“WHAT IS the latest?” Iraqis ask as they come together for tea and sympathy in these times of hope and uncertainty. And there is always someone who answers by reporting the discovery of a new mass grave where the victims of Saddam Hussein were buried.

According to the latest estimates, the remains of more than 200,000 people, the fruit of the 35-year-long rule of his Arab Socialist Baath Party, have been found in this ever expanding archipelago of death.

And yet, as the fallen dictator’s trial opens today, he faces only one charge: the massacre of 143 men, women and children in the village of Dujail in 1982. With him in the dock will be his half-brother Barzan al-Takriti, who headed his regime’s secret services, and Taha al-Jizrawi, who commanded the party’s so-called Popular Corps, an army of cut-throats.

The notorious Anfal (“Spoils of War”) campaign, in which 180,000 Kurds were massacred, the Halabja tragedy, in which 5,000 people were gassed to death, and the week-long killings in southern Iraq in 1991 have been set aside for the time being.

Lawyers at the special Iraqi tribunal, where Saddam and his seven co-defendants will be tried, say that the Dujail case, in which all victims were Shia, was chosen because it was easier to find witnesses and amass evidence for prosecution. Saddam and his supporters, including Roland Dumas, the former French Foreign Secretary, who heads the fallen despot’s team of lawyers, claim that the Dujail case represents an attempt by Iraq’s Shia majority to exact revenge. The lawyers’ strategy is to transform Saddam from one of the most brutal rulers in history into a victim of rough justice.

It is, therefore, imperative for the Iraqi authorities to make it clear at the outset that the Dujail case is one of a series to deal with the crimes committed by Saddam and his cohorts.

Millions of those who suffered at the hands of the regime would be glad to see Saddam punished as quickly as possible. Kangaroo courts have a long history in Iraq, starting with the televised murder-express trials presided over by the notorious Fadhil al-Mahdawi under Colonel Abdul-Karim Qassem in 1958. The typical al-Mahdawi trial lasted 15 minutes, often ending with a death sentence. When Saddam seized power he reduced that time by two-thirds and added a new feature: the accused were shot on live television by their former comrades.

Liberated Iraq should show that things are different under the new democratic system. There should be no hurry to send Saddam to the gallows. Investigators have already collected 40 tonnes of documents, more than 10 million pages of sworn testimonies, and forensic reports from more than 297 mass graves. To these could be added the mass of evidence collected in Iran and Kuwait, both of which suffered from Saddam’s aggression.

What is at stake is more than the fate of a despot and his entourage. Iraq and, beyond it the Arab world, where the remnants of pan-Arabism regard Saddam Hussein as their champion, need a prolonged, dispassionate, and judicially impeccable lesson in history and political ethics.

According to Khalil al-Dulaimi, who heads Saddam’s team of Arab lawyers, the fallen despot intends to cast himself in the role of “the defender of pan-Arab values”. This should be welcomed by the judges, for it would allow the exercise to assume a greater role: putting on trial the military-security model of statehood that has been the most popular in the Arab world since the Egyptian coup d’état of 1952. Far from being an aberration, Saddam Hussein was an archetypal figure of the modern Arab despotic regimes based on the military and the security services. His kind of despotism was imposed on a dozen Arab nations at different times and is still in power in Libya, Syria and Sudan. In its 50 years of existence, this form of government has provoked ten large wars, including the longest of the last century: the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88 that stole more than a million lives.

Saddam may try to present himself as the champion of Iraq’s Sunni Arabs, who account for 15 per cent of the population. The fact is that Sunni Arabs were as much a victim of his as any other community. (As far as its elite elements are concerned, Saddam was responsible for the death of more Sunni Arabs than Shia or Kurds.) Next, he may try to appear as the champion of the Baath and its claimed ideals of socialism and Arab unity. But more Baathists were killed under Saddam than any other ruler since 1947 when the party arrived in Iraq. When it seized power in 1968 the Baath had an 18-man politburo. By 1988 he was the only one still alive and in power.

Saddam’s trial should also expose the foreign powers that helped to set up and sustain his murderous regime, and the banquet of corruption at which scores of politicians, diplomats, intellectuals and businessmen, some from Europe and the United States, supped with the devil. An Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations has resigned after being charged with receiving illegal kickbacks from Saddam. One of France’s most senior diplomats is in prison on a similar charge. A former French Home Secretary, several members of the Russian parliament and a dozen Arab media figures have also been exposed.

In the three decades that Saddam dominated Iraq he had almost $200 billion in oil revenues not only to finance three large-scale wars and kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, but also to buy influence in the West. Part of that investment may be bearing fruit as the chorus of his admirers, led by the French, raises its voice.

Saddam is enjoying what he denied his victims: a public trial with defence lawyers of his choice and the rule of evidence taking into account the principle of reasonable doubt. Here a new Iraq, based on the rule of law, will be trying the old Iraq of cruelty and corruption. The Arabs will watch and decide which they would rather live under. The rest of the world should also watch to decide which side to support in the struggle for Iraq’s future.

The author is a commentator on Middle East affairs

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