Will he become a martyr?

THE hangman’s noose was placed around Saddam Hussein’ neck in the early hours of the morning on which Sunnis in Iraq and neighbouring Arab states were due to celebrate Eid ul Azha. He had been captured on December 13, 2003, some nine months after the American invasion, in as humiliating a posture as could be imagined. It had been expected that he would be executed.

For the majority of the Iraqi Sunnis, Shias and Kurds Saddam was a monster whose dictatorial rule and unbridled ambitions had reduced the most prosperous and populous Arab country in the Middle East to a living hell. Few would have mourned his death had it occurred shortly after his capture. All knowledgeable observers of Iraq knew that the Baath party’s real base of support was extremely narrow.

They knew that the vast majority of its members had joined it because of their career advancement, university places for their children and general economic well-being depended on it. They had not joined the party because they were admirers of Saddam or because he was a defender of Sunni privileges. The privileged in Saddam’s day were those from Tikrit, the city that he considered his hometown.

The Americans seemed to believe that his trial and sentencing by an Iraqi court under Iraqi law would become a symbol of the restoration of the rule of law and reinforce efforts to introduce democracy in Iraq. This was unrealistic. What was not expected was that the year-long trial with its faulty procedures would be reduced to a farce and that there would then be a sudden rush to execute him.

As an Arab observer pointed out, “The trial judgment was not finished when sentence was pronounced. Saddam’s defence lawyers were given less than two weeks to file their appeals against a 300-page court decision. Important evidence was not disclosed to them during the trial, and Saddam was prevented from questioning witnesses testifying against him. Several of his lawyers were threatened or actually assassinated, and the trial was subjected to continuous political interference.”

Saddam, on the other hand, managed to refurbish his image during his trial with his defiant posture and his taunting of the prosecution team and the frequently changed judges. Even so it would have meant hardly anything to Sunni insurgents. The insurgency owed little at this stage to Baathist “remnants” who financed the initial uprising but then rapidly lost influence in a movement that focused more and more on the injustices being perpetrated on them by the American-supported Shias. There was a clear understanding that with American support the Shias were intent on depriving the Sunnis of any role in governance and the resourceless Sunni-majority regions of a share in the country’s future oil revenues.

When asked within hours of the hanging about the latter’s impact on the Iraqi people and Sunnis in neighbouring countries I said that Saddam had ceased to be relevant to the Iraq situation some time ago and that his hanging would be only a tiny blip on the Iraqi screen. Sectarian strife had now reached a point where his death would have little impact even if he had enjoyed the popularity that his few Baathist followers claimed for him, even if that popularity was boosted by the dignity with which he conducted himself in the last moments of his life. Subsequent developments have not changed this view.

What did become important, however, was the effect of the timing and the manner in which the hanging was carried out. There is apparently a specific provision in Iraqi law forbidding such executions on public holidays. Iraqi law also required that the sentence had to be assented to by the president and the two vice-presidents within 30 days.

The Americans have been briefing journalists that they were uneasy about the speed with which the sentence was being carried out and had insisted that the full letter of the law be observed. According to them, they had to be satisfied in the face of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s obduracy in securing not assent but “no-objection” from President Talabani, acting on his own without consulting the vice-presidents, and, with regard to the holiday issue, seeking the approval of the marjaiyah — the council of Shia ayatollahs.

Clearly these did not meet the requirements of Iraqi law and should therefore have been rejected by the occupying power even when the Iraqis argued that the Shias would celebrate Eid on Sunday and that there was, therefore, no contravention of Iraqi law in carrying out the hanging on Saturday. (Nobody seems to have been sensitive to the fact that the Sunnis are also Iraqi citizens and that traditionally both Shia and Sunni occasions were marked by public holidays).

The team of executioners chosen by the Iraqi prime minister obviously belonged to the Moqtada al-Sadr group. This is the group that provides Al-Maliki crucial support in parliament but it is also the group that the Americans hold responsible for much of the killing of Sunni civilians. It is a group that the prime minister was supposed to bring under control. It did not help when a website released a mobile phone video recording of' the hanging in which these executioners, supposedly government officials, were heard screaming the name of “Moqtada” and giving the entire proceedings the air of a sectarian killing rather than the dispensation of impartial justice.

To add to the discomfort of the Americans, if these contraventions of law were not deliberate and connived at, the Iraqi prime minister’s national security adviser termed the hanging an “Eid gift” to the Iraqi people. All this made laughable President Bush’s statement that the execution of the sentence was “an important milestone on Iraq’s course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain and defend itself, and be an ally in the war on terror”. These were the acts of a dictator intent on having his way irrespective of what the law said and what the political situation demanded.

From the perspective of the overall situation the Americans in agreeing to Al-Maliki’s demands for an immediate execution were in effect suggesting, or at least this is how the Sunnis would perceive it, that the Shias could get what they wanted even if it impacted adversely on efforts to bridge the sectarian divide. The Iraqi leader made his intentions clear when in choosing the team of executioners he selected people whose loyalties were publicly proclaimed as lying with the Moqtada Al-Sadr group rather than with the Iraqi state.

Does all this mean that Saddam will become a symbol of Sunni resistance? While there have been some protest demonstrations in the Sunni areas of Iraq and Palestine it is apparent that these do not represent a major addition to the ongoing sectarian strife. Saddam’s hanging will not make a martyr of him but it will accentuate further the sectarian divide and perhaps make it impossible to keep Iraq united unless the Americans make a much more determined effort than they seem to be willing to do at the moment.

This brings us to the question of the policy review that is currently underway in Washington and the policy that Bush is likely to announce during the next few days. Press reports suggest that the president, still intent on “victory” in Iraq, wants to send an additional 20,000 to 30,000 troops to Iraq and use them to clear and hold areas in Baghdad. The current sectarian cleansing is seeing Sunnis being driven out of Shia areas. The Sunnis are attempting, less successfully than in the past, to drive Shias out of the areas where they are in a majority. While in Saddam’s time Baghdad had an almost equal number of Shias and Sunnis, the latter are now fleeing to neighbouring cities and towns where they feel better protected by Sunni insurgents against the depredations of Shia militias many of them in the uniform of the security forces.

Will an additional American force make a difference? Will Bush be able to persuade Congress now controlled by the Democrats to agree to this policy? American casualties are now more than 3,000 and have lately exceeded the number of casualties caused by 9/11. Unimportant perhaps in the American domestic political calculus but worth mentioning is the UN calculation that by October the number of Iraqi deaths had mounted to 26,782 and that by that time more than 1.5 million Iraqis had fled the country. There is little chance that Congress can stomach any substantial addition to this number particularly when there is no assurance or even a good chance that this sacrifice will bring peace to Iraq.

It is also apparent that whatever the past faults of the Sunnis, at present most of them would be satisfied if assured of a share in power and oil wealth. Today in Baghdad, of the 50 municipal councillors only one is a Sunni. Many of the Sunnis who were part of the Sunni negotiating groups have fled the country. The Iraqis fleeing the country are mostly Sunnis. That they are powerless today must have been underlined by the fact that the Sunni vice-president was not consulted before the sentence against Saddam was carried out.

As regards the oil wealth so far there appears to have been no substantive advance in changing the provisions of the constitution which permits the formation of autonomous Shia regions in the south akin to the Kurdish area in the north and which would give these regions the right to decide how revenues from new oil finds would be utilised. If these provisions remain it is quite understandable that the Sunnis would continue to fight as otherwise they would have to accept being powerless and resourceless in a Shia-dominated Iraq.

As the situation in Iraq deteriorates it becomes more and more difficult to accept that all the problems that the Americans have created have arisen from incompetence or ignorance. Surely they realise that no reconciliation is possible until the Sunnis are promised a fair share of Iraq’s oil wealth. Surely they are aware of the strong sentiments of Iraq’s Sunni neighbours on this score. Surely they are aware that if Iraq breaks apart then an independent Kurdistan will also destroy the territorial integrity of Turkey, Iran and even Syria. Surely they are aware that improving the security situation requires political measures even more than military or economic ones. Surely they are aware that at this time what is needed is to give an ultimatum to the Shias to agree immediately to changes in the constitution and to avoid needless provocations such as were apparent during the Saddam hanging.

If these are not forthcoming then the world will be forced to come to the conclusion that the disintegration of Iraq and not the elimination of WMD or the promotion of democracy was the real goal of the American invasion.

The writer is a former foreign secretary.

A leader by deeds or rank?

IN A philosophical conclusion to his sentimental memoirs, Pervez Musharraf has this to say about a true leader: “They (the people) will be prepared to follow him not because of his rank and position but because of their respect and esteem for him.”

After seven years in power, Gen Musharraf will not be seen to measure up (although his ministers say he will) to the ideal that he himself has set for a leader if he were to seek election as president for another term from the existing assemblies in their dying moments and that too by retaining his army rank and position. Idealism aside, the system he has introduced may not work if the majority in the new parliament is averse to it.

To silence his critics and dispel the doubts of sceptics (both species abound) and also to demonstrate that his leadership over seven years has earned him the people’s “respect and esteem,” he would be well-advised to present himself for election to the new assemblies after quitting the army command. Hiding behind a clumsy legal formula (said to have been put forward by some “distinguished constitutional lawyers”) that he can be elected by the current assemblies before their term expires would assuredly get him another five years as president and in military uniform. But he would certainly not be able to motivate and inspire the people or infuse confidence in them by his personal example which he says in his memoirs a leader must do.

In fact, it is the failure to abide by past commitments that casts doubt on the promises he makes and the hopes that he holds out for the future. The fact that in the course of negotiations on the seventeenth amendment he formed the opinion that the clerics were “hypocritical” and the alliance of their parties (MMA) was “anything but straight and its members were devious to the extreme — continually reneging on its promises” should not have given Musharraf an excuse to renege on his promise to leave his army job at the end of 2004. His commitment was to the simple folk and not to the clever clerics.

The policy that Musharraf declared on taking control of the government in 1999 (now confirmed in his book) was that the army would not superimpose itself on civil institutions but only monitor their performance. His actions have been to the contrary both in matters constitutional and administrative.

While validating the army takeover, the Supreme Court had directed that the federal and parliamentary features of the Constitution should in no manner be altered. Notwithstanding this direction, both have been drastically changed through constitutional amendments, presidential ordinances and, more conspicuously, by an obsequious political leadership that was too willing to surrender its statutory authority to the president.

At home and abroad, it is the president, and not the prime minister, who is treated as the chief executive. The cabinet has also more of the president than the prime minister. The district governments vested with vast functions and authority under the laws made by the centre but dutifully promulgated by the provinces look up to the federal government against intrusions by the provincial government in their sphere.

The federal and parliamentary character of the Constitution, thus, has been impaired but, surprisingly, goes unchallenged though the Supreme Court had specifically noted that its power of judicial review, the validating law of state necessity notwithstanding, remains intact. The vested interests of the political parties and other professions are, perhaps, to be blamed more for this indifference than any lack of trust in the ability of the judiciary to compel the government to conform to the legal framework.

It is easy to write and proclaim reforms (every changing regime does it) but the hard part is to implement them for the benefit of the people. On assuming power Gen Musharraf discovered that “our main political parties in reality are no more than family cults, a dynastic icon at their head. Remove the icon, and the party evaporates”. The cult has not ended nor have the parties evaporated, and the icons have become more iconic in jail or in exile. His remedy of creating district governments to break the stranglehold of a few families has only strengthened it. The nazims have arisen not from the impoverished masses but have been handed down to them by those very families. In performing their civic functions, the much-needed local councils too have become tools of clan politics.

The law requires every local council to be inspected by a public commission every year. Hardly any has ever been inspected. Karachi, the biggest of them, was inspected but once in all these five years by a single member of the commission who has since left the commission. The auditor-general of Pakistan is required to certify the accounts of every local government for each financial year. He hasn’t certified any in five years. With their multiple functions and large spending the district governments and the lower councils will thus provide a happy hunting ground for future NABs.

To make the police force act professionally without political interference, the reforms envisaged a host of independent safety commissions, complaint authorities and ombudsmen. “With the stroke of a pen,” Musharraf claims, he “did away with the vestiges of the colonial era.” For his own satisfaction he may like to check whether any of these commissions or authorities exist at all much less protect the police from the politicians.

Five years is a long enough period to evaluate the actual working of reforms rather than gloat over their theory. Growing disorder, crime and corruption underline the urgency of an impartial evaluation. Ego should not stand in the way of change where reforms are seen to falter or make matters worse.

Musharraf has made no economic reforms and yet the economy is doing well because, he says, he chose his finance minister, commerce minister and central bank governor — whom he did not know at all — on the basis of the knowledge that they knew their job and would do it well. He should have tried the same simple and straightforward formula in politics and administration. Perhaps he still should.