Posted on 26-5-2003
The
Other Saddam - A View From India
By Mani Shankar Aiyar*
BANGALORE, India (UPI)-Why should the Iraqi people feel any gratitude or
loyalty to President Saddam Hussein? You would not know
it from anything that has been written in the U.S. or British media, but
there are very good reasons.
I was commercial counsellor and deputy chief of mission at the Indian
Embassy in Baghdad from 1976 to 1978. During the interregnum
between two ambassadors I was also for a while the Indian charge
d'affaires. This explains why I had more than one
occasion to stare into Saddam's expressionless grey-green eyes-straight
out of "The Day of the Jackal"-while shaking his hand at
various official banquets and other ceremonial occasions.
Saddam ran a brutal dictatorship. That, however, caused no
concern to the hordes of Western businessmen who descended in droves on
Iraq to siphon what they could of Iraq's new-found oil wealth through
lucrative contracts for everything. Everything-from eggs to
nuclear plants. Because technologically, from the end of the Turkish
Empire over Iraq in 1919 through the British mandate, which lasted till
1932, and the effete monarchy masterminded by Anthony Eden's buddy, Nuri
es-Said, right up to the Baath Party coup of 1968, there was virtually no
progress at all.
Iraqi latifundia -- the vast country house estates of the tiny privileged
elite -- gave large parties for visiting Western guests, including Agatha
Christie's archaeologist husband, who did most of his digging in Nineveh,
now known worldwide to TV viewers as Mosul. The puppet ruling
establishment gave away Iraq's most precious asset, oil, for a
song. Iraq's major export was -- hold your Patriot missile --
dates, the fruit of the Arab desert eaten by pious Muslims to break their
daylight fast during the Muslim Lent-Ramadan. India was
Iraq's largest buyer.
It was Saddam's revolution that ended Iraqi backwardness.
Education, including higher and technological education, became the top
priority. More important, centuries of vicious discrimination
against girls and women was ended by one stroke of the modernising
dictator's pen . I used to drive past the Mustansariya University
on my way home from downtown Baghdad. It was miraculous -- I
use the word advisedly -- it was nothing short of miraculous to see
hundreds of girl-students thronging the campus, none in
"burkhas" or "chador"-the head-to-toe black cape that
was, and is, essential dress for women in most of the Islamic world-and
almost all in skirts and blouses that would grace a Western university.
The liberation of women-that is half the population of Iraq, as for any
other country-has been the most dramatic achievement of Saddam's
regime. To understand how dramatic just look across the Iraqi
border at America's once-favourite Arab satrap, Saudi Arabia.
These last few days, watching television footage of President George W.
Bush's fireworks over Baghdad, I have been remembering pretty Samira,
Purchase Officer at the Iraqi Cement Co., with whom India was doing a lot
of business. She was as efficient as she was lovely, with
every little detail at the tips of her delicate fingers. She
was also the velvet glove protecting us from her irascible boss, Managing
Director Adnan Kubba, a man not inclined to treat leniently the many and
varied delinquencies of the Indian business enterprises it was my duty to
shepherd into his presence. Between Samira and me, we got Adnan to warm
to India and the Indian businessmen to mend their ways.
It was a great and valued partnership. Samira's mother and all her
female ancestors for centuries could never have left the cloistered cages
of hearth and home. But here she was, under 30, yet the motor driving the
engine of the Iraqi state-owned cement monopoly.
I do not know if Samira is still alive-or buried under the rubble of a
bombed-out Iraqi marketplace But as U.S. missiles fall
nightly on her neighbourhood or her grave, why would she not have at
least some gratitude in her heart for the revolution Saddam brought into
her life and those of her countrywomen, whatever the horrible things he
has been doing to keep his regime going? Has U.S. Defence Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld factored the feelings of Samira into his war plans for
the taking of Baghdad? I think also of the chief engineer at the State
Organisation for Industrial Housing, the driving force behind the massive
housing programme, which turned Baghdad in the first decade of Baath rule
from a dirty shantytown into a pulsating modern metropolis that provided
a roof over the head of every family in the city.
The chief engineer was a woman. I kick myself for having
forgotten her name. But I remember her well. She
was so much like Mama in "Chicago"! Across the road from SOIH
was SOI-State Organisation for Industry where my diplomatic fate obliged
me to cross swords with another tough-as-they-come lady, the head of the
Legal Division, without whose OK no bills were paid.
This was the position of women in Iraq under Saddam a quarter century
ago. One had to keep reminding oneself that this was the
Middle East.. My second daughter, Yamini, was born in Medical City,
Baghdad, symbol of the astonishing revolution wrought by the Baath Party
in health care. My child's cradle is now a coffin, a
purgatory that holds the mangled remains of Iraqi babies killed by a rain
of terror to end a reign of terror.
If I, who lived in Baghdad but two years, and that too as a foreigner and
so many decades ago, feel violated in my deepest sensitivities at what is
being done to my memories of the ordinary Iraqi men, women and children I
knew, consider the feelings of those who have lived all their lives in
Iraq. All those below 40 years of age have known no Iraq
other than the Iraq of Saddam, and now find everything they have seen
grow around them going up in smoke - for their
"liberation!"
Iraq is home to some of the holiest Muslim shrines, fertile ground for
religious fundamentalism. Saddam would have none of
it. Clerics were put firmly in their place-that is, the
mosque and the madrasa-and the Iraqi believer liberated from the
thralldom of the priesthood. The ethos was completely
secular: we interacted every day with Iraqis of numerous religious
persuasions in every position of responsibility.
Few know even now that one of Iraq's longest lasting Baath leaders,
companion-in-arms to Saddam for the last four decades, is Tariq Aziz, a
practising Christian notwithstanding his name.
For Indians, there is a special place in our regard for Saddam, who has
treated with reverence a sacred spot in Baghdad where, legend has it,
Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh faith in the 16th century, meditated
on his way back to India from Mecca on the imperative of synthesising
Hindu and Muslim beliefs.
Iraq under Saddam had everything going for it-except
democracy. And it was, of course, the absence of democracy
that accounted for Saddam brushing aside all vested interests: his
instant liberation of women, his instant dismantling of feudalism, his
instant caging of the priesthood, and, therefore, his instant-and, yes,
brutal exclusion from Iraq of all forms of religious fundamentalism and
religion-based terrorism. Which is, one thing at least that
Osama bin Laden and Bush II share: they hate Saddam equally.
If Saddam goes, the brutality of the Baath party will finally be
ended. But other things not wonderful either will take its
place. There will be a take-over of civil society by the
elements sidelined over four decades of Baath rule.
Therefore, along with democracy, fundamentalism and terrorism will rear
their heads.
Samira-if, poor thing, she has not already been killed-will probably lose
many of the privileges which Saddam ensured her. RIP.
* About the author: Mani Shankar Aiyar is a member
of the Indian parliament representing the Congress Party. His
column is published weekly. This feature originated from the UPI
International Desk.
|