Arabs Remain Divided Over Saddam's Legacy

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
By NADIA ABOU EL-MAGD - Associated Press Writer
CAIRO, Egypt - (AP) Across the Arab world, some watched intently
as Saddam Hussein went on trial Wednesday for crimes against Iraqis but
others seemed not to care _ a sign the former Iraqi leader still divides
this region two years after his fall.
The region's influential satellite television networks, Al-Jazeera
and Al-Arabiya, carried nonstop coverage starting hours before the trial
began. Pan-Arab dailies like al-Hayat also splashed the opening day on their
front pages.
But Saudi Arabia's Arabic language-daily Al-Watan used the headline:
"Saddam's Trial: No one cares" and added: "The curtains have opened, the
cast is ready and the audience is busy with other issues ... Even if we
concede that the majority of Iraqis hate Saddam, they also hate how things
have developed."
Yet in Kuwait, which Saddam invaded in 1990, feelings in support of
the trial ran strong.
"We have been waiting for this trial for a long time _ not only us,
but the Iraqi people and Iranian people as well. We say this is the end of
every oppressor," said Omar Al-Murad, a 43-year-old architect.
Many Palestinians also watched closely, but with the opposite view.
Weal Naser, a 42-year-old Palestinian owner of a Gaza vegetable
shop, said Palestinians can never forget Saddam's past support for their
cause. At the start of the Palestinian uprising against Israel, Saddam paid
$15,000 to families of Palestinian suicide bombers, later raising it to
$25,000.
"He supported the martyrs' families and he helped many students in
Palestine or during their studies in Iraq," he said.
Saddam is "paying now the price for being a hero, for saying 'No' to
America and to (President) Bush," Naser said.
"If the world wants justice, as they claim, they should bring Bush
and (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon to trial before Saddam."
Palestinian taxi driver Saed Souror, 32, was more ambivalent about
Saddam but equally critical of the trial.
"I am not a Saddam supporter, but I am against this trial because it
came upon American orders," Souror said. "If Saddam was a murderer, what can
we call the American acts there?"
Egypt's state-owned press chose to mostly ignore the trial, with a
few carrying small stories inside but none putting it on the front page.
Jordan's media reported on Saddam's trial but provided no
independent commentary or analysis, apparently to avoid stirring public
anger already high because of opposition to the U.S. invasion.
A columnist in respected pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat said the
trial has lost much of its meaning because of the bloody insurgency that now
attacks Iraqis daily. Some of the worst terror attacks are blamed on
al-Qaida in Iraq, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
"It should have been held when Iraqis' memory was full of images of
humiliation and that of tens of thousands of the victims and handicapped of
the wars," Lebanese columnist Samir Attallah wrote.
Instead, he added: "Al-Zarqawi has erased from the minds and hearts
all the past horrors. Innocent Iraqis used to die in prison and in their
homes, now the occupation resistance is killing the Iraqi innocents and
their children in the streets."
In Dubai, the Gulf News paper said in an editorial that not just
Saddam, but Iraq itself is on trial, to see whether its new government can
rise to the occasion and give Saddam a fair hearing.
"Anything less will be a permanent scar upon Iraq and its future,"
the paper said.
 
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