Iraq

Middle East Fascism: Saddam Hussein

Various religious sects and ethnic groups make up Iraq's population of 25 million. Some 95 percent are Muslims, and they have experienced oppression, torture and fear for many years. The most important factor in the killing and poverty inflicted on the Muslim population has been Saddam Hussein's "fascist" dictatorship.

Saddam Hussein took power in 1979, and ever since he has refused to allow religious circles to enjoy any kind of political or social activity. Saddam was the architect of the massacre of 5,000 Muslim Kurds by chemical weapons at Halabja, inflicted terrible suffering on his own people and those of their neighbor by starting the Iran-Iraq war, and tried to conquer Kuwait in 1990. Although he has sometimes spoken in religious terms in order to try and win Muslim support, that is nothing but a hypocritical policy.

A brief look at Saddam's past will let us see the foundations of the regime he established.

The events that brought Saddam to power in Iraq began with a coup. In February 1963, a group of army officers and street activists calling themselves the Baath (Resurgence) Party overthrew General Abdul Karim Kassem, who was in power at the time. Among these militants one man, a member of a six-man team charged with killing Kassem, stood out: Saddam Hussein al-Takriti, in other words Saddam Hussein from Takrit. Although not a soldier, Saddam was seen frequently in uniform and immediately after the coup, he was brought in by the Baath regime and tasked with committing acts of terror and murder. His first action was to develop effective new torture methods with which to interrogate those opposed to the coup. This Baath administration which began with a palace coup came to an end in November of the same year. Saddam's torture center then came to light, full of pain-inflicting devices of his own invention.

The Baath administration of less than 10 months' duration had also been ended by a coup. However, the party staged another coup on July 17, 1968, and this time it was to last. The deputy leader of this second coup was none other than torture specialist Saddam Hussein himself. By appointing his own relatives to key posts and doing away with his political rivals, he soon held all political power in his own hands. The pitiless torturer had become dictator of Iraq.

THE IRAN-IRAQ WAR One million people out of a total Iraqi population of 17 million were either killed or wounded as a result of the war with Iran, started by the fascist Saddam regime. Another 1 million were forced to flee the country for political and economic reasons. The nearly-decade-long war effectively ruined Iraq.

Despite all his ruthlessness and cruelty, one of the main factors which allowed Saddam to stay in power was the support he received from outside the country. The most fascinating alliances were established to keep Saddam in power. Heading the list of these was the alliance he formed with Mossad, one of the darkest intelligence organizations in the world. Mossad regarded Saddam as an important pawn in Israel's Middle East strategy and occasionally used Saddam in the directing of the course of events which might turn out in Israel's interests.

In his second book, written after the Gulf War, the former Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky would write in describing this interesting view of Saddam in Israel that that country wished the Iraqi dictator to remain in power because he was totally irrational in terms of international policy and was likely to engage in useful stupidity which might be able to be used by Israel.

This provides most important information about the true face of Saddam Hussein. Saddam has never followed a policy aimed at the good of Muslims and attempting to defend the people's interests. All the measures he has taken up until today, directed by certain circles opposed to religion, have been aimed at harming Muslims and his people. The fact that throughout Saddam's administration the lives of the Iraqi people have been full of war and conflicts, and that most of these were aimed at other Muslim countries, is an important indication of this fact.

Terrible images of Saddam's massacre at Halabja.

After securing power, Saddam constantly sought out war and conflict. In 1980 he suddenly invaded Iran for no reason, thus starting a war that over the next eight years took the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Iranians alike. Two years after the war finally ended, he then invaded Kuwait without cause and thus brought about the 1991 Gulf War. Yet Saddam's terror was not only aimed at neighboring countries but at his own people, too. Throughout his reign those seen as opponents of the regime and various political and ethnic groups have been subjected to all kinds of savagery. In 1990, Newsweek carried the following description of Saddam's fascist character:

His detractors call him a bloodthirsty tyrant - the Butcher of Baghdad. Saddam Hussein rules Iraq with an iron side a steel glove, backed by a million-man Army and a legion of informers, assasins and torturers. Saddam, as he is known throughout the Middle East, is utterly ruthless in the pursuit of glory for himself and his country. He has not hesitated to use poison gas on enemies both foreign and domestic.56

Saddam has shed the blood of many Iraqis. By the end of the war with Iran, 1 million out of a population of 17 million Iraqis had been killed or wounded. More than a million people fled the country for political or economic reasons. Washington-based human rights organization Middle East Watch states that forced exile, arrest and punishment for no crime as well as torture and "mystery" killings are some of the methods frequently employed. According to Amnesty International, torture, even of children includes such methods as roasting victims over flames, amputating noses, limbs, breasts and sexual organs, and hammering nails into bodies.57

Saddam demonstrated his fascist attitude towards people of different ethnic origins with the 1988 Halabja massacre. Nerve gas was used against the civilian Kurdish population, and many innocent people died in agony, with no distinction made between infants, the elderly, men and women. Amnesty International reported that 5,000 Kurds died in that massacre, and several thousand more in similar attacks elsewhere in the country.58

The tortures inflicted on political detainees by the fascist regime in Iraq are even more terrible. A doctor who fled the country describes them in these terms:

I was an intern in a hospital in the south. Only doctors could see those people brought in from prison. Most of them were just lumps of flesh and soon died. Not one political detainee lived through the torture. I fled when I realized I was going to be arrested.59

The embargo imposed on Iraq after the invasion of Kuwait has only increased the suffering of Iraq's people. Saddam himself remains untouched by it.

Even Saddam's own family and close colleagues have not been spared his cruelty. Saddam's stepbrother Barzan Takriti and his son Uday fled to the United Arab Emirates out of fear he might have them killed. Two of his sons-in-law, Hussein and Saddam Kamel, fled to Jordan in 1995 out of similar fears. Saddam then guaranteed that their lives would not be threatened and asked them to return. When the two brothers returned to Baghdad, however, they were immediately put to death, along with their father. Their mother's savaged body was found later.

The Iraqi leader intimidates opponents of his regime who flee the country using the most terrible methods. For instance, General Najib Salihi fled to Jordan in 1995. He revealed that videotapes of his family and friends being raped had been sent to him, and that this had happened to many other opposition figures.

As we clearly see from these examples, Saddam's power over the people of Iraq is entirely based on intimidation, terror, oppression and torture. The population is poor and unemployed due to the hostile, aggressive foreign policy pursued by Saddam just to satisfy his own ego. Babies die from hunger and lack of medicines, and despite its natural wealth the whole nation is being dragged towards death and extinction.

At this point, however, it needs to be stressed that violence must never be the way to protect the innocent people of Iraq from Saddam's savagery. In the event that such a policy were followed, the innocent Iraqi people would suffer much more than Saddam. There is no doubt that innocent civilians (children, women, the elderly, the sick) would be the ones to suffer most in any war or conflict. Those who maintain that violence is necessary to rid the Iraqi people of Saddam must carefully avoid falling into a similar error with Saddam himself, in other words they must avoid any methods which would ruin the whole country and cost the lives of thousands of innocent people.

Saddam's fascist methods were no better than those of Hitler and Mussolini, and he spread terror to neighboring countries. The sudden invasion of Kuwait after the war with Iran is just one example. That invasion inflicted huge physical and psychological damage on Kuwait, and brought about an embargo on Iraq that has been causing great suffering to its people for years.

Saddam's Hypocritical Appeals to Religion

The most important feature of the mass hypnotism Saddam has cast over the people of Iraq is that it operates under a false religious mask. Saddam always employs a religious style, aimed at the people, in his domestic and foreign policies, and engages in actions designed to pull the wool over their eyes. That is why he sometimes resorts to portraying himself as the defender of the Islamic world, and tries to take advantage of the people's religious sensitivities, as when the words "Allahu Akbar" were added to the Iraqi flag during the Gulf War.

Looking at all the cruelty that is inflicted makes it quite clear that this has nothing whatsoever to do with the religion of Islam or the values of the Qur'an. Allah reveals the situation of such people in a verse:

They swear by Allah that they are from among you while they are not from among you... (Qur'an, 9: 56)

Obviously, Saddam is nothing like a true Islamic leader. It is clear that his actions are forbidden in the Qur'an, and strongly condemned. For instance, racism plays a strong role in Saddam's actions within the country. Many innocent people have been savagely slain, just because of their ethnic origins. With the Halabja massacre, Saddam went down in history as the murderer of 5,000 people. Like many other racist leaders, Saddam claims that his own ethnic roots are superior. The Qur'an, however, makes it clear that superiority lies not in race, color or any other such feature, but rather in godliness or closeness to Allah, faith and morality. Racism, on the other hand, is described in these words in the Qur'an:

Those who are disbelievers filled their hearts with fanatical rage - the fanatical rage of the Time of Ignorance - and Allah sent down serenity to His Messenger and to the believers, and bound them to the expression of heedfulness which they had most right to and were most entitled to. Allah has knowledge of all things. (Qur'an, 48: 26)

Allah has created people with different races and colors. Man is a helpless creature, fully dependent on Allah, so nobody has any right to claim to be superior to any other person or nation. At the moment of death, on the Day of Judgment or in the hereafter, such things as race will be of no importance. On that day, nobody will be able to hold anyone else to account for their race or origins. Those who are now behaving savagely because of their race, killing people and even burning them alive, will on that day realize how helpless and needy they are, no matter their race. One verse has the following to say about the Day of Judgment:

Then when the Trumpet is blown, that Day there will be no family ties between them; they will not be able to question one another. (Qur'an, 23: 101)

IIn short, since the 1970s, the Muslims of Iraq have been subjected to the cruelty of a dictator who is far removed from the morality set out in the Qur'an, but one who believes instead in racial and tribal bigotry, has no hesitation about killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people to satisfy his own desires, and who takes great pleasure in cruelty and torture. Furthermore, many of them do not even realize what is truly happening, due to the propaganda they are constantly subjected to. The salvation of Iraqi Muslims from Saddam, or from any other dictator who might rule from Baghdad after him, depends on the ideological and material strengthening of the Islamic world, a total embrace of the Qur'an, and the destruction of a fascist ideology trying to operate under an Islamic mask.