By Iraqi Standards, Saddam’s Hanging Was Just

The sorry video spectacle that was Saddam Hussein’s hanging has provoked outrage throughout the world. The taunts of the guards, Saddam’s ripostes and the very videotaping of the event—ending in the sequels to the dropping of the trapdoor—removed, at least in Western eyes, any dignity to the proceedings and opened questions about its legality. Even the architects of Saddam’s downfall, Tony Blair and George W. Bush, have expressed displeasure with how things unfolded.

It is clear that US and Iraqi officials wanted Saddam to be convicted and sentenced to capital punishment for a variety of atrocities. It is also clear that US officials underestimated the determination of Shiite Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al- Maliki to avenge his dead brethren. His determination was due more to reputation and political motivations rather than emotive reasons: his signing of the execution order and (most importantly), his immediate follow-up in face of numerous pressures to delay or commute the sentence, confirmed Maliki as a serious player in post-Saddam Iraq. He is, after all, the man who did it—he killed Saddam.

For the pushing and shoving throng that passed as witnesses at the hanging, revenge was sweet. With the exception of one Sunni cleric, the executioners, guards, government officials, and everyone else in the room were Shiia victims of Saddam’s reign. To be in the room at his death was to recognize the sacrifice of their dead kin. These were no wanton victims, but symbols of heroic resistance to Saddam’s rule. To be present at Saddam’s hanging meant that a participant’s family member (usually a father or brother) had paid the ultimate sacrifice for his political opposition during Saddam’s reign. Among those martyrs was Moqtada al-Sadr’s father, the much-revered Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, who was assassinated in 1999 along with two of his sons (Moqtada’s brothers) in Al Najaf. No wonder members of al-Sadr’s entourage and al-Mahdi Army were among those at the scene. In effect, the room was stacked with people directly victimized by Saddam, and it is no surprise that they felt the need to speak.

For those who were present at the execution, and more so for those who spoke, Saddam’s hanging was a momentous event. Their stature in the Shiite community is established, and their heritage reaffirmed. For his part, Saddam comported himself with valor at the end, remaining calm and defiant in the face of taunts and death. That saved his honour in the eyes of his Sunni followers, particularly his Abu Nasir tribe, and reaffirmed his strength as a leader at a time when Sunnis feel besieged and poorly represented in post-Baathist Iraq. At the end, he was a reminder of Sunni strength and resolve in the face of insurmountable odds—something not lost on Shiia leaders. Thus, whatever their rhetorical outrage, Sunnis know that even in death Saddam will continue to cast a long shadow over Iraqi politics.

For the US, the problem was the apparent haste and thirst for revenge that fueled the drive to execution. US attorneys at the Regime Crimes Liaison Office in the US embassy, who created the tribunal that tried Hussein and his lieutenants, expected months of appeals and a verdict on the infamous gassing of Kurds at Anfal and Halabja to occur before Saddam was sent to the gallows. Members of Task Force 134, the unit responsible for high value detainees such as Hussein, expected that at a minimum the execution would take place after the Id al-Adha religious festival marking the end of the pilgrimage to Mecca. Saddam’s supporters assumed that some form of pardon or reduction in sentence might be possible in order to quell sectarian violence. None of these views took into account Maliki’s motivations or the absolute need of Shiia leaders to see that Saddam hung sooner rather than later in order to bolster their political positions in an around the new government. Thus, the drive to execute was the “known unknown” (to use one of Donald Rumsfeld’s best phrases) in the equation that US policy-makers did not foresee and could not prevent.

In the end, Saddam met his maker in a very Iraqi way. It may have looked cruel and barbaric to Westerners, and it may have been based on disputed legal grounds, but he was tried and convicted for capital crimes, sentenced, and executed in what for Iraqis was an efficient and relatively transparent process, one that was far better than the “justice” carried out during his rule. To be sure, the trial was more political than criminal, but that was exactly the point: political crimes are the most sacred of crimes in Iraq, and Saddam was the best at committing them. That he was hung on the same gallows as many of his victims provided a sense of poetic, as well as political justice.

Saddam’s execution holds important lessons for those who seek to impose democracy in countries where it has never existed. Holding elections is useful as a procedure for selecting government incumbents, and running open trials in which defendants can speak and have legal representation is clearly a step towards more transparency in the administration of justice. But neither of these can overcome decades of political hatred superimposed on centuries of religious and ethnic conflict, which is the case in Iraq. Saddam’s hanging exposed the delusions of Bush administration officials who championed the forced imposition of “democracy” in Iraq, as well as the naiveté of US officials on the ground when dealing with the political realities motivating Iraqi approaches to his prosecution. It also proved to be a remarkable way of reaffirming both Sunni and Shiia pride and determination as well as Iraqi sovereignty, which may or may not pave the ground for some form of post-Saddam, post-US occupation political compromise (especially if the Kurds can act as intermediaries and power brokers, given their history and treatment under the Baath regime).

Whatever the future may bring, in Iraqi eyes Saddam’s execution was relatively dignified and just. It also draws to an end a chapter in Iraqi history that in retrospect may seem relatively stable given the uncertainties and chaos of the present. For the moment, contrary to what was promised in 2003, the future for Iraq is uncertain and delicately balanced as a direct consequence of the US-led invasion and occupation. Such are the perils of the forced imposition of democracy, something that nations with similar pretensions may wish to take into account as they pursue their foreign affairs.

Paul G. Buchanan is Director of the Working Group on Alternative Security perspectives at the University of Auckland.

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