and their views on why it is a good thing that America removed Saddam from power.
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| By Mike Heronemus 24th Infantry Division (Mech) Fort Riley, Kansas |
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FORT RILEY, Kan., Jan. 25, 2005 - "Saddam (Hussein) destroyed the family structure in Iraq. He turned brother against brother. He turned sons into informers against their fathers. Fathers could not trust their sons," said Dr. Mahmoud Thamer, an Iraqi-born cardiologist who is now an American citizen. "If an American asks an Iraqi on the street if they are glad American soldiers are in their country, they will probably not tell you the whole truth. They are still afraid someone is spying on them. But, when I asked them, they told me they are glad," said Susan Dakak, an Iraqi-born civil engineer who became a U.S. citizen and recently returned to her native country for six months to help rebuild water and sewage systems destroyed by Saddam's regime. The two Iraqi-Americans spoke to groups of officers and families at Fort Riley, Kan., Jan. 12 and 13 about their experiences in Iraq, their reasons for coming to the United States and their views on why it is a good thing that America removed Saddam from power.
Thamer said he remembers a time when family bonds were strong in Iraq, perhaps the strongest family bonds of any nation in the world. After Saddam brought the nation's general population to poverty by spending Iraq's money and resources on nonproductive projects, such as his palaces, families thought more and more about how they would survive than about family bonds. "First they sold their jewelry, then their carpets, then their refrigerators and then their windows and doors," he said. Saddam fought many wars, Thamer said, so he had to conscript soldiers. "Once you were drafted, you never got out of the Army," he said. "But Saddam paid soldiers so little that he had many deserters. So, he would pay anyone who turned in deserters." Before long, no one could trust anyone and even family members were turning in their relatives in order to make a little money to live, he said. Before the Ba'ath Party (Saddam's regime) came to power, one Iraqi dinar was worth about $3.30, Thamer said. "Now one dinar is less than one-tenth of one cent, he said. Iraq 's people should not be so poor, Thamer said. The country lies in the fertile area of Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Eurphrates rivers, it has good weather for agriculture, it has a wealth of minerals, plenty of water and the largest reserve of oil in the world, he explained. It also has a good balance between the number of people who live there and the amount of resources it has, and the people are educated, he added. While Saddam was in power, nobody was allowed to become a teacher unless he was a member of the Ba'ath Party and he would teach about the magnificence of Saddam, Thamer said. To criticize Saddam was to commit a crime punishable by death; to hear someone criticize Saddam and not defend Saddam also was a crime punishable by death, he said. |
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People turn to religion when faced with such oppression, Thamer said. So, Saddam would build mosques and place imams in them who would preach the glory of Saddam as though he were God and that anyone who criticized Saddam was doing the same as criticizing God, he said. "When the statue of Saddam fell, you had a society that had been oppressed for 35 years and were in shock that Saddam was gone. It will take time for Iraqis to recover, but they will," Thamer said. They want democracy, Thamer insisted, and when they show they have it, it will be a good example for other countries in the region, he assured. Iraqis have a better life today than they did when Saddam was in power, Dakak said. "The economy is flourishing. People are making more money than they can spend," she said, mentioning the number of satellite TV dishes so prevalent now. "They want to see what the rest of the world has to offer. They use cell phones and send e-mail all the time," she said about the Iraqi relatives she became reacquainted with while working there for six months. The women of Iraq have accomplished remarkable things in the short time since Saddam's regime fell, she said. They got Resolution 137 abolished, she said. Resolution 137 essentially restricted all women to their homes, Dakak explained. They also wanted 25 percent representation in the new government, and by getting thousands of petitions signed all over the country, demonstrating in public and then talking to members of the governing council, achieved that goal, she said. "The women now have hope that things will get better," Dakak said. To a question from the audience about how Iraqis feel about U.S. soldiers being in their country, Dakak told about asking her relatives what she could send their children when her husband goes to Iraq to work for a while. "They wanted me to send them uniforms like the soldiers wear," she said. "These children idolize the American soldier. They are their superheroes." The fight to make Iraq a free and democratic nation isn't being fought just by U.S. soldiers, Thamer reminded. "More than 10,000 Iraqis died in Saddam's prisons because they opposed him. About 1,500 Iraqis died in the war. They still enroll in dangerous jobs in dangerous areas" because they want to be free, he said. |
