Page 224 - The Winter of Islam and the Spring to Come

THE WINTER OF ISLAM AND THE SPRING TO COME
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and torturers. Saddam, as he is known throughout the Middle East, is
utterly ruthless in the pursuit of glory for himself and his country. He
has not hesitated to use poison gas on enemies both foreign and do-
mestic. 56
Saddam shed the blood of many Iraqis. By the end of the war with
Iran, 1 million out of a population of 17 million Iraqis had been killed

or wounded. More than a million people fled the country for political or
economic reasons. Washington-based human rights organization
Middle East Watch states that forced exile, arrest and punishment for
no crime as well as torture and "mystery" killings are some of the
methods frequently employed. According to Amnesty International,
torture, even of children includes such methods as roasting victims
over flames, amputating noses, limbs, breasts and sexual organs, and
hammering nails into bodies. 57
Saddam demonstrated his fascist attitude towards people of dif-
ferent ethnic origins with the 1988 Halabja massacre. Nerve gas was
used against the civilian Kurdish population, and many innocent peo-
ple died in agony, with no distinction made between infants, the el-
derly, men and women. Amnesty International reported that 5,000
Kurds died in that massacre, and several thousand more in similar at-
tacks elsewhere in the country. 58
The tortures inflicted on political detainees by the fascist regime in
Iraq are even more terrible. A doctor who fled the country describes
them in these terms:
I was an intern in a hospital in the south. Only doctors could see those
people brought in from prison. Most of them were just lumps of flesh
and soon died. Not one political detainee lived through the torture. I
fled when I realized I was going to be arrested. 59
Even Saddam's own family and close colleagues were not spared
his cruelty. Saddam's stepbrother Barzan Takriti and his son Uday fled
to the United Arab Emirates out of fear he might have them killed. Two
of his sons-in-law, Hussein and Saddam Kamel, fled to Jordan in 1995
out of similar fears. Saddam then guaranteed that their lives would not
be threatened and asked them to return. When the two brothers re-