The Enigma of Saddam

It has been quite some time since Saddam was hanged.December 26,2006 to be exact.Saddam Hussein,or more fully ,Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was and will continue to be alongside Osama bin Laden the symbols of Islamic opposition to the West for a long time to come.Ironic,since he was avowedly secular and had hardly any truck with al Quaeda.His story will be cited as a classic case of a Frankensteinian monster which turned upon its creator,the US in this case.

As a young man Saddam along with the Ba'ath Party was involved in a plot to assasinate Gen Quasim in 1959 who had led a military junta in overthrowing King Faisal II.This was backed by the US.During the Iran Iraq war Saddam used chemical weapons supplied by west German companies while availing financial and military aid from France and the US ,to name a few.Billions of dollars were also dangled as bait to prevent him from joining the Soviet side by the US.

This honeymoon ended only during the first Gulf war when US realized that its interests would suffer if Kuwait came under Iraq.This was in 1991.Under harsh UN sanctions since upto the invasion and consequent toppling of his regime in 2003,the Iraqi society was fragmented and splintered along secterian and ethnic lines.This was manifested in increasing lawlessness,secterian cleansing,private Shiite and Sunni militias and restless Kurds.Meanwhile without any trace of WMDs,the ostensible reason of the invasion or links of the toppled regime with al Quaeda,the view in the Arab street that invasion was an attack on Islam and the Great Satan along with the accursed Jews were hell bent on looting Iraq of her oil,was gaining ground.The situation was compounded by Israel's botched attack on Lebanon and its apparent bruising by Hezbollah.But that is another story.

The trial of Saddam Hussein after his capture by American forces in 2003 was probably the most followed war crime trials after the Nuremberg trials of the Nazis.These trials,and the mrthod of conducting them have raised questions and criticisms of fairplay.Assasination of defence lawyers,removal of the presiding judge midway and the shennanigans of Saddam in the courtroom added up to the challenges.Opinion about his fate was sharply divided in a country which was technically a democracy but practically presented a picture of utter chaos.Saddam had no chance of escaping the verdict of death sentence,but the manner of his hanging and the haste in which the Iraqis went about it certainly had an impression of vendatta.

Saddam Hussein may already have become a matyr.When he was in detention messages attributed to him telling his country to resist the 'invaders' almost invariably led to a spike in violence.In this new war where the battle is fought in cyberspace as much as in the real world the videos of his hanging ,helpfully taken by an Iraqi official and circulated over the Internet were one of the most heavily viewed on sites like Google Video and YouTube.These videos no doubt will be used during sermons in madrassas from UK to Indonesia and the terrorist training camps of South Wazaristan and Afghanistan to further brainwash suicide bombers who would bomb buses and trains in the hopes of entering paradise.And the circle would continue.On the other hand proponents would say that if kept imprisoned Saddam would be the inspiration behind a rash of hijacking and terror acts and his statements ,his mere presence would have kept the pot boiling.The situation was complex and demanded complex solution.Nothing like you-are-with us-or-them type,typical of Bush Jr.

And now with the body count of American combatants about to cross 3000 since major combat was declared ended Dubya decides to increase force levels by more than 20000,a move which many commentators are saying as akin to providing more cannon fodder.America has wrecked the situation very badly,and it seems Vietnam was a walk in the park compared to Iraq.And most likely,at the time I am typing this a suicide bomber has exploded his bomb or Sunnis are gunning down Shias in some part of Iraq,with the US soldiers caught ,and dying in the crossfire along with the common people.