Fallout from execution

The execution of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein by the US-backed Iraqi government was motivated by a variety of factors which have not been highlighted by the mainstream media.  

For the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who has been heavily criticised in recent mon-ths by both friends and foes in Iraq and by his US allies for his inability to handle the in-surgency” - resistance would be a more accurate term - issuing Saddam's death warrant was an attempt to prove that he was tough, capable and decisive;  

For President Bush who has lost the support of the majority of Americans largely because of the mess he has created in Iraq and whose party was defeated in the recent Congressional Elec-tions, hanging Saddam was an attempt to refurbish his public image;  

In Bush's case there may also have been a personal mo-tive. The alleged bid by Saddam to get Bush's father assassinated in 1993 has always rankled the son. Saddam's execution was perhaps the revenge he was waiting for;  

The execution was also designed to please the Israeli leadership who regarded Saddam as a mortal enemy for his uncompromising opposition to Israel and for his unflinching support for the Palestinian cause;  

The execution was also an attempt by the Bush Admin-istration to tell Arab and Muslim leaders that unless they submit totally to American and Israeli hegemony, they could also meet Saddam's fate. It was a brazen warning to those who seek to challenge American power;  

At the same time, the Bush Administration hopes that with Saddam executed the mainly Sunni resistance will lose its zeal and vigor and yield to the American-led occupation; and  

There are also elements in Washington and Baghdad who are hoping that Saddam's execution will enrage his Sunni supporters even more and will lead to a further aggravation of the Sunni-Shiite conflict in Iraq. If sectarian violence gets worse, the justification for continued American occupation will get stronger.  

Whatever the motive, it is unlikely that resistance to the American-led occupation of Iraq will decline. 

For what drives the resistance is the fact of occupation itself. As with other people under ali-en occupation, Iraqis can be expected to continue their str-uggle until the occupier is de-feated and forced to withdraw.  

If anything, their colossal suffering in occupied Iraq where hundreds of thousands have been killed, where violence is endemic, security is illusory, jobs are scarce and basic amenities are in short supply, has strengthened their resolve to free themselves from the humiliation of occupation.  

Indeed, it is quite conceivable that resistance will become stronger now that Saddam is dead. 

More Shiites may join the resistance since the dominant presence of a dictator who had oppressed them in the past, in the struggle against American occupation had deterred the majority Shiites from playing their part. 

In fact, Shiite opposition towards occupation has been increasing since the capture of Saddam in December 2003.  

According to some analysts even a section of the Kurdish community which had also borne the brunt of Saddam's terrible atrocities especially in Halabja in March 1988, may lend their weight to the resistance movement. 

What this means is that with Saddam out of the picture, Iraqi resistance to occupation may be entering a new phase.  

In this new phase, Iraqi resistance may begin to exhibit some of the characteristics of some of the other resistance movements in the Arab world, notably Lebanon's Hizbollah and Palestine's Hamas.  

Its Islamic orientation may become more pronounced. Even now middle level Baathist leaders and former officers of the now defunct Iraqi armed forces who constitute the vanguard of the resistance to American occupation are generally more Islamic than the top brass of the Saddam government were.  

For instance, they do not share Saddam's virulent hostility to-wards “Persians,” which was so evident even as he went to the gallows.  

In this regard, it is important to understand that Saddam was the last of the Arab leaders who had built his nationalism on the basis of secularism and socialism which were the essential ingredients of the Baathist ideology that dominated Iraq for more than three decades.  

Secular socialism as the conduit of Arab nationalism, pioneered by Egypt's charismatic Gamal Abdel Nasser, swept thr-ough the Arab world in the 50s and 60s. 

It has now receded and today defence of the Arab motherland against foreign occupation finds expression through Islam.  

For the resistance movement in a post-Saddam Iraq the real challenge is whether Islam as the collective belief system of the vast majority of Iraqis can be harnessed to thwart the well-organised plan to exploit Sunni-Shiite differences in order to prevent a united front from emerging in the struggle for liberation from occupation.  

 

Dr Chandra Muzaffar, 

President, 

International Movement for a Just World (JUST), 

Kuala Lumpur.