Missing Quaddfi & Saddam

This article came out on Oct 17th 2016

"I hate to say it but our life was better under the previous regime," says Fayza Al Naas, a 42-year-old pharmacist, referring to Qaddafi’s more than four decades of rule. Today, "we wait for hours outside banks to beg cashiers to give us some of our own money. Everything is three times more expensive".

The turmoil that followed Qaddafi’s fall in 2011 has allowed ISIS to gain a foothold in Libya and use it as the launch pad for deadly attacks on holidaymakers in neighbouring Tunisia. Last June the extremist group seized the dictator’s hometown of Sirte.

"Libyans seem to have swapped a repressive centralised authoritarianism with a more decentralised and chaotic form of authoritarianism, be it under militias or under the rule of general Haftar."

The persistent chaos has also enabled human traffickers to step up their lucrative trade in the Mediterranean nation, with hundreds of refugees drowning off the Libyan coast after trying to get to Europe.

A UN-backed unity government has struggled to assert its authority nationwide with a rival parliament in the country’s far east refusing to cede power to it. On Friday it suffered a new blow when a militia alliance seized key offices in the capital and proclaimed the reinstatement of a third administration previously based in Tripoli.

"It is hard to think that the country will be stabilised any time soon," says Mr Toaldo.

I guess we can add this article to all these ones about Saddam Hussein......

In the midst of a war with the Islamic State (ISIS) a large percentage of Iraqis said they missed their deposed and executed dictator Saddam Hussein, according to poll results released today. Over 80% of Iraq's population pined for the years of internal stability Saddam Hussein maintained by ruthlessly cracking down on political dissenters and sectarian religious conflicts.

"You know, Saddam Hussein wasn't so bad in hindsight," said Ahmad Massar. He held up a portrait of Saddam Hussein before adding, "The Americans really %$#ed us over."

"Saddam Hussein was a dictator who checked Iran's influence in the region and made sure extremist groups like al-Qaed could not set up shop in Iraq. So American propaganda that painted Saddam as a religious zealot patiently sitting on nukes was pretty stupid," stated Hashim Boutros.

Interviews with Iraqis had to be called off as Baghdad came under siege by Islamic State forces.

In the Middle East, small talk often turns to politics. And that’s where Saddam usually comes in.

In my travels in Syria and Egypt, I have been told by many people they saw Saddam Hussein an Arab hero who faced down the
United States and Israel. Others criticised Iraq’s new Shi’ite-led government as Iranian-backed usurpers of a true Arab nationalist.

In 2004 I was kicked out of a Jordanian taxi, late at night in the middle of nowhere, for criticising Saddam Hussein. “Get out! Traitor! Coward!” shouted the Palestinian driver.

Barring Kuwait and Iran — with whom Saddam fought wars — it has seemed almost everyone in the Middle East liked Saddam.

But what has amazed me most is to hear Iraqis voice support for him to this day.

Since coming to work in Iraq this year, it has been disheartening to see many Iraqis, fed up with years of violence and deprivation since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, long for the relative stability of Saddam’s reign. And not just Saddam’s Sunni co-religionists, who were less likely to be persecuted by his regime, but many others.

To me and my peers, growing up as an Iraqi in exile, Saddam Hussein had been the bogeyman. Everyone we knew had stories of killings, imprisonment and close escapes. We joined demonstrations and carried banners through London against Saddam’s regime in the 80s and 90s.

Along with other boys, I would sneak peeks at the horrific images of death and torture in material distributed by anti-Saddam activists. A photo of my mother’s cousin has sat next to the family television set for years, a young man murdered by Saddam’s regime on accusations of being a member of an opposition group.
 
Many who miss Saddam say that if you kept your mouth shut and didn’t get involved in politics, you’d be fine. In a region flush with autocratic rulers, leadership expectations are low.

What we wanted was a democratic Iraq, free of tyranny, and a state that can protect all its citizens regardless of religion. In Iraq today, aspirations for many seem reduced to a reliable electricity supply, clean water, and being able to leave your home without being randomly blown up or shot.

Dina Al Azawi, a writer now living in the United States but who has a large Facebook following in Iraq, lost her brother and cousin in the violence that engulfed the country in 2004.

“Under Saddam, our foreign policy was balanced, and the world respected us," she wrote. “Iraq was not a proxy for a foreign agenda. Yes, we were independent and sovereign. It was a tyranny, but it was a state. Iraq does not even resemble a state today. It is not about who rules, it is about how we were ruled."

An unexpected challenge has emerged from the Philippines. The new president, Rodrigo Duterte, recently announced plans to pull his country out of America’s orbit and adopt an “independent” foreign policy. “I am anti-West,” he explained. “I do not like the Americans. It’s simply a matter of principle for me.”

Mark Twain wrote:"And as for the flag for the Philippine Province, it is easily arranged. We can have a special one - our States do it: we can have just our usual flag, with the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and cross-bones".
Mark Twain - To the Person Sitting in Darkness (1901 essay)

Mark Twain wrote:"You ask me about what is called imperialism. Well, I have formed views about that question. I am at the disadvantage of not knowing whether our people are for or against spreading themselves over the face of the globe. I should be sorry if they are, for I don't think that it is wise or a necessary development.

We have no more business in China than in any other country that is not ours. There is the case of the Philippines. I have tried hard, and yet I cannot for the life of me comprehend how we got into that mess. Perhaps we could not have avoided it -- perhaps it was inevitable that we should come to be fighting the natives of those islands -- but I cannot understand it, and have never been able to get at the bottom of the origin of our antagonism to the natives.

I thought we should act as their protector -- not try to get them under our heel. We were to relieve them from Spanish tyranny to enable them to set up a government of their own, and we were to stand by and see that it got a fair trial. It was not to be a government according to our ideas, but a government that represented the feeling of the majority of the Filipinos, a government according to Filipino ideas. That would have been a worthy mission for the United States. But now -- why, we have got into a mess, a quagmire from which each fresh step renders the difficulty of extrication immensely greater. I'm sure I wish I could see what we were getting out of it, and all it means to us as a nation."

Returning Home, New York World [London, 10/6/1900]