Saddam's Secrets Page 25

  Ultimately this meant that Saddam had made Iraq, its industry, its oil, and everything else, very small in the hearts of the people; but he had made himself bigger than Iraq because he was the gracious benefactor who was giving the people such wonderful gifts. And this is why people who supported the Baath Party were so loyal to Saddam after the war. In their minds, their loyalty wasn’t just to Iraq but to this man. And most of them had never considered that this wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

  Imagine the devastating impact this had on the nation. Inflation was destroying us and sanctions were just as bad, but Saddam was able to solve the problem by giving his people “the gift.” Thus, by his generosity, he restored what had been lost because of inflation. Party members were doing very well, but the rest of us had no alternative but to be quiet and wait.

  This also meant that non-party members had to begin selling off personal items—cars, clothes, televisions, furniture, even the good wooden doors inside our homes—just to be able to buy food to eat. We sold everything we could live without and many things we couldn’t. Some high-ranking officers who had beautiful chairs, lamps, light fixtures, and fans in their homes had to sell all of it, and in some cases they even had to sell the large ornate doors on the outside of their homes and replace them with plywood or simple sheets of tin.

  A Nation in Decline

  This all started after Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990. That’s when things really started going downhill for us. The lucky ones were those who had family living abroad, and fortunately I was one of them. My son and his family were living in Europe, where he had his medical practice. He wasn’t a wealthy man, but if he was able to send us just one hundred dollars a month, that was an incredible blessing, because it was a great amount of money for us. And that was the only way we managed to have anything like a normal life.

  Those who had no family abroad and who had no other means of earning money were in terrible shape at that time, especially the women. For some of those women, the only way to survive was to sell themselves to men who were members of the party and who could pay them for their services. This contributed as much as anything else to a coarsening of morality and decency and the breakdown of Iraqi society.

  Little by little, corruption began eating its way into every field and profession. The military was being run by men who were corrupt and, in many cases, incompetent. This meant, in turn, that the army was not able to defend the nation. The good officers were often forced to take lower-level jobs, or they were simply forced to leave the military altogether. The military commanders would keep non-party members if there was no one else to replace them; but as soon as they found a party man who could do the job reasonably well, they would push the non-party man out the door and release him.

  The Baath Party modeled itself on the Communist Party in Russia. In the Soviet system, children from eight to ten years old were encouraged to become Oktyabryata, or Octobrists. That was the Communist Youth Organization’s program for indoctrinating young people into the beliefs and policies of the party.

  The youngest ones were called “the children of October,” as a reminder of the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917. Between the ages of ten to sixteen, they could become Pioneers, which was sort of like Scouting, with a lot of outdoor activities. Then, from nineteen to twenty-three, they were expected to join the Komsomol. These children were taught how to be good communists, so that one day they could become full-fledged members of the party and unquestioning servants of Mother Russia.

  I was a student pilot in Russia for three years, so I was able to observe that system closely. This was the model Saddam had decided to follow; but as we saw in the late-1980s when the Soviet Union was beginning to collapse, there were many problems with the communist ideology. I think it was inevitable that the system would fail. And I think Saddam’s commitment to the same political ideology played a big part in the ultimate collapse of his regime.

  The only way I was able to keep my job and rise to the rank of two-star general was by being an excellent pilot and working harder than everyone else. Saddam knew that, as a Christian, I was no threat to him. Besides that, he knew that I was honest and he could count on me to tell the truth, whether he liked it or not. In some ways I think he was proud of me because I was the only officer in Iraq at that time who had been trained as a pilot in Russia and America, and I’d also spent time as an officer in England, France, Italy, and other places. I worked hard and was loyal to my country. These things pleased him, but not enough to make him listen to my objections or take my advice.

  Things in Iraq were getting progressively worse. We weren’t modernizing like other nations; we were going backward. Why? Because in every area of our lives, we were at the mercy of second-rate party officials and bureaucrats, and these men were incapable of restoring order or of coping with the problems created by the U.N. sanctions and the restrictions placed on us after the Gulf War. So the country continued to deteriorate, and life for all Iraqis became very, very hard.

  Risks and Rewards

  When we were still going through all of this, I asked myself at one point, What are the attributes of a Baath Party man? How is he different from me? And what are the benefits of being a party member? The answer was obvious. Those who were not especially capable—whether it was in the military, the administration, in politics, or simply being an accountant—could advance to the top of their career because of their membership in the party. In fact, the main value of membership in the party was job security.

  The important jobs were not given to those who were talented and hard working; they were given to members of the party, regardless of their skill. And the reason was that Saddam and the leaders of the party understood that rewarding party members with jobs and money and other benefits was the best way of preserving their own authority and power.

  Consequently, what you would find in Iraq, where the Baath Party was in control, was that the leaders in politics, science, medicine, administration, and every other field were, virtually without exception, the least efficient and least capable men. And these men, in turn, were always jealous and suspicious of those who were more capable, so they would hold them back and make it impossible for them to improve their status.

  The men who surrounded Saddam were never the best and most capable people in the government. They were the worst ones, but they were faithful to him because they had been given positions they knew they didn’t deserve. They owed everything to Saddam, and because they were loyal and would say or do whatever he wanted, they were also well rewarded for their service. It’s true that Saddam managed to build a large and powerful regime, but it was not built on the basis of skill and efficiency. Rather, it was built on the basis of blind loyalty to Saddam. And this is the only way that someone like Izzat al-Douri, who had been a lowly ice seller in the village of Dour, could rise to become Saddam’s top deputy, a four-star general, and ambassador of the president.

  Foreign Relations

  The only authority in Iraq was the authority of Saddam, and this was the only thing he created. His acts of generosity and benevolence were a sham. We were all puppets and he was the puppet master. Our government became one of the weakest government systems in the entire civilized world. While the system may have worked in Iraq for a time, simply because of the scope and brutality of Saddam’s repressive regime, it was a categorical disaster to everyone else in the world.

  Internationally, Iraq was seen as a loser, and the ones who paid the greatest price for this were the citizens who had to live under Saddam’s tyranny. Now that Saddam and the Baathists are gone, the people of Iraq are discovering that this person who had the power of life and death over them was a nobody. He was the biggest liar and the biggest loser of all. And the systems he created were among the weakest in leadership, organization, and administration of any in the entire world.

  Once in a while during the first year or so after liberation, I would hear someone say, “Now that Saddam is gone, who will take his
place?” Some would even say, “Where will we find another Saddam?” Frankly, I was shocked to hear that kind of talk. It made me angry to think that there were Iraqis who still believed that two plus two is nine, and anything that Saddam had said or done was just fine. But I realized, of course, that most Iraqis have never known any other kind of government, and they can’t imagine what will come next.

  But I would ask those people, “What are you talking about? Who was Saddam Hussein that you still think of him as some kind of hero? He was nothing but a gangster in the streets, a criminal, a common thug! Why are you worried about who will take his place? Anyone would be better than Saddam.” But this is what happened. For more than forty years the people of Iraq have been beaten down, oppressed, robbed, brutalized, and stripped of their resources and power by a tyrant. We were all victimized by a despot who would stop at nothing to enrich and empower himself. Now that we have a new government, a new constitution, and a new opportunity to join the community of nations, we have to look forward to what is next. With God’s help, perhaps we can even regain some of what we’ve lost.

  It’s sad for me to think about all the Iraqis who moved away during those terrible years. The Iraqi community in America, Australia, England, and many other places is very large now, and some of those people would love to be able to come home to their native land. And when they come, they will bring knowledge and experience and wealth, and they will be able to help us find what we’ve been missing for so long.

  It will not be an easy transition, but we need those people, and I think they need us. So it is my prayer that this sort of transformation will be possible in the months and years ahead. There’s so much we need to learn about self-respect and opportunity and freedom, and the Iraqi people are eager to learn.

  Iraqis who managed to survive all those years under Saddam may resent the fact that some of the people who have been living abroad will have a chance to come and take important jobs in business, industry, and the government, as if they had never left. But we need to understand why they left in the first place; and we need to understand that, at this moment, we need the knowledge and skill that they can bring to Iraq from abroad.

  A System That Works

  The Iraqi people also need to understand the importance of what America, Britain, and the other coalition nations have done for us. They have helped us regain our freedom, and they have helped to restore our credibility and give us a voice in the community of nations. They risked a lot to do this for us, and many of their sons and daughters gave their lives for our freedom. We should be grateful for what they’ve done and show them our appreciation by making the most of this incredible opportunity.

  We know, of course, that Europe and America have other interests in our area—they want to secure the peace because it is good for them too. Many of these countries have diplomatic and commercial interests in the Middle East that they want to secure, and this is also what they were fighting for. So we need to be realistic about that. But we Iraqis must now be willing to participate in the restoration of our nation and our honor, and to build a new government that is worthy of our hopes and our great and ancient history.

  Unfortunately, there are some Iraqis, and others in the Middle East, who are still pro-Saddam and pro-Osama bin Laden, who are saying, “The Americans are there to take your oil and occupy your country.” But this is not true. I know why the Americans are there. They want stability and peace in the region, and they want to make sure that their interests are protected.

  America is the longest surviving republican democracy in the entire history of the world, and they believe that a free democratic nation is the best system for guaranteeing the peace and prosperity of the people. The task now is to help the Iraqi people, who have known nothing but tyranny and fear and suspicion for their entire lives, to understand this and believe it.

  Americans and Iraqis need to understand that America’s interests will be served, naturally and fairly for everyone, if there is peace in the Middle East. One of the hats I wear today is that of Executive Secretary of the Iraqi Institute for Peace (IIP) in Iraq, and peace and reconciliation are very important to me for two reasons. First, I’m a Christian and Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace. Second, peace is the universal condition of nations that are prosperous and happy. And I believe that’s what we ought to be pursuing.

  The remarkable thing is that the American military and the U.S. State Department are still working to make sure that the people of Iraq feel that we have ownership of our government and its policies. In the past, armies have come to Iraq to conquer and colonize our land, but this is not what’s happening now. America and Britain do not want to own Iraq but to help us stabilize the country and get it going again. Our task now is to make sure that whatever we come up with in the future—at the polls and in the halls of government—will be a system that really works.

  PART III

  CHAPTER 9

  THE WAR OF LIBERATION

  When I was discharged from the air force on February 5, 1991, I returned to the job I had been doing before the war, working with the Christian community in Iraq, and I was elected president of the Baghdad Evangelical Church. This was an organization of all the evangelical churches in Iraq, and it’s where I spent most of my time. I had served as leader of the evangelical churches from 1986 to 1990, but not on a full-time basis. The farm was my main occupation in those days. But from 1991 to 2003 I was able to go back to this work full-time, and they were some of the most wonderful years of my life.

  During this time I met with people from all over the world, and I traveled frequently. Even though I was no longer an active duty officer, and certainly not a member of the Baath Party, the prime minister’s office called me on several occasions. They asked me to travel to Europe and North America as a representative of Iraq, and I was glad to do it. One of the most important trips was one I made to Coventry in 2000 to meet with leaders of the Anglican Church who were engaged in developing an alliance for peace and reconciliation. Participants in these meetings represented churches from all over the world—more than eighty men and women from North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa.

  On that trip I spoke with evangelical leaders and the directors of several Christian organizations. I also made my first visit to Coventry Cathedral in England—that great church which had been erected upon the ashes of the one destroyed by German bombers in the Second World War. The resurrected cathedral didn’t replace the old one, which was only a shell, but incorporated the fractured walls and towering spire in the new atrium, and those ruins still stand today as an even greater tribute to faith and freedom.

  After that, I was invited to conferences in Europe and America to talk about peace and reconciliation, and my knowledge and enthusiasm for this new area of interest were constantly being expanded. I continued to develop these relationships throughout 1999 and 2000, and in November 2001 I was invited back to Beirut, Lebanon, for a conference of pastors and laymen who were working for peace in the Middle East. At one of those meetings I was asked to serve as director of the International Centre for Reconciliation (ICR) in Baghdad, sponsored by the Bishop of Coventry and his emissary to the Middle East, Canon Andrew White. I understood the importance of the project, and I gladly agreed to take on the added responsibilities.

  A Life-Saving Message

  The church leaders in Britain were very encouraging to me, and they were eager to avert another war between Iraq and the West. They introduced me, in turn, to their counterparts in the United States who were pursuing similar goals, trying to improve relations between America and Iraq. Canon Andrew White, who was a young priest at Coventry Cathedral, just thirty-five years of age at the time, was convinced that if we could gather enough support, we could persuade Saddam to cooperate. Andrew was leading the mission in the Middle East, and he soon became a good friend and ally. It was through him that many of my contacts were established around the world.

  All the men and women I met in those days were ded
icated to reconciliation between the Sunni, the Shia, the Christians, and the other religions in Iraq, and their support and encouragement eventually made it possible for me to take leaders such as Dr. Abdul Latif al-Hemayem, who is the leader of Sunni Muslims in Iraq, and Ayatollah Sayid Hussein al-Sader, the Shia leader, to meet with prominent Christian leaders in England and America. And all of this had been arranged by my friend and colleague, Canon Andrew White.

  The first of those trips, widely reported in the media at that time, was to meet the Right Reverend Colin Bennetts, Bishop of Coventry. The group also met with the former Archbishop George Carey and from there they traveled to North Carolina to meet with the Rev. Billy Graham. I felt that these were remarkable accomplishments, that even in those difficult days we were able to take a deputy of Saddam Hussein and the secretary of the Islamic Conference to meet with men of that stature in the West. The meetings were informative, constructive, and eye opening; and I believe they helped create a new level of trust and respect between us.

  Everything was done with the aim of expanding the reconciliation and peace movement that I was trying to establish in Baghdad. Leaders of the government in Iraq, on the other hand, were hoping that these meetings would help to lift the sanctions, or at least reduce restrictions on trade. They wanted Iraq to be able to rejoin the community of nations and be accepted once again as part of the civilized world. I often felt that the people of Iraq were living on another planet. We were totally isolated from the rest of the world and in such bad shape, politically, economically, and spiritually. We needed all the help we could get.

  All our neighbors—Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and especially Kuwait—were enemies of Iraq now, and we were struggling to survive under United Nations sanctions. So my goal was to help regain my country’s standing in the world. The sanctions were bad enough, but we also had to live with Saddam, and he was at least as bad as sanctions. These were the real suffering years for us. But I felt that becoming involved in the religious life of the nation would give us renewed hope and new ways of improving our chances for reconciliation and peace.