garage and holds court. What is his role? "To regulate life", he explains tersely.
The citizens are monitored round the clock.
Whether one needs a school admission, to start a new job or to get a driver's license, everybody must first visit the Mukhtar to obtain proof of identity and address and for the incident to be recorded in a book. The Mukhtar also plays the role of small claims judge; and anybody in bad sniff with him can have a tough time in the neighborhood, for he is the safety net.
At the moment, the Mukhtars are busy preparing their neighborhoods for the war. They dig wells and clean their guns. They will have an important role to play when its time to impose a curfew on the city.
Baath, Iraq's nationalist and socialist ruling party, had big plans at first. The name translates as "rebirth" -- as in a renaissance of pan-Arab socialism. The Party's 1947 charter promises a political paradise on earth. "The Arabs form a single nation. It is their natural right to live in a single state and to freely develop their potential." The "Arab Fatherland" should be a "political and economic unit". The regime is founded on the sovereignty of the people. The freedoms of speech, assembly, belief and scholarship are sanctified.
That was the dream of the Party of Arab Socialist Revival that two Syrians brought to life early in the last century. The Orthodox Christian Michel Aflaq (1900-1989) and the Sunni Muslim Salah ad-Din al-Bitar (1912-1980) were taken with the ideas of European nationalism and wanted to revive the Arab nation. In practice, however, it led to a dearth of freedom and a lot of death.
Saddam Hussein used the nationalist and socialist Baath Party for his rise to power and then turned it into to an omnipresent instrument of power to control his people. In the party museum, which, in contrast to other architectural monstrosities of the personality cult, is surprising small, the party commemorates its revolutionary days. In front of the door is a 1954 VW Beetle that was once used for distributing pamphlets to the masses.
Rule by family clans
Baath, which actually wanted to organize itself as a pan-Arab movement, fell under the rule of family clans in Iraq and of officers in Syria. Saddam and his sons Uday and Qusay as well as their cousins and relatives have ruled Iraq with a firm hand. Next to the party headquarters there is still a statue of founder Michel Aflaq, who was powerless to resist the perversion of his idea.
Nothing is left of the promised "sovereignty of the people". Even [former East German dictator] Erich Honecker would have been envious of the few "elections" that take place in Iraq. In 1995 Saddam put out ballot boxes. That was the year his power was challenged by the defection of his son-in-law and cousin Hussein Kamal. Saddam was reconfirmed with 99% of the vote. He promised amnesty to his cousin, who was naive enough to return and be murdered.
High election returns have the disadvantage that they are hard to improve upon. Now that Saddam fears unrest in light of the American invasion, his subordinates had to confirm his leadership with 100% of the vote in October 2002.
Saddam simultanously holds the offices of State President, Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, and the Commander-in-Chief of the Iraqi Armed Forces. While his regime originally legitimized itself with revolutionary ideology and reverted to traditional Islamic or "anti-Zionist" parterns for legitimacy, in the 1990s the Iraqi leadership tried to legitimize itself more and more with formal democratic and constitutional means.
From a party to a pool of cadres
The politically powerless Iraqi National Assembly is comprised of 250 delegates, including 165 Ba'ath deputies. But Hussein is no longer interested in the Party and its ideology. In his personality cult it serves him only as a pool of cadres and a structure for discipline.
Nevertheless there is a wide range of attitudes among the people toward their leader. Before the dictator got it in his head to use the force of arms to persuade other countries of his abilities, Hussein had won over many people in Iraq for having one of the best education and health care systems and nutrition programs in the Arab world. The fact that all of that barely functions anymore, Hussein deftly blames on the UN sanctions, for creating intolerable conditions.
But certainly not for the elite. With oil smuggling, about one percent of the people keep living like kings. On the streets of Baghdad one sees the latest models from the auto factories of Stuttgart [VW/Audi, Mercedes] and Munich [BMW], while the common taxi drivers, for want of spare parts, hold their creaking jalopies together with sticky tape and prayers.
Iraq was once the intellectual center of the Orient. In the 1970s the country had the most people with academic degrees. In Baghdad the first center for political consultancy was founded. "Today it is very difficult to even get any books that are less than 30 years old", says Doctor Adi, who teaches at Baghdad University. The embargo has led to an intellectual genocide. His students, who once would have been the leadership elite of the future, are hungry for any sort of information. Any foreigner who wanders onto the campus would be warmly besieged and questioned, if only for the latest world soccer scores.
It is hard to get ahead in Iraq without a Party membership card. Many simply sign the application forms out of convenience, fewer out of conviction. The masses of members now fear that they'll have a tough time after a war. They casually ask foreigners whether the Americans will kill them all. After they hear about German de-Nazification or state pensions for former East German Stasi workers, they breathe a little easier.
An American attack would be seen as unfair
Many are simply tired. For twenty years they have faced the threat of the quick death of war, or the creeping death of the sanctions. Although they know the brutality with which Saddam holds on to power, they feel that an American attack would be an unjust war of colonization. After the months-long war of words, they simply hope that it will be over quickly.
Others portray a calm that is at odds with reality. Director Ahmad Saadoun plans to repaint and expand the Baath Museum. Too many interesting items of party history lie underappreciated around the country and are begging to be shown to the public, he says almost nostalgically. Iraq has also changed since the Kuwait war, and has become more relaxed and open, he says with hope in his voice.
It may be that after a war the history of the Baath in Iraq is finished and a completely different set of memories would be on display. Not everybody counts on it. For in Iraq, there have been too many wounded and too many people have simply disappeared. "Constitutional state" and "human rights" are foreign words for too many Iraqis. The prisons and torture chambers are notorious. Amnesty International estimates that since the Baath regime came to power in 1968, around three million people have been executed. Up to five million, or 15% of the population have fled from Saddam's bloodhounds into exile. Saddam's grandeur and welfare state are built on oil and blood.
Which leads me to wonder about all the dire predictions about urban warfare and other doomsday scenarios of Iraqis fighting with gusto to uphold the Baathist nightmare. You have to ask yourself (yes, especially you in the "peace" movement): "If I were an Iraqi living under such perverse conditions, and I had the opportunity to choose, would I prefer to (a) risk my life to save Saddam's regime, or (b) do what I could to hasten his demise?"
If I were certain that Saddam would emerge from the war with his machinery of fear, oppression and death still intact [the outcome that Chiraq and the appeaseniks seem to prefer], I might be cowed into going along with the crowd. But if it looked like Saddam and his cadres had an excellent chance of being eliminated [which seems like a safe bet when the Allies do the right thing], would I go out of my way to obstruct that outcome? I don't think that I would.
And to assume that the average Iraqi would think and act differently would be to assume that they are incapable of the same yearnings for a normal decent life that all the other peoples of falling tyrants throughout history have demonstrated. And why is it that so many in the self-described "peace" movement seem to believe that Iraqis are that much less human than the rest of us?
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at March 14, 2003 11:30 AMFree Iraq!
Saddam out of Iraq!
No more Iraqi blood for Saddam!
. . . . . . Ironic, ain't it?