Tyrants Survive By Instilling Fear
By Thomas Withington
Thomas Withington is an independent defense analyst
based at King's College, London.
April 2, 2003
'I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators," forecast Vice President
Dick Cheney on the March 16 edition of "Meet the Press," just four days before
the war in Iraq started. And, as it continues, coalition strategists are still hoping
the Iraqi population will rise up against Saddam Hussein.
This desire gives a clue to Donald Rumsfeld's "invasion-lite" strategy:
emphasizing fewer ground troops but relying on disgruntled elements in Iraq's
population taking politics into their own hands.
Experience over the past 10 years seems to have reinforced this theory. The
Kosovar Liberation Army were handy foot soldiers for NATO during "Operation
Allied Force" against Serbia in 1999, and the Northern Alliance was happy to
help the United States defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan last year.
However, populations cannot always be relied upon to overthrow their oppressors.
Exceptions exist, such as the 1989 mass revolt in Romania and the revolution in
Iran 10 years earlier. Yet history is also littered with examples of dictatorships so
brutal that any significant domestic opposition was considered suicidal.
Saddam Hussein has learned chiefly from Josef Stalin, but also from Adolf Hitler
and Mao Zedong about the importance of keeping both the population and
political establishment terrified.
As British troops besiege the Iraqi city of Basra, reports are emerging of the
harsh treatment meted out to civilians thought to be enemies of the regime.
Basra has seen this before. At the end of Operation Desert Storm in 1991,
ordinary Iraqis were encouraged by President George H.W. Bush to: "take
matters into their own hands to force Saddam Hussein ... to step aside." This
advice is being issued once again. Reports this past weekend spoke of British
troops insisting to local citizens that: "We can't do anything without you, [but] if
you rise up we can help."
This time around, the residents of Basra could be forgiven for taking a more
cautious approach. When they acted on American advice in 1991, the result was
a brutal crackdown from the Republican Guard and scant support from the United
States. One Western journalist who witnessed the aftermath in the city of
Karbala commented that it looked like it "had been shaken by a powerful
earthquake, with few schools, government buildings, private homes or clinics left
intact."
Today, history does not favor any would-be revolutionaries in Iraq. Over the past
50 years, political change in Iraq has tended to come from the political elite and
not from the streets. Hussein himself came to power in 1979 via a coup d'etat
and then implemented a bloody purge of any potential rivals. Such purges
discourage the forming of opposition cliques or alternative power structures. After
the Gulf War in 1991, Hussein conducted a wide-ranging reshuffle of his cabinet.
In total, 14 senior commanders were removed from their posts.
Hussein has learned from his political hero, Josef Stalin, how to quell dissent.
Stalin subjected his political opponents to the most appalling of punishments,
executing them or sending them to the prison camps - the gulag.
Once in the depths of Siberia, a regime of hard labor was designed to prevent
any political activity from continuing inside the gulags. Much as the residents of
Basra, Najaf and Karbala had been subjected to the brutality of Hussein's
security apparatus, thousands of Leningrad's residents were deported to the
labor camps after the assassination of Stalin associate Sergei Kirov in 1934 -
who was killed on Stalin's orders.
Nikita Khrushchev, later to be Soviet president and a latter-day critic of Stalin,
said: "It happens sometimes that a man goes to Stalin, invited as a friend; and
when he sits with Stalin he does not know where he will be sent next, home or to
jail."
Hussein, Mao, Stalin and Hitler all developed powerful cults of personality,
resulting in their attaining an almost divine status in the eyes of their populations.
Like his hero, Hussein's portrait decorates buildings throughout his country.
Stalin's success at infecting the population with his own myth was noted by the
Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. When referring to Stalin's 1953 death,
Yevtushenko wrote: "we had long forgotten that Stalin was a mortal. He had
changed into an omnipotent and mysterious deity. I could not imagine him dead.
He was part of myself and I could not grasp how we could ever separate."
Hussein has learned that brutality - combined with political maneuvering and a
cult of mystique - leaves virtually no room for dissent to flourish. Punishing
disobedience, rewarding loyalty and embedding himself in the Iraqi psyche has
so far ensured his survival. It enabled him to fight a brutal war with Iran for eight
years; to undertake a disastrous and costly invasion of Kuwait, and to subject
his population to appalling poverty and cruelty. What is more, this has continued
for more than two decades.
It may be that the people have almost gotten used to Hussein's presence,
whether they like it or not. Also it is not as if the population can readily
contemplate a time when Iraq ever enjoyed democracy.
Hussein's strategy seems to have worked. Despite the severity of his regime,
those Iraqis who are prepared to talk are as yet unconvinced that the coalition
are "knights in shining armor." Britain's Ministry of Defence announced this week
that it would be intensifying its psychological operations with posters of British
troops pasted around villages with the words "Freedom from Fear" written on
them.
The reluctance so far of the Iraqi population to revolt could make life more difficult
for the coalition. Victory may eventually be won, but without local assistance it
may come at a heavy price. Such is Hussein's survival strategy that it would be a
very brave group of dissidents that would challenge his rule even with the
coalition knocking at his door.
Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.
