Saddam is Still Here

They supported him and cheered him, they also beautified his cruelty and crimes and they simply put him in power to be a godfather of Iraq for good, but his execution order took place a few years ago.
 
Saddam is here again. Iraqi society can not forget him even after his death because some of us still love him and the rest are still afraid of him. People who love him say, because he was handsome, powerful and aggressive.

Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the President of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolutionary Ba'ath Party, which espoused secular pan-Arabism, economic modernization, and Arab socialism, Saddam played a key role in the 1968 coup that brought the party to long-term power.

As vice president under the ailing General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, and at a time when many groups were considered capable of overthrowing the government, Saddam created security forces through which he tightly controlled conflict between the government and the armed forces. In the early 1970s, Saddam spearheaded Iraq's nationalization of the Western-owned Iraq Petroleum Company, which had long held a monopoly on the country's oil. Through the 1970s, Saddam cemented his authority over the apparatuses of government as Iraq's economy grew at a rapid pace.

During one of his latest trips to Baghdad, Jamal tried another challenging experiment, one that excavated deeper into the psychology of Iraqis and investigated their lingering obsession with Saddam Hussein’s charismatic personality. In the series Saddam Is Here, subjects, including a coffee seller from the streets of Baghdad, a prostitute in a hotel lobby and a doctor in his surgery, cover their face with a picture of Saddam Hussein’s.

‘Some people insulted me. Others praised me. His portrait always triggered a reaction, though. People say Saddam is dead. They don’t realise that Saddam is in their mind-set and their daily actions.’