The Return of “Saddamism”

The execution of Saddam Hussein at the end of 2006 was the first step in consolidating Saddamism as a political method and practice, which are flourishing in Iraq. In one of the sad ironies of Iraq, the return of Saddamism today passed through the eradication of his own party. The exclusion campaigns against hundreds of “political entities” which the authority tries to repudiate while backed and encouraged by the most prominent political forces, are one chapter of the cleansing measures which Iraq’s [former] ruler had loved to implement during a live TV coverage. As such, he wanted his opponents who fell in his hands to be a lesson for anyone daring to oppose him in the future.

The dire circumstances that overshadowed the execution of Saddam and the slogans launched and disgusting revengeful spirit in dealing with him and his legacy as a whole, only announced that the man triumphed over his domestic enemies whether or not they are aware of it. He made them miniature versions of him, implementing his methods with his tools, even though with different slogans. He embedded his “culture” deeply in the Iraqi political awareness and consolidated a methodology of bloody violence – and it is difficult to imagine how long Iraq needs to get rid of it. In addition, generations of “followers” adopted Saddam’s methods in repression, liquidation, and cancellation, considering these methods to be the axioms of political action in the Arab Mashreq. This portends with continued waves of sectarian and ethnical violence for many coming decades.

Someone would say that three years have passed since Saddam’s execution with that method, especially after the trial that restricted his countless crimes to a “small” one among his small crimes that have clear sectarian significant (only if it is permissible to divide sins and crime into big and small ones). Then, (these years) should have helped Iraqi politicians detect the flaws of their sectarian regime and address the problems it entailed. However, what the “Accountability Commission” did reveal is that few are those who take lessons from history, and that the revengeful inclinations, which entail further sectarian and confessional and ethnical infighting, are the influential factor in creating an Iraqi political scene that rests on focusing on paradoxes and monopoly at the expense of serious attempts to look for factors of unity. This aims to establish a country that should come out of the occupation, and folds the chapter of Saddam Hussein, his discrimination, wars, and disastrous way in managing Iraq and its resources.

Hence, considering the abovementioned, it is no wonder that the “debaathification” campaigns are focused in areas with a flagrant sectarian identity where pictures and symbols are raised, ones that remind with the Stalinist and Baathist cleansing campaigns. It is difficult to convince anyone who is slightly informed about the Iraqi affairs, that the debaathification in Al-Najaf for example does not involve a message to bring the Iraqi Shiites together and make them advocates of eradication and the rule of armed sects, and to remind with the role of Baathists in the attacks that targeted the Shiites.

To avoid appearing naïve, it should be said that the same campaign benefits the sectarian opponents who manipulate it to incite the Sunnis against the Shiites. Therefore, sectarian slaughtering becomes non-stop, in a way that the only solution is to keep the sectarian entities controlling the wreckage of a country and an authority, and to keep Iraq a commodity in the bazaar of “oil in return for the Iranian nuclear project.”

Accordingly, the ghost of Saddam Hussein continues to grow, he who caused Iraq and the Arabs wounds that found someone to deepen them, and prevent them from ever healing. These wounds also found clever students in the school of oppression and the wars of the sects.