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oldemagics · September 08, 2007 19:22

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Neil Clark: Wanted: A strongman to hold Iraq together

22aug05

'LET sleeping dogs lie" is not the favourite maxim of neo-conservatives. Neither is "Better the devil you know". But events of the past 2 1/2 years in Iraq have proved once again the wisdom of these two old sayings, and the corresponding lack of wisdom of those who foolishly ignore them.

Before he was awoken by Shock and Awe, the sleeping dog of Iraq was a stable, contained dictatorship led by an ageing, Sound of Music-loving secularist. Now the Iraqi canine is foaming at the mouth, transformed, in the words of the US National Intelligence Council, into "a magnet for international terrorist activity" - a nightmarish world of car bombs and daily assassinations in which 3000 civilians have lost their lives in the past four months.

The Shia-dominated Government, under the growing influence of radical Islamists, edges ever closer to an axis with Iran, while its police force, infiltrated by militant supporters of the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, carries out assassinations of former Baath party members and any others who stand in the way of the country's return to the dark ages.

Faced with their country's descent into anarchy, Iraq's professional classes are, unsurprisingly, leaving in their droves. "I love my country but I am unable to do any service for the people as it is overrun by fanatics and extremists," Abdul Jawad, head of English Literature at Baghdad University, told Britain's The Daily Telegraph. Jawad resigned his position as dean after "religious animals" surrounded his office and shouted war-like slogans. "It is now anti-religious to have free speech, liberal minds and civilisation in this country. It is more security problems than economic. Under sanctions, we had no problems like this."

Women too have seen their rights and freedoms eroded in "liberated" Iraq. Professionals have been targeted and killed by Islamic hardliners and women walking the streets of Baghdad in Western-style clothes have had acid poured on their faces and legs. Meanwhile, the new Iraqi Government contemplates the introduction of sharia law and the abolition of the Personal Status Law, which for five decades has protected the rights of Iraqi women in matters of marriage, divorce and custody.

The neo-conservative solution to the crisis they have created is that they simply don't have one. But as the body bags pile up and public opinion against the war hardens in the US, cutting and running and leaving Iraq to an all-out civil war that would make the break-up of Yugoslavia look like a tea party, is looking the most likely outcome. There is, though, a better way out of the mess.

The answer to both the West's and the Iraqi people's problems lies in a small, window-less cell somewhere in Baghdad. Is it time to bring back into power the man who kept his deeply divided nation together for 2 1/2 decades? Hate him or merely loathe him, Saddam Hussein remains the only man with the authority and experience to re-establish peace and security in his country, as even those who opposed him in the past now reluctantly concede. "If we need a person like Saddam to keep the Shi'ite militias at bay, then so be it," is the view of one pro-US, liberal Iraqi blogger. "I have to admit that until now I have never longed for the days of Saddam, but now I'm not so sure."

But however desirable the return of the Iraqi strongman might be, it is not going to happen. Saddam will be found guilty at his trial - irrespective of the evidence produced, - and will probably face execution, his death added to the thousands of others who have lost their lives since the war began.

But even if we can't bring back Saddam, let's at least acknowledge that his removal from power was a colossal error. Rather than working for regime change, the US, Britain and Australia should instead have been collaborating with the Iraqi leader and acknowledging the key role secular Baathist regimes such as his had to play in the Middle East as bulwarks against a resurgent Islamic fundamentalism. After all, this was the West's policy up until the first Gulf War in 1991. Why couldn't it have been so again?

The US and Britain have been pilloried for siding with Saddam in the '80s, not least by the anti-war Left. But faced with the fearsome reality of Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran - a regime that openly talked of its plan to export Islamic revolution the world over - breaking bread with that country's biggest enemy made perfect sense. Donald Rumsfeld's crime was not doing deals with Saddam in the '80s, as many maintain, but not doing them 20 years later - and for playing such a pivotal role in the destruction of a regime that could and should have been a vital strategic ally.

When I met the Iraqi consul to Britain, Mudhafar Amin, in London in October 2002, he told me that the only winners from an US-led attack on his country would be al-Qa'ida. Amin - a cultured and intelligent man, a graduate of Durham University and a devout Anglophile - could not understand why, in the aftermath of 9/11, Bush, Blair and Howard were so keen to topple a government that had a Christian as its long-serving deputy prime minister and whose president had been denounced by Osama bin Laden as a "socialist infidel". He was not alone in his bewilderment.

Iraq, under Saddam, may have been a dictatorship, and at times a brutal one, but people could walk the streets without being bombed, Christians could worship in peace, women could pursue careers, wear make-up and drive cars and Jawad could give his lectures on Pride and Prejudice without fear of being beaten to death by fanatics.

To many, the idea that Iraq, under Saddam, was the least-worst scenario for both the West and the Iraqi people may seem depressing and defeatist. But 2 1/2 years since his statue was toppled in central Baghdad, the evidence to the contrary is hardly convincing.

Neil Clark is a tutor in history and politics at Oxford Tutorial College in England.
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