http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=24481
Toen het coalitieleger ten strijde trok waren de verwachtingen hoog.
Overal zouden ze onthaald worden als bevrijders en helden net zoals in 1944 maar het gejuich bleef uit. Wat is er aan de hand?
Een veelgehoorde verklaring is dat de burgerbevolking zich spontaan schaart achter Saddam terwijl de Amerikaans-Britse coalitie aanzien wordt als een invasieleger. Anderzijds hebben de aanhoudende bombardementen veel burgerslachtoffers geëist, allicht ook een verklaring.
Diezelfde volkeren werden elf jaar geleden door vader Bush opgeroepen om te rebelleren. Onmiddelijk nadat zij deze gevaarlijke en onomkeerbare stap hadden gezet werden ze vervolgens door Bush senior in de steek gelaten. Saddam, die de opstand overleefd had, sloeg hard terug: tienduizenden mensen werden koelbloedig afgemaakt. De wereld keek toe, niemand reageerde.
Een Arabisch nieuws correspondent trok naar de Irakese oorlogsgebieden, hier zijn verslag:
After 75 minutes of driving in a manner likely to get me arrested in most countries, we were able to catch up to the convoy as it passed through the dreaded checkpoint at Mutla’, where we had been turned back several times in the days before.
When we finally made it to Safwan, Iraq, what we saw was utter chaos. Iraqi men, women and children were playing it up for the TV cameras, chanting: “With our blood, with our souls, we will die for you Saddam.”
I took a young Iraqi man, 19, away from the cameras and asked him why they were all chanting that particular slogan, especially when humanitarian aid trucks marked with the insignia of the Kuwaiti Red Crescent Society, were distributing some much-needed food.
His answer shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did.
He said: “There are people from Baath here reporting everything that goes on. There are cameras here recording our faces. If the Americans were to withdraw and everything were to return to the way it was before, we want to make sure that we survive the massacre that would follow as Baath go house to house killing anyone who voiced opposition to Saddam. In public, we always pledge our allegiance to Saddam, but in our hearts we feel something else.”
Different versions of that very quote, but with a common theme, I would come to hear several times over the next three days I spent in Iraq.
The people of Iraq are terrified of Saddam Hussein.