http://www.news.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=1381582003
The Scotsman Wednesday, 17th December 2003
Opinion
Why Washington did not want Saddam 'found dead'
FRASER NELSON
THE TRIAL of Saddam Hussein will be a pivotal moment in history.
Already, there
is a search for precedents, and Nuremberg is mainly being pointed to
for
inspiration. But a far more pertinent example is staring us in the
face:
Slobodan Milosevic.
The butcher of Belgrade has spent the last three years in The Hague,
being tried
by a British judge in an ad-hoc international court. The world,
meanwhile, has
not been interested and is missing out on a staggering drama.
There, in the Dutch courtroom, one of the world's most evil dictators
has been
defending himself - quizzing his former allies who are testifying
against him
and using the trial as a forum to justify his actions, hoping for the
banner of
"martyr".
Anyone suffering withdrawal symptoms from Lord Hutton's inquiry (it
is still
running as a play in a London theatre) would have their addiction to
reality
courtroom drama more than satisfied by the transcripts emerging
online from The
Hague.
Milosevic has judged the situation brilliantly. Like all successful
modern
dictators, he worked out how easy it is to fool the United Nations.
Like Saddam,
he learnt how to run rings around soldiers whose hands are tied by
the
bureaucratic rope which accompanies their blue berets.
In Iraq, this meant playing cat-and-mouse with UN weapons inspectors.
In Bosnia,
it was a case of genocide while UN troops were purportedly keeping
peace - yet
failing to stop 7,000 Muslim men and boys being slaughtered by
Bosnian Serbs in
the UN "safe haven" of Srebrenica.
The arrest of Milosevic was a great success for the international
justice
movement, but one scored before the era of the bandit hunt which has
ensnared
Saddam and has presumably made Osama bin Laden now hide-and-seek
champion of the
world.
So what to do with a dictator when you have caught him? Back in 2000,
there was
no compunction: take him out of the country, before he escapes again.
The
International Criminal Court did not then exist, and the US still
refuses to
sign up to it.
Perhaps because of this ongoing row, Washington has been reluctant to
draw
attention to the imprisoned Milosevic - even though he is a prize
scalp from a
war which saved Muslim lives. Even more strangely, Tony Blair has
also gone
quiet about the man he helped imprison.
Milosevic's trial shows the difficulty in bringing dictators to
justice.
Evidence is needed - and Downing Street's dodgy dossiers would not
stand up in
any courtroom. Neither Milosevic nor Saddam can be imprisoned for
bilious
policies or making idiots out of the United Nations.
Also, dictators tend not to leave the type of e-mails unveiled by
Lord Hutton.
Lack of documentary evidence linking Hitler to the Holocaust has
allowed
generations of his apologists to claim the murder of six million Jews
was
carried on without his knowledge.
And, in this way, Milosevic now claims he was a figurehead who had no
knowledge
of the ethnic cleansing being carried out by what he says must have
been rogue
elements of the military. It is up to the prosecution to prove to the
contrary.
To prove he was actively controlling the ethnic cleansing apparatus
requires
evidence, and without paperwork, this requires informants. Which
means
persuading former allies that they or their family will not be killed
by
mercenaries as soon as they step out of court.
Milosevic has found his ability to intimidate still intact - and
greatly
enhanced by the lamentable decision to let him defend himself and
deploy a full
range of guerrilla tactics. Instead of playing by the rules, as any
professional
defence lawyer would, Milosevic is trying to spoke the wheels of
justice. And
his antics are working: the trial is now ending its second year, with
the
defence not due to start until April 2004 at the earliest.
A former Serb intelligence agent who gave evidence last year, under a
witness
protection scheme, was given the cover of the name C-001. Milosevic
started his
questioning, saying: "Based on my information, your wife's name is
..." - and
then named her, for the record. As the prosecution howled, Milosevic
was sending
a message to all those who would follow this informant that their
families are
not safe from Serbian nationalist mercenaries still at large.
Milosevic was
demonstrating power from captivity: as valid in Baghdad as in The
Hague.
He also tries to incriminate witnesses, many of whom have a
less-then-perfect
record during the war. Last month, one informant referred to his
"sabotage
training" practice in the military. "Everyone knows what that really
means,"
replied Milosevic, and then drew him further.
Is the 66-year-old Saddam capable of such tactics? Dictators of his
notoriety
are seldom intellectuals, but masters in the use of power. Whether
defending
himself or in a witness stand, he will seek to present himself as a
martyr for
the Arab world.
Here is the opportunity facing the allies. Already Islamic Hezbollah
has
denounced his imprisonment as an insult to all Arabs and Muslims -
this for the
man who condemned more Muslims to their grave than any peacetime
leader.
It may not be long before Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda ( a small league
player
compared to Hezbollah) offers similar messages of fraternal support
for Saddam,
hoping to make a martyr out of its erstwhile enemy. In fact, the more
terrorists
identifying themselves with Saddam, the better. Because the trial of
Saddam will
tell the dictator's story, and in doing so will expose the full
nature of his
regime. That is why Washington allowed him to live (it would have
been easy to
"find him dead", if the Pentagon so desired). His trial is needed for
vindication of the war.
In March, the true evil of the Saddam regime was not appreciated by
many of
those who marched against Britain joining the US to remove him. Even
now, words
such as "brutality" and "torture" do not do justice to the 400,000
corpses
uncovered in mass graves so far.
The crucial task of Saddam's trial should be to perform the
psychological
function of Nuremberg: to show not just Iraq, but all Arabs and all
Muslims,
what was really happening under the UN's banner of "international
law". The
Nuremberg trial was the start of a catharsis for Germany;
schoolchildren watched
live, uninterrupted coverage and learnt the true nature of the Nazi
regime many
of their relatives had died for. As they grew up, the country was
regenerated.
The Milosevic trial is failing to make its message heard. Only one in
eight
Serbians claims to be following it "very closely"; proceedings are
being
conducted through translation in English, and it seems foreign to
Serbians with
a fresh set of very real problems.
The Iraq war will not be vindicated in the West until the first Arab
democracy
is created, with the same forceful determination which transformed
Japan after
its US occupation 50 years ago.
And the war will not be explained to the most important audience -
the next
generation of Arabs - until the trial of Saddam shows in explicit,
chronological
and horrifying detail the brutality of the regime which only the 2003
Iraq war
could have ended.
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