Headlines, Middle East & North Africa, North America

IRAQ: Saddam’s Arrest Could Refuel Arab Anger With Leaders

Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON, Dec 16 2003 (IPS) - The capture of Saddam Hussein could fuel the simmering anger that Arab populations feel towards their dictatorial leaders, and embolden them to demand greater participation, say analysts here.

U.S. forces uncovered the former Iraqi president hiding in a pit near a house in Tikrit, his birthplace, Saturday. His capture was announced Sunday and powerful pictures of the former strongman in U.S. custody were shown extensively in the Arab world.

Some observers say the humiliating scenes of the once feared Arab dictator in custody revealed not only his fallibility but that of other incumbent, and similarly awe-inspiring, Arab leaders ­- a realisation that could renew popular demands for regime change or at least political and economic reforms.

The mostly western-backed regimes in the Middle East have often ruled with brute force over the past half-century, with human rights abuses widely reported in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and Algeria -­ countries whose ruling elites are strong allies of Washington.

Their rulers have survived many assassination attempts, public protests and military coups, mainly through wielding iron fists, which helped to fortify images of invincibility.

“Obviously finding him (Saddam) in a hole in the ground in this kind of condition will do a lot to demythologise … that he was a great leader and a feared dictator,” said Judith Kipper, an expert on the Middle East with the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations.

“I think that it will reverberate not only throughout Iraq but throughout the Arab world in countries where leaders are mythologized and demonised,” she added in an interview.

The Arab peoples “will realise that (their leaders) are not extraordinary people, and that these are not people to look up to but rather, desperate sick people who get some kind of satisfaction or get some sense of their own security by killing and torturing others”, said Kipper.

For their part the leaders, some analysts say, might draw the lesson that they cannot continue to rule through oppression. Scenes of Saddam ragged and meek in the hands of U.S. forces could cause other Arab governments to take a more serious look at the consequences of not opening up their societies to viable public participation.

“The rulers will realise that it is no longer possible to rule by sheer brute force; that reform is necessary and should be mandated to the people if necessary; and that even Saddam Hussein can go, and that he went like a rat into a hole,” Kipper said.

Walter Cutler, who served twice in the 1980s as U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said Saddam failed to see the need to win over his people and to share power with them.

“I think Saddam’s demise is just another reminder for the need of reform, because he failed totally to see that light,” Cutler told IPS.

“It’s a grim reminder of what can happen under a totally repressive closed regime,” he added. “So let’s hope that it serves as a further inducement for greater, popular participation in decision-making, and I think that’s what’s needed in the Middle East.”

Some circles close to the ruling elites in some Arab countries have indeed acknowledged the arrest of Saddam as “shocking” and “painful”.

“It was a painful picture – (in which) one would have hoped not to see the president of one of the most important Arab countries,” wrote Ibrahim Nafei, editor of the Egyptian ‘al-Ahram’ daily newspaper, in its online edition.

Other newspapers said the arrest of Saddam underlined the tenuousness of Arab governments.

“This event in itself really shows the frailty of the Arab ruling regimes when their peoples forsake them,” said ‘Al-Quds’ in its editorial online.

Cutler suggested the capture could result in increased Islamic resistance to the U.S. occupation in Iraq. The return of Islamic fighters from a similar situation in Afghanistan at the end of the 1980s – when invading Soviet troops withdrew from the country – later destabilised Arab regimes via a wave of insurgency.

“One of the concerns I have is that the prolonged presence of a western army occupying an important part of the Arab world is going to attract other disillusioned and unhappy Arabs – be they al-Qaeda or others -who, for their own reasons, want to have another victory over the West,” said Cutler, who oversaw Washington’s relationship with Riyadh in the 1980s, when both countries were funding the Islamic resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

“The Soviets were pushed out of Afghanistan and I am sure there are some non-Iraqis who say that ‘here’s our chance to push the other superpower out of our land’,” added Cutler.