TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/012891/01289911.000

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                                                                                THE GULF WAR, Page 64

SADDAM AND THE ARABS

The Devil in the Hero


Iraq's leader may be a blood-drenched tyrant, but for many he
is nonetheless a symbol of dignity, unity and self-reliance

By LANCE MORROW -- Reported by David Aikman/Cairo and Scott
MacLeod/Amman


    The figure of Satan flickers through the rhetoric of the
Middle East. The Arabic language likes to inflate politics with
supernatural meanings: a mere mortal enemy -- George Bush, for
example, or the West -- may be transformed into the Great
Satan. The phrase has moral and dramatic clarity. It is a
bright blade of denunciation flashing on a battlefield of
absolutes. But it is difficult for Arabs to use such a weapon
against a mortal friend -- against a brother.

    What are Arabs to do with Saddam Hussein? What are they to
think if they see the devil in the hero, the thug tricked up
as a Pan-Arabist dreamer? In considering Saddam, many Arabs are
sorting out complexities in themselves. They are formulating
an attitude toward their collective past and future, toward the
Arabs' place in the world. The exercise does not leave them
entirely happy.

    Many Arabs despise Saddam, condemn his invasion of Kuwait
and welcome the coalition's war against him. They know that in
his blood-drenched career, Saddam has acted truly, not
metaphorically, satanic. It is reported, credibly, that in the
evening, before bed, he has been in the habit of watching a
video of an execution that he ordered, preferably one carried
out that day. He is apparently conscienceless, a murderer of
Caligulan whimsy. In August 1979, during a purge of his Baath
Party, Saddam arranged this scene, reported by a former Iraqi
Cabinet member: "The party officials were handed machine guns.
One by one the guards brought in the accused, their mouths
taped shut, and their hands bound. Saddam asked everyone to
start shooting. At least 21 were killed, and every victim
received at least 500 bullets in his body."

    But Saddam also represents the yearnings of the Arab people:
a defiant assertion of dignity, unity and honor. He has given
fierce expression to the emotions of many Arabs on matters that
mean the most to them: opposition to foreign domination, the
achievement of a kind of moral parity with the West, just
distribution of Arab oil wealth, settlement of the Palestinian
problem, the purity of Islam. He leads the Baath Party, whose
name means renaissance. So powerful are these emotions that
millions of ordinary Arabs, from factory workers to university
professors, are willing to tolerate Saddam's otherwise evil
performance -- his despotism that permits no freedom, his
sacrifice of thousands of young lives to advance his ambitions,
even his use of chemical weapons against his own people.

    In a universe of sometimes incapacitating grievance, a
practical Arab future opening onto a larger world, onto a new
century, may be more difficult to imagine than a romantic past.
The past has a powerful, seductive glory. It seamlessly
encloses itself within fundamentalist Islamic virtue. It
mobilizes the mind for a classic conflict of Islam vs. the
West, that historical cliche -- the sword of Islam against the
last crusade.

    To cast Saddam merely as a gangster is to misunderstand not
only why he invaded Kuwait but also why he has gained so much
popular support among the "Arab masses." Saddam's propaganda
variously portrays him as Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian King
who destroyed Jerusalem in 587 B.C., or as Saladin, the Kurdish
warrior who fought off the Crusaders.

    Saddam also fancies himself as an Arab version of Otto von
Bismarck. In Europe more than 100 years ago, the Iron
Chancellor fused German-speaking principalities into one mighty
nation. Saddam remembers as well his patron Gamel Abdel Nasser,
who organized Arab pride and resentment against Western
hegemony. Saddam's ambition has been to use Iraqi muscle and
achievement to unite the Arabs and thereby re-create the vast
Abbasid Empire, which lasted 500 years. In that sense, the war
in the gulf is transpiring in a time warp. It is a
retrospective vision.

    Centuries of foreign domination have left Arabs with a sense
of violation, of second-class status. When communism collapsed
in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the feeling of
vulnerability deepened. Arabs found themselves without
strategic allies to help them counter Israel's -- and, by
extension, America's -- power. George Bush's new world order
did not seem to promise much for the Arabs, who militarily
remain weaker than Israel. Saddam's answer -- standing up to the
world's only superpower -- thus struck a chord within the Arab
psyche.

    "We all hate Saddam," explains an Iraqi woman. "But it was
you, the United States, that made us support him when you sent
your troops to Arab soil to attack an Arab country." An Arab
diplomat says, "He anticipated and welcomed some U.S. reaction.
That's part of his strategy for making himself bigger. When you
have a strong enemy, that makes you stronger."

    With a certain brutal genius, Saddam has worked three Arab
themes: poverty, Palestinians and piety. The Aug. 2 heist of
Kuwait harmonized with the profound resentments that many Arabs
harbor in regard to the oil sheiks. "People do not like the
Kuwaitis," a Cairene named Mohammed Fawzy said last week. "The
Kuwaitis are always in the nightclub and casino. All they think
about is money. They think they can buy anything." The mass of
Arabs recoil from the injustice of oil wealth that buys Scotch
and an opulent life for the sheiks' Cairo holidays during
Ramadan and leaves so many of their brothers in poverty and
squalor. A Moroccan journalist remarks, "I don't care if he is
a fascist. At least he doesn't gamble and chase women." Many
Arabs admire Saddam for his hazem, a sort of relentless
strictness, although the image is at odds with a more secular
impression that Iraq made until Saddam began shading his nation
and himself toward fundamentalism. Last week, in a gesture of
piety and defiance, Saddam ordained that Allahu akbar (God Is
Great) should be sewed into the Iraqi tricolor flag.

    Saddam appeals to an obscure, almost magic sense of
inevitability among some Arabs. Jordanians last week were
recalling a popular but apocryphal tale that contains a
prophecy. It is written that the Bedouin of Arabia, together
with the Franks (Westerners) and Egypt will gather in the
desert against a man called Sadam (sic), and they will all be
killed, and none will escape. This will happen between the
second half of December and the second half of February.

    Many Arabs believe the text predicts the destruction of the
enemies of Saddam Hussein. Ahmad Oweidi Abbadi, chairman of the
Jordanian National Front, a member of Parliament and chief of
one of the largest nomadic tribes in the country, quotes the
prophecy with a glare in his hawkish eyes. "We Arabs are proud
of our dignity," he says. "Saddam talks about the things we
feel. The U.S. will win the battle but lose the war. Both Arab
Christians and Muslims want a jihad against America, against
the U.K. and the Jews. The citizens of every nation fighting
against Iraq will be in danger -- those with blue eyes and a
red face. You Westerners are keen to live. We are keen to die
because we go to paradise. As the U.S. destroys Iraq, it will
give birth to the jihad that will destroy the West."

    Arabs cling to their spiritual distinctiveness: it gives
them, they think, a metaphysical edge in the long haul.
Moraiwid M. Tal, brother of the assassinated (by Black
September) Jordanian Prime Minister Wasfi Tal, says, "Saddam
is a Muslim fatalist, though he is a secular Arab and a
nationalist. You in the West believe man can shape his destiny.
We in Islam believe God controls our destinies."

    In the Arab countries where support for Saddam is strongest,
U.S. embassies have been drawn down to skeleton staffs.
Saddam's strongest support is in Jordan, with its majority
Palestinian population and a powerful fundamentalist movement.
Western diplomats are worried that the U.S. embassy in Amman
could be torched and American citizens in the kingdom targeted
for terrorism or violence. There is growing concern that King
Hussein might be unable to control the streets of his capital.

    Yemen and Sudan have recently tried to distance themselves
from Saddam, but there is substantial popular support for him
in both countries. The radicalism and fundamentalism sweeping
through the politics of the Maghreb have put Americans at some
risk in Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. Mauritania, where Saddam
has test-fired missiles in the past, is considered dangerous
territory for U.S. citizens. Ironically, of the five Maghreb
nations, only Libya appears to be relatively safe for
Americans, most of whom live and work, in violation of U.S.
government regulations, in oil fields far from urban centers.

    Apart from Jordan, with its pronounced Palestinian
coloration, most of the Arab countries where Saddam has popular
support are economically impoverished and tending toward
political radicalism.

    In the Arab nations backing the coalition, sentiment is
mixed. In Syria, Saddam is believed to have widespread support
-- despite the brute personal animosity toward Saddam that
moved President Hafez Assad to join the anti-Saddam alliance.
Assad's ruthless secret police keep popular support for Saddam
muted.

    Much of Egypt's vast population of 55 million survives
barely above the level of subsistence and would seem an ideal
constituency for Saddam. Yet notwithstanding the presence of
radical and fundamentalist sentiment, his appeal there is
limited. One reason is the bitter experience of thousands of
Egyptian laborers maltreated in Iraq at the hands of their
employers; hundreds are believed to have been killed. Another
reason may be the strong leadership of Hosni Mubarak. By
supporting the U.S. and Saudi Arabia against Saddam, Mubarak won
considerable financial benefits. Both nations have forgiven
billions in Egyptian debts, for example.

    In addition, by stirring up trouble in the Middle East,
Saddam has been a disaster for the Egyptian tourist trade, an
immense business and an important source of income. "He is a
very bad man," says the manager of an elegant furniture store
in a Cairo bazaar. "It is not a way to act, for one Arab
brother to attack another, as Saddam attacked Kuwait. If
everybody did this, what would our region be like?" A woman who
claims to be one of only two female licensed cabdrivers in
Egypt is blunt about Saddam: "He is a very dirty man. He is
destroying everything." Then she hurries home to watch the
latest episode of Falcon Crest, which is a popular Western
intrusion in the life of Cairo.

    In the gulf states, sentiment in favor of Saddam is scarce.
Complaints about the local rulers' opulence and corruption are
endemic, but people still regard Saddam as a much greater
threat to their well being than kings and emirs.

    Virtually all Arabs feel a kind of residual kinship with
Saddam because of their common cultural ties. But they react
to him in markedly different ways. In their profound and
continuing frustration, many of the Palestinians are
instinctively attracted to Saddam. That seems odd in at least
one way: the Palestinians might be expected to sympathize more
with the Kuwaitis, as Arabs displaced from their homeland.
Instead, most identify with Saddam's aggressions and his
determination to get even with Israel.

    The future of Saddam probably depends upon two factors: 1)
how long the war goes on, and 2) whether, or how, Israel
becomes involved. In a short war, Saddam in Arab psychology
might be dispensable -- a humiliated failure when the Arab
cause needed a triumphant hero, not a martyr. But if the battle
is prolonged, if Arab casualties mount, if television cameras
show the bodies of Iraqi civilians blasted by American bombs,
then Arabs will recoil in even greater anger from the U.S. and
the others in the coalition. Even in defeat, Saddam could
emerge stronger still.