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December 26, 2003
Saddam Crawls out of a Hole to Ignominy
What a sorry figure he presented in the video film showing him being examined by a military doctor soon after he emerged from the narrow dust hole in the backyard of an adobe farmhouse some ten miles from his hometown of Tikrit. The mighty ruler of Iraq for a quarter of a century, known for his unmitigated arrogance, his numerous palaces, his unlimited power and grandeur, and his dream of leaving behind a legacy of the greatest builder and benefactor of Iraq, struck every bit, in the words of New York Post, “like a subway panhandler”.
Did he deserve this humiliation?
Yes, says a Persian proverb: ‘One who digs a ditch to put someone into it, usually falls into it himself’.
Saddam Hussein deserves perhaps a much worse retribution for the genocide of over a quarter of a million of his own people under his orders.
By allowing himself to be captured, he has destroyed the iconic stature that he enjoyed in a sector of Arab society as the only Arab leader willing to defy the West.
The chief impression of the man I gained sometime back reading his biography was that he was a psychopath and a sadist who enjoyed killing people for no unavoidable reason. I could not at that time visualize him to be such a coward. He was armed but elected to surrender with a whimper.
I am reminded here of a fable in Saadi’s Gulistan in which a slight and short-statured prince was being teased by his brothers over his physical handicap. He retorts:
Aan na mun basham ke rose-i-jang beeni pusht-i-mun
Kein manum kander miyan-i-khak o khoon beeni sarey
Translation: I am not the one whose back you will ever see in the battlefield.
I am instead the one whose head you will find amid dust and blood!
Sadam Hussein evidently did not belong to the category of this prince who, according to the fable, did die fighting to the last, while his braggart brothers surrendered meekly to the opponent’s army.
An overweening bully is usually a craven at heart.
While both of his obnoxious sons, Uday and Kusay, fought to death in an encounter with a contingent of the US army, Saddam Hussein, who used to flaunt his swords and guns, did not have the courage to even shoot himself with the pistol he had on his person.
His captors, on the other hand, have shown maturity and restraint in describing the event. Only a sector of the tendentious US media appeared to be gloating over the achievement.
Some members of the Iraqi Governing Council who were allowed to meet him also gave the impression of settling scores with him and insulting him. I am reminded here of a famous Persian poet whose rivals could never excel him, so they conspired to poison him. While he was dying, they approached him and asked him, “Ma kianaim”; he replied, “Murghe roohe mun parvaz me kunnad. Mera us makian che kar.”
Translation: “Who are we?”
“The roaster of my life is about to fly away. I have no use now for the hens.” There is a pun in this story on the expression “Ma kianaim” which means “Who are we?” as well as “we are hens”
William Safire, columnist of New York Times, has described the encounter between Saddam and the team of Iraqi Governing Council. A Shiite member of the team asked Saddam, “Why did you kill Ayatollah Sadr?”
“Sadir” or “Rijl”, Saddam asked.
This was a contemptuous play on the word “Sadir” which sounds like the name of the assassinated Shiite cleric and means ‘chest’ while ‘rijl’ means foot. The columnist remarks: “Saddam, murderer of hundreds of thousands of Shia who dared oppose his rule, didn’t leave the thigh-slapping sense of humor in the ‘spider hole’.
The term spider-hole was used by Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, to describe the dugout in which Saddam was hiding. It originated during the Vietnam War when the Vietcong used to dig such a hole to place clay pots large enough to hold a crouching man. It would be covered by a wooden plank and concealed with leaves. When an American patrol passed, the hiding Vietcong would spring out and start shooting. But the hole had its hazard too. It would be infested with poisonous spiders. Hence the term: ‘spider-hole’.
Saddam is out of the spider hole and in the custody of a civilized nation. Several senior members of the US Administration have assured that he would get the treatment due to a Prisoner of War (POW) under Geneva conventions. He must be realizing now that power lies not in persons or guns but in ballots, laws, and liberties, which constitute the real safeguards of human dignity. President Bush has assured him unequivocally that he would get justice that he had himself denied to so many in his own country for so many years.
In all probability, he would be tried in Iraq by a duly constituted court comprising Iraqis for crimes against humanity.
His dramatic arrest has provided a major boost for the President and derogated the chief plank of his democratic opponents in next year’s elections. The Democratic forerunner, Howard Dean, had built his campaign on a denigration of Bush administration’s policy on Iraq.
After one of the bloodiest months in Iraq in terms of US casualties since the war began last April, Saddam’s capture is likely to be viewed as a success of the government policy. With the economy also improving, both sides of the Democrats’ argument to replace Bush appear to have notably eroded.
The capture of Saddam is no doubt a shot in the arm politically for President Bush. But, the question remains: would it help pull the US out of the quagmire of Iraq? Would it be possible now to transfer power to an interim Iraqi authority before July 1, 2004 as already declared?
Since no evidence has become available attributing to Saddam the direction and leadership of the current insurgency in Iraq, it would be unwise to think that with his arrest the insurgency would also come to an end. The Iraqi guerrillas have been acting quite separately from Saddam. The insurgency is therefore likely to increase in coming months. The original US belief that the American soldiers would be welcomed by Iraqis as liberators from the clutches of a tyrant has been disproved. Some of them, at least, appear inclined to treat the US forces as an army of occupation.
History is full of instances that the quelling of guerillas fighting for their homeland is an almost impossible task. The best that the American forces can do now is to provide for a political process to take hold quickly. Success will depend now less on the use of the military might than on politics and diplomacy. Iraqi people themselves, with the assistance of the US, will have to stand behind a new representative government and political pluralism. The concept of pluralism in the case of Iraq negates the policy of ‘you are either with me or against me’. It calls for a consensus of all sectors of the society - Shias, Sunnis and Kurds. (arifhussaini@hotmail.com December 17, 2003)
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