The Gulf Crisis • 40313 The Roots of Arab Bitterness
To many Arabs (and some non-Arab Muslims), Saddam was a folk hero
who defied the West and made everyone reexamine the rules by which
Middle East politics were conducted. He captured the hearts of the
mostaz afan. Most Palestinians, embittered by Western neglect, Israeli op¬
pression, and abuse from other Arabs, admired him. Pro-Saddam demon¬
strations spread in Jordan and in Israel's occupied territories, as well as in
more remote lands, such as Tunisia, Libya, and Yemen. In countries whose
regimes opposed Iraq lest it come to dominate the Arab world, notably
Syria and Egypt, some people hailed Saddam in outbursts that were
promptly suppressed. However, some Arabs who had suffered indignities
from the Iraqi army and had lost their livelihoods and remittances also
demonstrated against Saddam.
Iraq's political system, the way in which power was allocated and deci¬
sions were made, was highly dictatorial. The state controlled Iraq's major in¬
dustries, all educational institutions, and the information media. Huge
portraits of Saddam Husayn adorned street corners and public buildings.
No one could speak out against his policies. Summary executions, torture,
and long jail terms without trial were common. Most of the military officers
and civil officials who had belonged to his Ba'th Party faction when it seized
power in 1968 or who had helped him to become president in 1979 were
later purged, exiled, or pensioned off. Saddam surrounded himself with a
clique of relatives and friends from his hometown, Takrit. His army, includ¬
ing the Republican Guard, "popular forces," and reservists, numbered more
than a million and was the largest and best equipped in the Arab world.
France, Germany, the USSR, and even the US had sold Iraq weapons during
its war against Iran. Iraq's use of poison gas against Iranians and even Iraqi
Kurds during that war enhanced its army's reputation for cruelty.
How did Iraqi soldiers, or the families of their fallen comrades, feel
when Saddam announced in August 1990 (hoping to get Iran to defy the
UN sanctions) that Iraq was ready to reinstate the 1975 agreement, thus
allowing Iran to share with Iraq control over the Shatt al-Arab and return¬
ing other lands Iraq had taken during eight years of war against Iran. And
how could Saddam offer to give Iraqi oil to those Third World countries
suffering from price hikes caused by the invasion, when he had just com¬
plained that Kuwait was depressing oil prices that Iraq wanted to raise?
Clearly, Iraq's protean interests, which Saddam equated with his own, dic¬
tated these drastic policy lurches.
But what did the crisis tell us about Iraq's Arab rivals? Governments
such as Syria and Egypt joined the allied coalition to punish Iraq, ignoring