Longing for dictators: Hussein, Gaddafi and Assad
A frequent Kremlin narrative is that Iraqi leader Hussein, Libyan Gaddafi, and Syrian Assad were great patriots with good social policies, but victims of American imperialism, leading to the emergence of some new, worse structures like the Islamic State. There is some truth to this, but it ignores or downplays the fact that they were dictators and sponsors of terrorism, and imperialists themselves
Author: Vangel Basevski
Criticizing US policy is a democratic right, but some people idealize or justify historical figures who are not exactly examples of peace and humanity such as Saddam Hussein (Iraq), Muammar Gaddafi (Libya), and the Assad family (Syria).
These Kremlin narratives prevail in neighboring Serbia and even in our own country as a malign foreign influence. Such examples are the posts found on the following links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. The last post contains a clip of an African-American extremist and an anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan from the Nation of Islam movement praising Gaddafi.
Here these brutal dictators are described as victims of American imperialism or coups victims, although they themselves were imperialists and came into power through coups – in Iraq in 1968, in Libya in 1969, and in Syria in 1970.
They had some positive aspects: industrialization, free education and healthcare, etc., but all that was overshadowed by their crimes: imprisonments, torture, executions, etc. The positive thing was that they supported women’s emancipation, but ironically, they were notorious for rapes, especially Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein’s son, Uday.
Saddam Hussein
In 1968, Hussein became Vice President of Iraq, gaining great power. In 1979, he forced the already aging and ill President to relinquish his position to him, then conducted a purge within the ruling party, executing several of his own party members.
On the 22nd of September 1980, Hussein started a war against Iran aiming to seize the Khuzestan region, which lasted until the 20th of August 1988. On the 2nd of August 1990, Hussein attacked Kuwait and on the 28th of August 1990, he annexed it, thereby provoking a military intervention by the USA and its allies, during which he used foreign civilians as human shields. On the 29th of January 1991, Hussein conquered the Saudi city of Khafji, launched missiles at Israel, and threatened to use chemical weapons.
Hussein employed this tactic during the Anfal campaign (1988), alongside his general known as “Chemical Ali.” He justified it as a fight against Kurdish separatists supported by Iran. However, the main targets were civilians, who were killed with poison and napalm or displaced by incoming Arabs. On the 28th of March 1991, a massacre followed against the Turkmens in the city of Altun Kupri.
Hussein treated the Sunnis with privileges at the expense of the Shiites, whom he considered an alien pro-Iranian body, even though they were the majority in Iraq. In the 1970s, their ceremonies were banned and in 1982 several Shiites from the city of Dujail were executed for an alleged assassination plot against Hussein. Although he was a secular socialist, religious fanaticism was not entirely strange to him.
According to the Constitution, Islam was the official religion in Iraq at the time, and Hussein even claimed to be a descendant of Prophet Muhammad. In the 1990s, Socialism was no longer popular, so Hussein intensified the Islamization of Iraq by placing the Takbir (“Allahu Akbar”) on the national flag, introducing religious education in schools, building mosques, and restricting alcohol, even ordering the Quran to be rewritten in his blood.
In the early 1980s, Hussein supported Sunni Islamists against the regime in Syria, which was dominated by Alawites, similar to Shiites. That regime supported Iran and the US intervention against Hussein in Kuwait in 1991. No understanding existed between Hussein and Libya either. All these regimes hated each other and undermined each other.
Muammar Gaddafi
From the moment he came to power in Libya, Gaddafi got involved in the conflict in Chad, supporting the social-Islamists against the Christians and Animists who were in power. He seized the small uranium-rich area of Aouzou and aimed to take half of Chad (the Northern, Islamic, and Arabized part), ultimately leading to the merger of all within Libya. However, his supporters in Chad turned against him and defeated him in 1987.
On the 21st of July 1977, Gaddafi attacked Egypt, angered by the failed union attempt with the neighboring country and its leader Anwar Sadat’s desire for peace with Israel.
For his actions, Gaddafi created the Islamic Legion, recruiting immigrants from impoverished regional countries with deception or by force. He deployed them in wars in Chad, Sudan, Lebanon, and Uganda, supporting the bloodthirsty dictator Idi Amin.
Initially, Gaddafi supported the Sudanese regime but later backed the coups against him – in 1976 and 1985. Gaddafi’s policy was inconsistent, marked by numerous swings, and he acted as a Socialist, pan-Arabist, pan-Islamist, or pan-Africanist depending on the period. Many African countries broke ties with him due to his interference, and many boycotted the Organization of African Unity Summit in Tripoli in 1982, preventing Gaddafi from becoming the chairman.
He was also an Arab chauvinist and cultural-racist, considering Arabized Africans as Arabs. He sought control over Sudan’s Darfur region, supporting the Arab paramilitary group Tajamu al-Arabi, which committed genocide against the black-skinned Fur tribe in 1987. In Libya, he oppressed the Tubu ethnic group and Arabized the Berbers by force.
He organized public trials and hangings, such as that of Sadiq Shwehdi in June 1984. Shwehdi studied in the United States, where he allegedly met with Libyan dissidents which led to his public trial and hanging. While he struggled for breath, a woman from the audience, Huda Ben Amer, ran up to him and pulled his legs to hasten his death. Gaddafi rewarded her with a government position.
On the 17th of April 1984, Libyans in London protested against the hangings in front of the Libyan Embassy, and the Embassy staff fired at them, killing the police officer Yvonne Fletcher.
Libya was a terrorist country and Gaddafi boasted about killing Libyan dissidents abroad. On the 11th of April 1980, he had the BBC journalist Mohamed Ramadan killed, and when the body was sent from London to Libya for burial, Gaddafi impertinently sent it back.
When Libya clashed militarily with the United States over the Gulf of Sidra, on the 5th of April 1986, Libya bombed a nightclub in West Berlin, visited by American soldiers.
The US responded by bombing Libya on the 15th of April 1986, after which Libya unsuccessfully attempted to bomb the Italian island of Lampedusa, where the US had a base. On the 28th of December 1988, Libya destroyed an American passenger plane over Scotland with a bomb, thereby killing 270 people.
Gaddafi supported terrorist groups, mainly left-wing ones. Although some consider them liberation groups, their methods were undoubtedly terrorist, and their victims were mostly civilians.
He organized a heroic welcome and shelter to the Palestinian terrorists who killed the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972 and sent shiploads with weapons to the IRA (Northern Ireland), ETA (Basque Country), and the Red Brigades (Italy).
Gaddafi had some good social policies, but their praise was often exaggerated as if Libya was some kind of utopia. Some Libyan activists claim that these policies were a myth and that just a few saw any money from Gaddafi, while he himself lived in luxury. His Socialism also implied land acquisition (i.e., robbery) from wealthier Libyans.
Assad Family
The Assad family ruled Syria for 54 years. Hafez Assad was President and Prime Minister, his brother Rifaat was Vice President, and Hafez’s son, Bashar, is the current President. Bashar’s brothers, Basel and Maher, became high-ranking military officials, and their relatives lead the private para-military Shabiha or are involved in the production of the drug Captagon and other businesses.
For 48 years, Syria was under martial law, which gave the regime free rein to terrorize various unsuitable groups: liberals, Islamists, and minorities such as Kurds, Turkmen, and Jews.
The Syrian regime had socialist and secular features, but according to the Constitution, Islam was the official religion, and the regime de facto privileged the Alawites, who make up only 12% of the population, at the expense of the Sunni majority.
This created resentment, which Islamists from the movement the Muslim Brotherhood utilized to incite the Sunnis to rebel. The rebellion lasted from 1976 to 1982 and was crushed by the regime with unselective Sunni massacres, particularly in the city of Hama.
This trauma erupted during the Syrian war in the 2010s, and this time, even more extreme groups like the Islamic State made use of the situation. One might argue that the Assads are a lesser or necessary evil, nevertheless, they are still evil. It is also overlooked that the Syrian revolution initially started peacefully and was later kidnapped by fanatics.
For a long time, Syria had peaceful civil opposition figures such as Nizar Nayouf, Anwar al-Bunni, Aref Dalila, Michel Kilo, Kamal al-Labwani, Aktham Naisse, Muwaffaq Nyrabiya, Riyad Seif, and Samira Khalil, but the regime imprisoned and tortured these people by using inquisition methods.
After the death of Hafez Assad in 2000, the regime slightly loosened its grip, raising hopes for reforms, but this was short-lived, and in 2011, the Syrian revolution followed. Although it was peaceful, the regime responded with shootings, imprisonments, and torture, victimizing even a 13-year-old boy, Hamza Ali al-Khatib, which sparked even greater outrage.
Syria’s foreign policy was not peaceful either. In 1970, Hafez Assad attacked Jordan, and in 1976, Lebanon, dreaming of Great Syria. Assad supported the Palestinian struggle against Israel, but for his own purposes, seeing it as South Syria.
In 1970, Palestinian fighters were sheltered in Jordan, where they acted like a ”state within a state”, thereby threatening the Constitutional order. Jordan tolerated them for a long time but eventually took action against them, and Syria unsuccessfully intervened to help them. They relocated to Lebanon, where a similar conflict erupted in 1975, but there, Syria was already against them. Syria occupied Lebanon for 28 years, 10 months, 4 weeks, and 2 days.
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