I remember when the Baath Party took over Abdel Karim Kasim's leadership. It did it wth a very strict hand, and placed a socialist regime vouching the opportunity of full employmnt, full medicar, and full education t the masses. The 5 year plan was implemeted, and I saw Iraq grow. Before Saddam Hussein, Al-Bakr began the industrial boom. In 1972, when the oil crisis was felt in Europe and the world, Iraq vowed that th extra income would open the gate for re-modernising Iraq. During the late 70's, The Government headed by Saddam's Baathists allowed mixed sectors and private sectors to set-up manufacturing with government financing at 0%. These were the times when many Iraqis began to widen their horizons by travelling to the Industrial nations searching for knowledge and knowhow, to implement it in Iraq. During my 60 years of travelling in the Middle East, I was admitted in Hospital in Baghdad for a minor operation. I spent 14 days, and ca confirm that most professional medical Doctors were graduated in the UK, US, Switzerland, and Canada. The surgical theatres were of the most modern units found in the US and Europe.
Although I have elaborated in my prelude, I am certain that Iraq will only survive if such a regime is put back, to lead the country with NO INTERFERENCE from so-called pacifists who have no clue of local traditions and customs, Furthermore, in my opinion, Iraq did no wrong (except what George Bush Snr.) had planned for their own interests. Destabilize Iraq, Threaten Iran, and Syria, where the planned pipelines will be errected unhindered. Russia tried for 10 years and failed. Now the Nato is trying, and will fail too. As for Bush Jnr.! well, he has put many lives in danger on both sides, bankrupted the US economy, Damaged relations between the US and the rest of the world, Perhaps B. Obama will listen closer to the actual truth of what is happening in the region, and seriously consider mending ties unconditionally.
I may see some drastic changes during my lifetime (I Hope!!)
The Return of the Baathists
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Under Saddam, the party became a despised and feared network for informants and patronage. Much of its ideology is deservedly dead—the glorification of Arabism at the expense of ethnic Kurds, the hidebound socialism, the nationalism that fueled Saddam's horrific wars. But the party's whisky-drinking secularism is attractive to Iraqis tired of Islamist rule, and its emphasis on strong central government and opposition to Iran are gaining ground in a country plagued with feuds and intrusive neighbors.
Mutlaq, defiant but disarmingly candid, is a walking emblem of the country's compromised past. He belonged to the party himself until 1977, when he opposed the execution of five Shiites for allegedly plotting against the government. The story is well known in Iraq: Mutlaq insisted that the men deserved a fair trial at least. The men were killed anyway, and Mutlaq was thrown out of the party.
He went into farming as the partner of another ex-Baathist, a Shiite who had once been Saddam's superior in the party before being forced out by a power struggle in the 1960s. Mutlaq grows animated as he recalls the old days, when he slept in an onion-seed-storage room and woke to start work at dawn. He had a Ph.D. in agronomy, and like many educated Iraqis he stayed at arm's length from the regime but was ready to take advantage when it came calling. One day in the mid-'80s, Saddam arrived by helicopter at a farm that was rented by the two Baathist renegades. He admired the fertile land so much, he decided to appropriate it for the government and offered acreage elsewhere in compensation.
Mutlaq started over and prospered, acquiring (always by competitive bids, he says) a chain of farms and greenhouses. His giant irrigation pumps fed water to land run by Uday, Saddam's violent oldest son, and Mutlaq later took over the place from him. (He says they never met.) Eventually, Mutlaq says, his agribusiness supplied a third of Iraq's cucumbers, eggplant and tomatoes, and he had become one of the biggest farmers in the country by the time of the 2003 U.S. invasion.
After that, his long-ago expulsion from the party was a positive advantage. He was named to the committee to help draft the new Iraqi Constitution. Had he ever been a ranking Baathist, he probably would never have been allowed into post-invasion politics. When the new Constitution was put to a national referendum in 2005, he opposed it, in part because it outlaws the Baathists. Even so, he refused to join the massive Sunni boycott of parliamentary elections that same year, instead leading his National Dialogue Front to win 11 seats in the 275-seat, Shiite-dominated Parliament.
As one of the few Sunnis who defied the violent insurgency by participating in the political process, Mutlaq paid an awful price. His brother was kidnapped and killed after the 2005 elections, and several of his bodyguards have died in bombings. Mutlaq now lives and works in the security of a Green Zone hotel; his wife (a Shiite) and their son stay in Amman. Just before the recent local elections, his party's deputy leader, another ex-Baathist, died in a bombing that was attributed to Qaeda militants.
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