In the aftermath of Saddam’s hanging

THOSE who could have stopped Saddam Hussein’s execution seem to be getting wiser after the event and are now expressing their disgust over the grainy video shots showing his last moments and the taunts he exchanged with some of those present there. While the US welcomed the execution immediately after the trap door opened for the former Iraqi president, there are reports now that US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad tried to halt the execution. Britain, which, along with America, played a leading role in the invasion of Iraq and the end of the Baathist regime, reacted angrily to the video shots, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott saying he found the mobile phone footage “unacceptable”. According to him, those involved in the recording and release of the video images should be “ashamed of themselves”. Similar reactions have come from around the world, including the Vatican, with the press regretting that the execution should have been turned into a spectacle and saying that the recording and release of the video shots had become “an expression of political hubris”. More astonishing is the behaviour of the Iraqi government. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who chose to send Saddam to the gallows on Eid day, is now reported to have ordered an inquiry into the whole episode to determine who smuggled the mobile phones into the prohibited area in spite of the ban and who released the tapes to TV channels. Agency reports say that the Maliki government is keen to “clear the air”, hoping that the end of Saddam could pave the way for a reconciliation between the Shia and Sunni communities. This now seems a forlorn prospect.

The Maliki government’s policies have contributed in no small measure to the rise of sectarian militancy in Iraq. Whatever else one may say about Saddam Hussein, he never encouraged sectarianism, and Iraq, ever since its founding in the aftermath of World War I, never had sectarian trouble of the kind witnessed since the fall of the Baathist regime in April 2003. Saddam’s armed forces gassed thousands of Kurds, but the Maliki government chose to try him on a charge of killing 148 Shias in Dujail. This and the taunts of a sectarian nature exchanged prior to his execution have not helped matters. In fact, as the Maliki government knew, those whom Saddam persecuted included Arab Sunnis as well. But the US-installed Maliki government’s way of trying and executing Saddam has only widened the gulf between the two communities. As for America, it should brace itself for more fatalities, which have already crossed the 3,000 figure. As a message received from Mr Izzat Ibrahim Douri, one of Saddam’s fugitive deputies, said “assassinating” Saddam would only “strengthen the will of the Baathist party” and increase its determination to “escalate its jihad”.

Only a miracle can now save Iraq from dismemberment. President George Bush is still thinking of increasing the number of American troops in Iraq, in spite of what the Iraq Study Group has recommended about a withdrawal by the first quarter of 2008. More troops are unlikely to achieve what the 140,000 already there could not achieve. The Maliki government has failed to raise a reliable security force. If the Americans withdraw, there will be greater chaos; if they stay on, the present anarchy and bloodbath will continue. In short, the Bush administration finds itself caught between the devil and the deep sea, and for this it has no one but itself to blame.

Pollution, a looming disaster

A WORLD Bank study on air pollution in Pakistan makes shocking reading. It attributes 22,000 deaths in the country every year to the presence of air particulates in the atmosphere that damage the respiratory system. The casualty figures have been disputed by the Pakistan Environment Protection Agency, but no one questions the fact that air pollution in all major cities is a serious health hazard. This is not the first time that such a revelation has been made. A number of studies of this nature have been carried out — Suparco conducted one a year ago — and their findings may vary in detail but are identical in the observation that pollution in Pakistan is extremely high. Karachi and Lahore have pollution levels that are 20 times higher than the limits set by WHO. It is also known that the major source of pollution is vehicular emission, followed by industrial pollution and the burning of municipal waste.

With all this information ready at hand, the moot question is: why is not anything being done about it? Of course, there is a lot of noise that is made by environmentalists protesting against air pollution and there is loud talk from the civic authorities about different plans and projects they have on the anvil to check pollution. At one time we were told that a $500 million project had been assigned to a Malaysian firm to set up 20 centres to check vehicles polluting the air in Karachi. The two-stroke rickshaws have already been banned in Karachi, so the CDGK claims. There is an abundance of rules to regulate industrial pollution and burning of garbage is not allowed under the law. But the reality on the ground remains unchanged. The fact is that corruption is so rampant that all the laws that are already in place are ignored with impunity. The police, which are supposed to check the road fitness of transport, are most amenable to bribes. Some institutions which could have made a difference are still not around, a notable example being the environmental tribunals now promised to become functional by next week. The industries have learnt how to evade the laws. It is time to make a break with the status quo and check corruption with a firm hand.

Mixed municipal response

TV REPORTS emanating from Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar over the Eid holidays suggest that the respective city district governments have done a good job of post-Eid cleaning up of animal remains. Hides, offal and sundry parts of slaughtered sacrificial animals were swiftly picked up by the municipal staff on duty, refuse skips were emptied several times over and camps set up by philanthropist organisations to offer collective sacrifice facilities were cleaned repeatedly over the two days of the ritual slaughter. The task at hand was admittedly a daunting one, especially given that citizens generally do not show a sense of civic responsibility when it comes to the disposal of animal entrails. That is precisely why the story in parts of the federal capital, Rawalpindi, Quetta, Hyderabad and many other cities in Punjab reportedly remained one of neglect as far as municipal services were concerned. The cities in question fared no better this year than on previous Eids: animal remains were left to rot unattended, creating unhygienic conditions and spreading a foul smell.

While the local governments of Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar should be commended for a job well done, it is equally important to note the failure of the general public in keeping their immediate neighbourhoods clean. The lack of awareness about general hygiene among the people adds to the burden placed on municipal services, which in most big and small cities and towns remain woefully inadequate, given the actual population that they have to cater for. But this is no excuse to leave the job unattended on the part of errant civic authorities in cities and towns which were left uncleaned. The auspicious occasion called for special arrangements to be made well in advance, even if that required seeking extra resources from the respective provincial governments, to get the job done.

Saddam’s rendezvous with death

IN the end, there was no closure, just another unnecessary act of violence. By the time a noose was placed around his neck and the plank he stood upon wrenched away with undue haste, Saddam Hussein had long since ceased to matter much as far as Iraq’s future was concerned.

His irrelevance did not suddenly manifest itself on the day of the spider-hole charade three years ago: it became reasonably clear the moment the conquest of his country compelled him to go into hiding. Thenceforth the fate of Iraq was in the hands of the conquerors. Or so they thought.

Back in 2003, Saddam received some of the credit for the incipient resistance to foreign occupation: it would become considerably more manageable, it was suggested, once the monster was apprehended. But the former strongman quite clearly wasn’t in charge of anything when they found him. The violence steadily deteriorated afterwards. More than 100 US soldiers were killed in December 2006, making it the worst month thus far in terms of American casualties and taking the overall toll past the psychologically damaging figure of 3,000. Much worse, the monthly casualty rate for the occupying forces roughly equals the daily death toll for Iraqis.

The Shia-Sunni violence has unofficially been designated a civil war, but what’s happening in Iraq is obviously not just a civil war. The Baathist influence on the insurgency was exaggerated from the outset, just like Al Qaeda’s role, in order to make it easier for the resistance to be written off as the handiwork of dedicated evildoers. It was never quite as simple as that. Or perhaps it was, in a sense. As the poet W.H. Auden, writing about the origins of the Second World War, pointed out: “I and the public know/ What all schoolchildren learn,/ Those to whom evil is done/ Do evil in return.”

It isn’t particularly difficult to come to terms with the fact that a substantial proportion of Iraqis - mainly Shias and Kurds - considered Saddam’s exit cause for jubilation. After all, the numerous brutalities of his atrocious regime were directed mainly towards those two sections of the population. An unpleasant and violent childhood made a thug and, reputedly, a murderer out of Saddam by the time he was in his teens. The key to his rapid rise through the ranks of the Baath party was ruthlessness. By the time the party acquired power in 1968, he was already a feared entity. When he formally rose to the top 11 years later, one of his first acts was a pitiless purge of the Ba’ath leadership, in a nod to his hero Josef Stalin.

Saddam brooked no dissent, nor did he shrink from mass reprisals. The aggression against Iran was criminal folly on a grand scale: that didn’t prevent Iraq’s Arab neighbours as well as the Reagan and Thatcher administrations from supporting his war effort: the CIA-supplied satellite surveillance photographs of potential targets, and even the ingredients for the chemical weapons he used against Iranians and the Kurdish population of Halabja came from western sources. Whereas Iran welcomed Saddam’s execution, at least some Kurds were more circumspect, regretting the fact that he was removed from the scene at the opening stages of his trial over charges relating to the genocidal Anfal campaign.

And there, perhaps, lies the rub. Or one of them at any rate. The Americans couldn’t have been particularly keen on court proceedings dealing with the period during which they were all too willing to bolster the Saddam administration. The Dujail massacre, which constituted the basis for Saddam’s conviction and execution, was a relatively minor bloodbath, occasioned by an assassination attempt organised apparently by the Dawa party, now led by prime minister Nouri Al Maliki. The victims were all Shias. For all that, the tawdry trial fell well short of acceptable legal norms in both evidentiary and procedural terms. The appeal was pure farce. And the unseemly speed with which the sentence was carried out signified that justice wasn’t the main item on the agenda.

Saddam’s final moments reinforced the impression of pure retribution. The official video of the execution was broadcast without the audio component, but an amateur effort found its way around the world in no time, making it clear that the deposed dictator was subjected to taunts from the guards and the assembled audience, including arguably blasphemous invocations of militia leader Moqtada Al Sadr, and that the noose tightened around his neck while he was halfway through the kalima.

According to a report in Monday’s New York Times, American officials in Iraq were alarmed by the Maliki government’s impatience, but couldn’t stand in its way. That seems like a post-hoc attempt to put a bit of distance between the US and the puppet regime in Baghdad, the implication being that the barbaric aspect of the exercise was an Iraqi initiative. This ploy is unlikely to work, given that the facade of Iraqi sovereignty is clearly a myth. As the NYT report points out, Saddam’s final public appearance was allowed “to deteriorate into a sectarian free-for-all that had the effect ... of making Mr Hussein, a mass murderer, appear dignified and restrained, and his executioners, representing Shias who were his principal victims, seem like bullying street thugs”. The Americans didn’t do anything about it because they did not wish to. Besides, it isn’t easy to inject a civilised note into something as primitive as state-sanctioned murder. It has been argued that Saddam’s end was a befitting one, given the man’s nature and his past. It has also been said that, for all its flaws, his trial was superior to the legal proceedings faced (or not, as the case may be) by his victims. Iraq under Saddam could, no doubt, be an extremely nasty place for those who fell foul of his regime. But the preceding arguments serve only to buttress the conclusion that not much has changed since those days, apart from the faces and sectarian affiliations of those in power.

It is quite possible that Saddam’s poise at the point of death was a corollary of the narcissism and arrogance that determined his course in life. “Nothing in his life,” as Shakespeare might have put it, “Became him like the leaving it: he died/ As one that had been studied in his death/ To throw away the dearest thing he owed/ As ‘twere a careless trifle.” But Shakespearean tragic heroes require a redeeming quality or two, and in Saddam’s case these are hard to come by. The mantle of martyrdom does not sit easily on his shoulders. He obviously shares responsibility for the sectarian divide that is tearing Iraq apart, although the gulf has deepened in the post-Saddam phase. The manner of his death will make it much worse.

A veracious catalogue of Saddam’s crimes could have served Iraq well, but that could have been put together only in an independent nation. That opportunity has now been lost: no one knows how many secrets he has taken to his grave. The persecution of Saddam was also jarring because, as far as Iraq is concerned, worse offenders have come to light in recent years. As Robert Dreyfuss points out in the US periodical The Nation, “Saddam Hussein was blamed by his fiercest critics ... of killing 300,000 Iraqis during his 35-year rule (1968-2003). In less than four years, George W. Bush has more than doubled that, with no end in sight. As war criminals go, Bush wins hands down.”

Saddam’s last rites in his birthplace, Awja, coincided with those for a former US president, Gerald Ford, who died last week at the age of 93. Ford was one of the only unelected presidents the US has had: he was appointed vice-president by Richard Nixon after Spiro Agnew resigned over a tax scandal, and became president when Nixon was run over by the Watergate crisis in 1974. Ford had to deal with the aftermath not only of Watergate but also of the American defeat in Vietnam. Not surprisingly, he avoided foreign adventures despite being surrounded by hawks.

In an embargoed interview with The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward two years ago, Ford expressed profound disagreement with Bush’s war on Iraq. His tenure was brief (he lost the 1976 election to Jimmy Carter, not least because he indemnified Nixon, an old friend, against all Watergate-related charges), but that shouldn’t detract from his status as the least harmful US president in the postwar era. It is difficult to forgive him, however, for a pair of sinister legacies. One of them is called Donald Rumsfeld. The other is known as Dick Cheney. Both of them served Ford as chief of staff, and Rumsfeld even did a preliminary stint as defence secretary. At a stretch, Ford could also be accused of helping to launch the Bush dynasty by ensconcing W’s dad at the helm of the CIA.

This is the same dad whose assassination Saddam allegedly tried to arrange, and the younger Bush has more than once given the impression of nursing a vendetta. It’s over now, but he still has Iraq on his hands. A week from today he is expected to come up with a fresh plan. Whether it will include anything other than a temporary troop surge remains to be seen. Bush took great pains, meanwhile, not to strike too triumphant a pose over Saddam’s fate. He described it as a milestone, but didn’t elaborate. There are only two possibilities: if it’s a milestone, it’s either on the Highway to Hell or the Road to Perdition.

Email: worldviewster@gmail.com