The US-led war in Iraq and Saddam’s Arab legacy

Many Arabs saw Saddam Hussein as a strongman who stood up to the West, but most Iraqis despised his brutal authoritarianism.

In the eyes of many Arabs, Saddam Hussein, the former dictator of Iraq, was a true leader who stood up to Western imperialism, the Israeli occupation of Palestine and foreign intervention in the region.

But for most Iraqis, Saddam was a tyrant whose 25-year reign from 1979 to 2003 was marked by brutal authoritarianism, repression and injustices, especially among the country’s Shia and Kurdish communities.

Twenty years after the 2003 United States-led invasion of Iraq which, in former US President George W Bush’s words, aimed to “free Iraqi people” of their ruler’s oppression, Saddam’s memory remains divisive and polarising. But to many, the economic and political chaos unleashed by the invasion lionised Saddam and his legacy more than ever.

“Saddam embodied the image of the strongman who stood up to the US, Israel, and Iran – all the traditional ‘baddies’ in the [regional] narrative,” said Fanar Haddad, an expert on Iraq and assistant professor at the University of Copenhagen.

“This narrative deepened after the 2003 invasion as a way to be against the occupation and order that emerged. The fetishisation of Saddam was a backlash against what happened,” he told Al Jazeera.

The Palestinian cause

Before Saddam came to power in 1979, the Baath regime he was part of espoused anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist rhetoric, called for the unification of Arab countries, and nationalised Iraqi oil by taking over foreign-held shares in the early 1970s.

It also brandished the foreign policy of a regional power as it tried to diversify Iraq’s economy and develop its educational system, infrastructure and social services.

In 1969, the Iraqi-led Baath party founded the Arab Liberation Front, a small Palestinian political party that came to be headed by Saddam and join the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The party espoused a pan-Arab ideology which believed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was not a particularly Palestinian issue, but rather an Arab one that Iraq must fight for.

When Saddam became president, it was not a surprise that many Arabs supported the persona he portrayed as their defender and, especially, a champion of the Palestinian cause.

In the early hours of January 18, 1991, Saddam launched several Scud missiles towards Israel – a defining moment for Saddam’s image. The Iraqi attacks, three of which landed in Tel Aviv, came a day after Bush unleashed an assault on Baghdad over its invasion of Kuwait.“Saddam stood up for us when no Arab leader did,” said Manal Mustafa from Jerusalem, referring to the attacks. The 72-year-old said she would always remember him for that.

Source:-Aljazeera