http://www.msnbc.com/news/891794.asp?0cv=KB10
‘We Will Turn Bush Into a Dog’
The Americans badly miscalculated by believing that the Iraqis would welcome them as liberators
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
March 27 — Dogs do not live happy lives in Iraq. Considered “unclean” by Muslims and rarely kept as pets, most of those that you see are feral curs slinking through the streets late at night.
IT’S NORMAL PRACTICE for Iraqi soldiers to cull the packs with machine guns. But the commandos of Saddam’s fedayeen, terrorist-shock troops organized in the mid-1990s, sometimes tear a dog limb from limb and sink their teeth in its flesh. Repulsive brutality, after all, is a badge of honor for these troops; this particular rite of passage was even captured on a government video.
“The fedayeen are animals!” says a young Iraqi woman who fled her country for Jordan a few months ago. “They are trained to be like animals! Everybody is frightened of them.” And even though there are only an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 of these militia, inside Iraq it feels as if the fedayeen—meaning “those who sacrifice”—are everywhere. These days, Iraqis say, they are forcing others to put their lives on the line in the face of the American invasion. “Saddam has succeeded in establishing a strong structure that is loyal to him,” says Issam Chalabi, a former Iraqi oil minister now in exile. “These fedayeen are not only fighting the Americans, they are mainly against those who want to surrender or refuse to fight.”
And yet, neither the frightened young woman, nor Chalabi (who is no relation to a would-be exile leader with the same last name), nor any of the other Iraqis or Arabs I’ve talked to since the fighting began last week, believes that the Iraqis’ resistance to the United States is solely a matter of intimidation and fear. That plays a part; the role of the fedayeen is important. But the resistance to the United States “is a matter of Iraqi patriotism,” says Chalabi. “No one will accept the Americans’ presence there. And if you say anything about me, say this: I am against the war. I am against the occupation.”
American administration officials and sympathetic pundits fundamentally miscalculated by believing that, as some exiles told them, because the Iraqi people hate Saddam, they would love their American “liberators.” “That’s where you went wrong,” a Lebanese friend tells me, summing up sentiments I’ve heard all over the Arab world, “The Iraqis do hate Saddam—but they do not love you.”
The best example of this lies in the largely Shia population of southern Iraq. There was a common assumption that, given the chance, the brutally oppressed people there would rise up against Saddam’s cronies and soldiers again just as they did in 1991 after the last gulf war. But what many of us forgot was the way in which the people there remembered that uprising, when U.S. troops stood by and let them be massacred. It was thought in Washington that this time around, with the Americans suddenly serious about eliminating Saddam (as the Bush I administration obviously was not 12 years ago), Iraqis would seize the day, and even the government. Not at all. Many who lost brothers, sons, wives and mothers in the savage reprisals of 1991 believe the American offensive is a dozen years too late and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives too short.
So those who are not actively fighting against the U.S. troops are happy to let them do the job of ousting the dictator by themselves. “We will accept the Americans to come liberate us from Saddam because,” says an architect from Baghdad, “it’s easier afterward to fight the Americans than to fight Saddam. This is the way we feel. This is what ‘the silent majority’ are thinking, if you want to know.”
The fear that’s at play is more complex than the simple terror of fedayeen seizing children to force fathers to fight, as coalition briefing officers claim. Through 35 years, first as head of the secret police and then as president, Saddam has programmed so much terror into his people that at this stage few would believe that he is dead if they weren’t able to witness the event, see him killed, even dip their hands in his blood. (Many of his predecessors, after all, met just such grisly ends, either dragged through the streets or shown blown-away on live TV.) The fedayeen, with their savagery, only reinforce the almost supernatural terror already inflicted by the dictator. Iraqis know he has staying power. They believe the Americans do not.
But pride, as Chalabi suggests, is what’s really essential to the resistance, and it infects the broader Arab and Muslim view of the showdown. Since the fighting started, Saddam has tried to turn the Iraqi battle into what his favorite role model, Josef Stalin, called “The Great Patriotic War.” Add to this the tribal character of much of Iraqi society. Saddam has armed almost everyone in the country and now demands the tribes defend their honor against the foreign invaders. Many have heeded the call. “I don’t think there’s a single Iraqi family that has not suffered from Saddam,” says a senior Jordanian official with close ties to the U.S. administration. “But they are fighting now for Iraq, for their dignity. They don’t think the Americans are fighting for their dignity.”
The refugee flow across the Iraq-Jordan border tells an important part of the story. There is none. The flow of traffic since the beginning of the war—more than 5,000 in the first week of fighting—has been entirely eastward, into Iraq, as mostly young day laborers brave possible U.S. air attacks to get back home to their families.
“I don’t hate the Americans,” says Mohamed Al-Alwani, 36, who was at the Iraqi Embassy in Amman, Jordan, earlier this week to get the necessary papers to return. “When anyone comes to Iraq as a guest, we will receive him with flowers and dates and yogurt and all the highest hospitality. But when he comes as an invader we will fight with the last of our blood.”
Another young man in the crowd at the embassy, who didn’t give his name, spoke more ferociously. “The first day of the war, Bush appeared on television playing with his dog,” he said. “We will turn Bush into a dog.” In Iraq, everybody knows what that implies. And many Iraqis—and not only the fedayeen—echo the sentiment.
‘We Will Turn Bush Into a Dog’
The Americans badly miscalculated by believing that the Iraqis would welcome them as liberators
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
March 27 — Dogs do not live happy lives in Iraq. Considered “unclean” by Muslims and rarely kept as pets, most of those that you see are feral curs slinking through the streets late at night.
IT’S NORMAL PRACTICE for Iraqi soldiers to cull the packs with machine guns. But the commandos of Saddam’s fedayeen, terrorist-shock troops organized in the mid-1990s, sometimes tear a dog limb from limb and sink their teeth in its flesh. Repulsive brutality, after all, is a badge of honor for these troops; this particular rite of passage was even captured on a government video.
“The fedayeen are animals!” says a young Iraqi woman who fled her country for Jordan a few months ago. “They are trained to be like animals! Everybody is frightened of them.” And even though there are only an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 of these militia, inside Iraq it feels as if the fedayeen—meaning “those who sacrifice”—are everywhere. These days, Iraqis say, they are forcing others to put their lives on the line in the face of the American invasion. “Saddam has succeeded in establishing a strong structure that is loyal to him,” says Issam Chalabi, a former Iraqi oil minister now in exile. “These fedayeen are not only fighting the Americans, they are mainly against those who want to surrender or refuse to fight.”
And yet, neither the frightened young woman, nor Chalabi (who is no relation to a would-be exile leader with the same last name), nor any of the other Iraqis or Arabs I’ve talked to since the fighting began last week, believes that the Iraqis’ resistance to the United States is solely a matter of intimidation and fear. That plays a part; the role of the fedayeen is important. But the resistance to the United States “is a matter of Iraqi patriotism,” says Chalabi. “No one will accept the Americans’ presence there. And if you say anything about me, say this: I am against the war. I am against the occupation.”
American administration officials and sympathetic pundits fundamentally miscalculated by believing that, as some exiles told them, because the Iraqi people hate Saddam, they would love their American “liberators.” “That’s where you went wrong,” a Lebanese friend tells me, summing up sentiments I’ve heard all over the Arab world, “The Iraqis do hate Saddam—but they do not love you.”
The best example of this lies in the largely Shia population of southern Iraq. There was a common assumption that, given the chance, the brutally oppressed people there would rise up against Saddam’s cronies and soldiers again just as they did in 1991 after the last gulf war. But what many of us forgot was the way in which the people there remembered that uprising, when U.S. troops stood by and let them be massacred. It was thought in Washington that this time around, with the Americans suddenly serious about eliminating Saddam (as the Bush I administration obviously was not 12 years ago), Iraqis would seize the day, and even the government. Not at all. Many who lost brothers, sons, wives and mothers in the savage reprisals of 1991 believe the American offensive is a dozen years too late and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives too short.
So those who are not actively fighting against the U.S. troops are happy to let them do the job of ousting the dictator by themselves. “We will accept the Americans to come liberate us from Saddam because,” says an architect from Baghdad, “it’s easier afterward to fight the Americans than to fight Saddam. This is the way we feel. This is what ‘the silent majority’ are thinking, if you want to know.”
The fear that’s at play is more complex than the simple terror of fedayeen seizing children to force fathers to fight, as coalition briefing officers claim. Through 35 years, first as head of the secret police and then as president, Saddam has programmed so much terror into his people that at this stage few would believe that he is dead if they weren’t able to witness the event, see him killed, even dip their hands in his blood. (Many of his predecessors, after all, met just such grisly ends, either dragged through the streets or shown blown-away on live TV.) The fedayeen, with their savagery, only reinforce the almost supernatural terror already inflicted by the dictator. Iraqis know he has staying power. They believe the Americans do not.
But pride, as Chalabi suggests, is what’s really essential to the resistance, and it infects the broader Arab and Muslim view of the showdown. Since the fighting started, Saddam has tried to turn the Iraqi battle into what his favorite role model, Josef Stalin, called “The Great Patriotic War.” Add to this the tribal character of much of Iraqi society. Saddam has armed almost everyone in the country and now demands the tribes defend their honor against the foreign invaders. Many have heeded the call. “I don’t think there’s a single Iraqi family that has not suffered from Saddam,” says a senior Jordanian official with close ties to the U.S. administration. “But they are fighting now for Iraq, for their dignity. They don’t think the Americans are fighting for their dignity.”
The refugee flow across the Iraq-Jordan border tells an important part of the story. There is none. The flow of traffic since the beginning of the war—more than 5,000 in the first week of fighting—has been entirely eastward, into Iraq, as mostly young day laborers brave possible U.S. air attacks to get back home to their families.
“I don’t hate the Americans,” says Mohamed Al-Alwani, 36, who was at the Iraqi Embassy in Amman, Jordan, earlier this week to get the necessary papers to return. “When anyone comes to Iraq as a guest, we will receive him with flowers and dates and yogurt and all the highest hospitality. But when he comes as an invader we will fight with the last of our blood.”
Another young man in the crowd at the embassy, who didn’t give his name, spoke more ferociously. “The first day of the war, Bush appeared on television playing with his dog,” he said. “We will turn Bush into a dog.” In Iraq, everybody knows what that implies. And many Iraqis—and not only the fedayeen—echo the sentiment.
