Saddam's Humiliation Could Backfire On U.S. Allies

by Emad Mekay

U.S. forces uncovered the former Iraqi president hiding in a pit near a house in Tikrit, his birthplace, Saturday. His capture was announced Sunday and powerful pictures of the former strongman in U.S. custody were shown extensively in the Arab world.

Some observers say the humiliating scenes of the once feared Arab dictator, ragged and unkempt, being examined by a doctor in custody revealed not only his mortality but that of other incumbent, and similarly awe-inspiring, Arab leaders -- a view that could renew popular demands for regime change or at least political and economic reforms.

The mostly Western-backed regimes in the Middle East have often ruled brutally over the past half-century, with human rights abuses widely reported in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and Algeria -- countries whose ruling elites are strong allies of Washington.

Their rulers have survived many assassination attempts, public protests and military coups, mainly through iron rule, which helped to fortify images of invincibility.

"Obviously finding Saddam in a hole in the ground in this kind of condition will do a lot to demythologize him -- that he was a great leader and a feared dictator," said Judith Kipper, an expert on the Middle East with the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations.

"I think that it will reverberate not only throughout Iraq but throughout the Arab world in countries where leaders are mythologized and demonized," she added in an interview.

The Arab peoples "will realize that their leaders are not extraordinary people, and that these are not people to look up to but rather, desperate sick people who get some kind of satisfaction or get some sense of their own security by killing and torturing others," said Kipper.

For their part the leaders, some analysts say, might decide that they cannot continue to rule through oppression. Scenes of Saddam ragged and meek in the hands of U.S. forces could cause other Arab governments to take a more serious look at the consequences of not opening up their societies to viable public participation.

"The rulers will realize that it is no longer possible to rule by sheer brute force; that reform is necessary and should be mandated to the people if necessary; and that even Saddam Hussein can go, and that he went like a rat into a hole," Kipper said.

Walter Cutler, who served twice in the 1980s as U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said Saddam failed to see the need to win over his people and to share power with them.

"I think Saddam's demise is just another reminder for the need of reform, because he failed totally to see that light," Cutler told IPS.

"It's a grim reminder of what can happen under a totally repressive closed regime," he added. "So let's hope that it serves as a further inducement for greater popular participation in decision-making, and I think that's what's needed in the Middle East."

Some circles close to the ruling elites in some Arab countries have indeed acknowledged the arrest of Saddam as "shocking" and "painful."

"It was a painful picture -- in which one would have hoped not to see the president of one of the most important Arab countries," wrote Ibrahim Nafei, editor of the Egyptian 'al-Ahram' daily newspaper, in its online edition.

Other newspapers said the arrest of Saddam underlined the tenuousness of Arab governments.

"This event in itself really shows the frailty of the Arab ruling regimes when their peoples forsake them," said 'Al-Quds' in its editorial online.

But Cutler suggested the capture could result in increased Islamic resistance to the U.S. occupation in Iraq. The return of Islamic fighters from a similar situation in Afghanistan at the end of the 1980s -- when invading Soviet troops withdrew from the country -- later destabilised several Arab regimes via a wave of insurgency.

"One of the concerns I have is that the prolonged presence of a Western army occupying an important part of the Arab world is going to attract other disillusioned and unhappy Arabs -- be they al-Qaeda or others --who, for their own reasons, want to have another victory over the West," said Cutler, who oversaw Washington's relationship with Riyadh in the 1980s, when both countries were funding the Islamic resistance to the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.

"The Soviets were pushed out of Afghanistan and I am sure there are some non-Iraqis who say that 'here's our chance to push the other superpower out of our land,'" added Cutler.