IN IRAQ, A LAMENT FOR SADDAM
Kadhim Sharif al-Jabouri helped bring down Saddam Hussein. Now, he wishes the dictator could return,
It is an image seared in the minds of the war-ready and war-weary alike. Just weeks after the invasion of Iraq, American armoured vehicles bore down on Firdos Square in downtown Baghdad, where an emboldened man had already taken a sledgehammer to the base of a statue of Saddam Hussein.
That man, Kadhim Sharif al-Jabouri, had once repaired the Hussein family’s motorcycles, but was also imprisoned by Saddam after falling out of favour. He says that 14 or 15 members of his family were executed by Saddam’s regime.
In an interview aired this week by the BBC, more than 13 years after the invasion, Jabouri speaks of his longing for the relative peace of the years before it.
“Now, when I go by that statue, I feel pain and shame. I ask myself, why did I topple that statue?” said Jabouri. The toppling of the statue became the iconic image of the beginning of the invasion. It conveyed hope — though many have since alleged that the whole scene was more or less staged.
“I’d like to put it back up. To rebuild it. But I’m afraid I’d be killed,” said Jabouri.
Jabouri has long since left Baghdad, which he found to be too unsafe for his family. He now lives in Beirut, along with more than one million refugees from Iraq, Syria and Palestine.
Heblames the current situation squarely on the Iraqi government. After the American invasion, he says things got worse every year. “There was corruption, infighting, killing, looting. Saddam killed people, but it was nothing like this current government,” he said. “Saddam is gone, but in his place there are 1,000 Saddams.”