TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/010791/0107995.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 13.2 KB | 276 lines

                                                                                MEN OF THE YEAR, Page 34

THEY ALSO MADE HISTORY


SADDAM

Desert thug he may be, but Iraq's leader possesses an ugly
finesse

By LISA BEYER

    Equating an enemy with Hitler is hazardous business,
distorting perception and setting reason aflame. Yet with Saddam
Hussein the temptation is nearly irresistible. He blithely
knocks off rivals, gasses Kurdish children, launches rockets
against big cities. He murders a neighboring country, then makes
himself the record-breaking hostage taker of our day.

    At times in the gulf confrontation, Saddam has played the
dumb thug to a T. He made a video of himself petting the head
of a small, petrified boy, one of his captives. He recklessly
provoked France by violating its embassy in Kuwait City,
prompting an incensed Paris to double its troop strength in the
gulf. Given the chance to address the American people, he badly
miscued, unleashing an insufferably long, rambling diatribe.

    Such blunders testify to the limits of the man's
sophistication. Scarcely traveled, haphazardly educated,
counseled only by sycophants, Saddam was stunned to learn this
summer that in America there is no penalty -- let alone the
mandatory death prescribed in Iraq -- for criticizing the
nation's President.

    Desert bumpkin though he may be, Saddam has played the gulf
game with an ugly finesse. He released the transcript of his
preinvasion chat with a courtierly April Glaspie, humiliating
the U.S. ambassador and the government she represents by
publicizing her unctuous comments. He set hostages free in dribs
and drabs, enticing a parade of foreign has-beens and wannabes
to his door. Then, recognizing finally that his "human shields"
offered him no real protection, he dismissed them all,
portraying himself, however dishonestly, as amenable to reason.
Saddam may yet complicate life for George Bush by staging a
partial withdrawal, crippling (perhaps fatally) the resolve of
the alliance arrayed against him.

    Artfully exploiting the Arab psyche, Iraq's "Father-Leader"
managed to muddy a clear-cut case of avaricious land gobbling
by convincing millions of fellow Arabs that the real issue was
Israel's intransigence, or the haves and have-nots of the Middle
East, or the imperialism of the West. By exciting Arab
resentment, Saddam raised the stakes for his opponents,
threatening the West with terrorism and neighboring regimes with
unrest. If it comes to war, Saddam may end up losing in the
skies over Iraq but prevailing as a hero on the streets of
Cairo, Damascus and Amman.

    Yet Saddam has no death wish. He has survived an enfilade
of 10 assassination attempts, and was constantly moving his
sleeping quarters long before he antagonized any superpower. He
once told another Arab ruler, "If I am killed, there will be no
part of me left bigger than the tip of my finger." A man who
knows such things can be counted on to employ every last drop
of cunning for the task of staying alive -- and on top.


KOHL

Seizing the moment, he overcame all obstacles and remade Germany

By BRUCE W. NELAN

    Dreams, like revolutions, have the power to galvanize wildly
disparate forces. The dream of a unified Germany, so long as it
seemed unattainable, commanded the West's official support for
decades. But when the Berlin Wall crashed down in November 1989,
NATO's decades of pro forma unanimity also tumbled -- into
confusion, hesitancy and doubt. Of all the European leaders, one
man read the moment and seized it. Helmut Kohl, the consistently
underestimated master of German domestic politics, knew
instinctively that the communist regime in East Berlin was
kaput. He saw that unification of Germany and the mending of
Europe were now within reach. He set to work, overcame every
objection and obstacle, and in December's all-German election
became, literally, the unification Chancellor.

    At first his obstacles included not only anxieties in
Britain, France and the Soviet Union but the mood in East
Germany as well. The peaceful revolution had been led mostly by
intellectuals, members of the clergy and students who believed
their state should become democratic but remain socialist and
separate from West Germany. As an initial response, Kohl
proposed a federation of the two German states.

    That was his only stab at a go-slow approach, and events
quickly swept it aside. East Germans demonstrated their
rejection of half measures by surging into West Germany: 340,000
in 1989 and more than 300,000 in 1990. Kohl headed the other
way, wading into East German politics with a clear-cut promise:
a vote for his Christian Democratic Union was a vote for
unification. In March his conservative coalition won by a
landslide in East Germany's first free elections.

    While Kohl was still viewed by many as a provincial
politician, he proved to be a diplomatic whiz. His biggest
problem of all remained Moscow. The Soviets, who make a cult of
memorializing World War II, resolutely opposed German unity.
After a visit from Kohl in February, however, President Mikhail
Gorbachev modified his position, conceding that unification was
Germany's right, but not immediately and not inside the NATO
alliance.

    Unperturbed, Kohl flew back to the Soviet Union in mid-July
and went hiking in the Caucasus with Gorbachev. The two leaders
were downright jovial as they announced that the united Germany
would enjoy full sovereignty, including the right to join NATO.
Kohl had not depended entirely on persuasion to bring Gorbachev
around; he also agreed to pay most of the tab for a package of
joint projects.

    Now that Kohl's triumph is complete and he has won a new
four-year mandate as Chancellor of the united Germany, he still
cannot sit back and enjoy it. Like most visionary projects,
German unification will cost much more than the original
estimates, requiring hundreds of billions of deutsche marks to
modernize the five states newly added to Germany. This means
increasing budget deficits and possibly new taxes.

    Germany also feels it must support the economic and
political development of Central and Eastern Europe, which
remain perilously unstable. That task, far too big for Germany
alone, will require a major effort from the whole European
Community. By bringing Western Europe to the aid of the East,
Kohl continues to help the Continent mend its divisions.


MANDELA

A famous prisoner is freed at last, and hope dawns for the
future

By SCOTT MACLEOD

    History's great men and women ordinarily become myths by
fighting their spectacular battles for all to see. Nelson
Mandela became the stuff of legend while languishing in South
African jails for 27 years, seen only by his guards, his family
and a handful of friends. True, he had earned a wide following
before his imprisonment in 1962. But it was during his time
behind bars and away from the public that Mandela came to
symbolize an entire people's struggle against apartheid.

    Transition from myth to man has not been easy. Yet Mandela,
72, has managed it with amazing grace. In the space of one
extraordinary year, South Africa has moved from its nightmare
of eternal racial conflict to a hopeful dawning of racial
reconciliation -- and that is largely due to Mandela's
statesmanship. He, in fact, initiated the current negotiation
process in 1986 when he received a visit from South Africa's
Justice Minister. Three years of secret talks followed between
Mandela and government ministers on the country's future.
Hard-liners within the African National Congress disapproved,
but Mandela's initiative prepared his militant organization for
the eventual necessity of a negotiated settlement.

    Mandela has not looked back since that sunny afternoon in
February when he strode through the gates of Victor Verster
Prison, clenched fists raised skyward. Trading smiles and
handshakes with his former jailers, he exhibited uncommon
magnanimity in guiding the A.N.C. through two rounds of historic
talks with President F.W. de Klerk's government. The discussions
at Groote Schuur and Pretoria began solving some of the
probpolitical prisoners -- that stood in the way of
negotiations on a new constitution.

    If Mandela has disappointed many of his admirers, it is
because he has been unable to stamp his authority fully on his
organization and its restless following. Within days of his
release, Mandela was largely ignored in the township of Soweto
when he called on students to end their boycott and return to
school. He was again dismissed a few weeks later in the Natal
port city of Durban when he pleaded with rival black factions
to "throw your pangas into the sea." The year of Mandela's
long-awaited freedom witnessed the worst black-vs.-black
violence in South Africa's history.

    In prison Mandela expressed a desire to end the bitter
fighting between the A.N.C. and the Zulu-based Inkatha movement,
headed by Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Yet, bowing to the
pressure of his A.N.C. comrades, Mandela has repeatedly refused
to hold peace talks with Buthelezi. A.N.C. strategists seem to
find Mandela more useful as a fund-raising machine. He has spent
about half his time since his release outside South Africa,
traveling to North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia in
search of money.

    South Africa may not cleanse itself of violence soon, but
without Mandela the country would be even less likely to achieve
peace. No other leader commands the respect not only of many
blacks but also of De Klerk and his fellow Afrikaner reformers.
Mandela the man has not measured up to Mandela the myth. That
was inevitable. But it is a sign of Nelson Mandela's greatness
that he continues to inspire such expectations -- and dreams of
a free South Africa.


YELTSIN

This onetime comrade is setting the agenda for his whole country

By JOHN KOHAN

    BORIS, BORIS! That Russian pun, prominently displayed on
buttons and posters from Moscow to the icy reaches of Magadan,
means "Boris, fight on!" No last name is needed, for to the
Russian Federation's 147 million people there is only one Boris,
and the great majority of them are rooting for him. Elected
chairman of the Russian parliament in May, Boris Yeltsin
oversees what is by far the largest, wealthiest and most
populous of the Soviet Union's 15 republics. More to the point,
Mikhail Gorbachev cannot make a decision without glancing over
his shoulder at this onetime comrade turned rival who was
bounced from the party's ruling Politburo in 1988 because he
wanted reforms to move further, faster.

    With his booming voice, Texas-style handshake and wide smile
-- not to mention his reputed fondness for the occasional drink
-- Yeltsin is dismissed by some Western analysts as the Huey
Long of Soviet politics. The Moscow elite may wince at his
unabashedly populist attacks against privilege. But to millions
Yeltsin is a reckless street brawler ready to abandon caution
in the interests of principle, a modern-day David who took on
the establishment Goliath and won. Russians adore such underdog
heroes. As a middle-aged fan passionately puts it, "I believe
in no one but Yeltsin. He has suffered."

    Thanks to the Russian leader's brand of people power, a
dramatic realignment of forces took place in the Soviet Union
during 1990. Gorbachev, once the prime force behind perestroika,
found himself outmaneuvered and put on the defensive. While the
Soviet President battled to hold his crumbling empire together,
fending off separatist challenges from the Baltic republics and
armed insurrection in the Caucasus, an invigorated Russia led
by Yeltsin issued a brazen declaration of sovereignty in June.
The genie was out of the bottle. According to Yeltsin, all the
republics faced a common enemy: the centralized bureaucracy
controlled by the Kremlin.

    Whatever the issue, be it legalizing private property or
drafting a new constitution, Yeltsin and the Russians have been
setting the agenda for the entire country. In a legal war that
has all the makings of a tennis grudge match, Russian
parliamentarians pass measures asserting their republic's
sovereignty, only to have Gorbachev strike them down. The
Russians in turn countermand the presidential decrees, whereupon
Gorbachev ignores them. Even when Gorbachev tries to join forces
with Yeltsin, as he did in August to draft a 500-Day Plan for
radical reform, the effort seems to dissolve almost immediately
in mutual recrimination. Gorbachev needs to win Yeltsin's
support for a new treaty of union, and the two will probably
begin their mating dance again.

    As confidence in the central government has evaporated, more
and more Soviets are looking toward Moscow's "White House" --
the nickname for the headquarters of the Russian republic's
government -- to fill the leadership vacuum. The obvious
candidate is Yeltsin, whether in league with Gorbachev or alone.
The Russian leader likes to speak of his "credit of trust" with
the people. To bring Russia safely through a winter of worsening
food shortages, haunted by the danger of ethnic and labor
unrest, Yeltsin may have to draw on every kopeck in that
account. At the moment, he is the only Soviet politician with
enough trust to draw upon.