For Sunnis, Dictator’s Degrading End Signals Ominous Dawn for the New Iraq

Alert Focus: Nation rising against nation / The Fruit of Islam NEW YORK TIMES - By Sabrina Tavernise - December 31, 2006 -- BAGHDAD -— For Sunni Arabs here, the ugly reality of the new Iraq seemed to crystallize in a two-minute segment of Saddam Hussein’s hanging, filmed surreptitiously on a cellphone. The video featured excited taunting of Mr. Hussein by hooded Shiite guards. Passed around from cellphone to cellphone on Sunday, the images had echoes of the videos Sunni militants take of beheadings. “Yes, he was a dictator, but he was killed by a death squad,” said a Sunni Arab woman in western Baghdad who was too afraid to give her name. “What’s the difference between him and them?” There was, of course, a difference. Mr. Hussein was a brutal dictator, while the Shiite organizers of the execution are members of the popularly elected Iraqi government that the United States helped put in place as an attempt to implant a democracy. It was supposed to be a formal and solemn proceeding carried out by a dispassionate state. But the grainy recording of the execution’s cruel theater summed up what has become increasingly clear on the streets of the capital: that the Shiite-led government that assumed power in the American effort here is running the state under an undisguised sectarian banner. The hanging was hasty. Laws governing its timing were bypassed, and the guards charged with keeping order in the chamber instead disrupted it, shouting Shiite militia slogans. It was a degrading end for a vicious leader, and an ominous beginning for the new Iraq. The Bush administration has already scaled back its hopes for a democracy here. But as the Iraqi government has become ever more set on protecting its Shiite constituency, often at the expense of the Sunni minority, the goal of stopping the sectarian war seems to be slipping out of reach. ... http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/01/world/middleeast/01sunnis.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.