The meaning of Saddam Hussein's execution, reality and urban legends

Yoram Mizrahi, the historian and military expert, analyzes the situation in Iraq, the Middle East and the world. From his blog for military and security affairs at Ishrablog

The image is taken from Wikipedia, which itself quoted it from the Iraqi television Al Iraqiya.

The hanging of Sadam Hussein will be remembered in the history of the 21st century as one of the most prominent and least routine events of its kind. In the first stage, it is still difficult to estimate how far the political and social "ring of waves" of the hanging will expand and reach, including the commemoration of the former tyrant "as a martyr" or "as a vile murderer"/

One way or another, on the background of the execution it is evident that the world was divided as it was, with opinions one way or the other. While the US is "satisfied with the demonstration of law and democracy" that was manifested precisely with... the hangman's necktie, Russia, the political rival of the US, expressed "doubts and opposition" to the execution of the sentence. The European community also came out in condemnation of the execution, with in mind a question of principle related to the very fact of the death penalty and in the background a desire to reconcile factors in the Muslim and Arab world, considering "we are not in the business".

In the Arab Muslim world, where one holds one's breath waiting for what is to come, the voices of protest grow stronger, when the concentrations of the Muslim majority in the world, which is not Arab, tend to condemn the execution to the point of taking to the streets. For example, it happened in India that the number of its Muslim citizens reaches 174 million, which is about 16% percent of the population, China with between 20 and 100 million Muslims (according to a BBC survey), Bangladesh, Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia and countries in Africa, a group of countries where most of the world's Muslims live.

The killing of Sadam Hussein was accompanied by quite a bit of nonsense, fragments of truth, deliberately biased and incorrect information and above all historical ignorance.

For example, the presentation of the measure "as the first time in modern times that a former Muslim leader is executed" ignores the execution of Adnan Menderes, who was hanged in Turkey in 1960 with two of his ministers, and of Ali Bhutto, who was hanged in 1979 in Pakistan, or Amir Abbas Hobeida, the former prime minister of Iran, who was shot the day he returned Ayatollah Khomeini from his exile in Paris.

They also compare the execution to a "Shia ethnic image" and point out that the man was hanged by a Shia government, all of this due to the fact that the Prime Minister of Iraq, Nouri al Malachi, is a member of the Shia community. But El Malachi was not the final arbiter. In his government, which is supposed to operate in democratic ways, Sunni ministers, what's more, the president is a Kurd - a Sunni who could, if he wanted, throw his weight against the execution. They also tend to ignore the part of the United States that the dead tyrant was in possession of until the last minutes when he was officially transferred immediately to the international coalition to the executioners of Iraq.

The distorted image of the Iraqi scene in general has created urban legends since 2003, the first of which is the presentation of the Iraqi Ba'ath party as a Sunni political body that has turned against the Shiites. The truth is different. The Ba'ath arose as a body with a non-Arab and non-religious worldview, quite the opposite. Saddam Hussein was not a fanatical Muslim, although like other Islamic tyrants he knew how to flatter ayatollahs or mullahs, whatever the need. In this he was no different from Gamal Abdel Nasser or Haft al-Assad and others. The Ba'ath government mechanism, at all levels, included Shiites whose number in the army was decisive due to their weight in the Iraqi population in general. Even during the long war against Iran, Shia officers stood out. In the Shia areas of post-2003 Iraq, members of the Palestinian Authority who held senior positions are murdered almost every week.

Saddam's government, as cruel as it was, strove for the modernization of Iraq, equal rights for women, promoted education and also involved Christians in the mechanism, for example his right-hand man Tarek Aziz and more.

Middle Eastern politics usually has an ironic aspect that in this case will come to hit the United States which at the end of the day will be seen in the eyes of the world as Saddam's execution in the examination "the hands of the Iraqis and the American voice" In Iraq, and when he stops in the deserts of the Middle East, he will see that there are no exiters from Iraq except by tooth and eye, and in terms of "democracy for exporting the Bush style" there is no talk of a great miracle there.

For the military and security blog (Bishrablog) of Yoram Mizrahi