Photo: MP Barry Gardner introducing Hamid Alkifaey at a gathering at Wembley Town Hall 2002

I would like to begin by saying how wonderful it is to be here at Queen Mary College, University of London. It is a great privilege to be with you all. I do not know if it is a coincidence that we are here at the ‘Chemical Building’ in order to discuss the dangers of chemical weapons. It is indeed an appropriate place for such a discussion. 

The issue of Iraq is very complex and it has a history behind it. You will never understand it fully, unless you understand the recent history of Iraq, and how Saddam Hussein got in power and how he kept it.

And to cut a long story short, Iraq has been ruled over the last three and a half decades by a secret organization called erroneously, the Ba’ath Party. This organisation has used every method you can think of, and every method you cannot think of, to stay in power.

It encouraged people, even members of the same family, to spy on each other. School children are interrogated by Ba’ath Party members in order to know what their parents think of Saddam Hussein and of the Ba’ath Party.

One child once told Saddam Hussein, that his father was angry every time he saw Saddam on TV. Soon afterwards, the father disappeared not to be seen again. It was known later that he was executed. An Iraqi student told me once that he used to take photographs of dissident Iraqis and take them to the Iraqi embassy here in London, they used to pay him £50 for each photo.

As this secret Organization got stronger and richer, its methods of terrorizing the Iraqi public got more and more public. They started showing films of interrogations and executions in public, in street markets and schools. I was once out in the town and I saw a crowd in the town centre. When I asked for the reason, they told me they were told that ‘an Indian film’ was going to be shown here. Indian films were very popular in Iraq. I walked away as I was not very interested in Indian films. I was told later by friends that the ‘Indian film’ was in fact a video recording of an internal Ba’ath Party interrogation of senior members accused of treachery. They were later executed. The idea was to make every one scared of doing any thing against ‘the government’, and to terrorise people into submission.

Then there was a campaign of ethnic cleansing, which involved expelling people of ‘Iranian origin’ especially among wealthy families. An estimated half a million people were thrown on the border with Iran, with their property confiscated and given to senior Ba’ath party members as bounty. Had the campaign been limited to the expulsion of the people from the country, It wouldn’t have been so bad, as most Iraqis even those of Arab Iraqi origin, like myself, were trying to leave the country any way, in order to escape Saddam’s terrorism.

If confiscating people’s property and expelling them were the only punishments, people would at least have some consolation in the fact that they are alive. But that would not have been Saddam’s style, would it? All young members of the expelled families were put in prisons, and no one has heard of them ever since. There was no sign of them in the recent, and much publicised, ‘amnesty’. This means that they are dead. Similar campaigns were waged earlier against Jews, tribal leaders, Islamic scholars, independent politicians, and any individual or a group that did not actively support Saddam and his party in every thing they do. 

At the turn of 1980, Saddam was at the height of his power, and of course of his arrogance and his criminal activities. The killing of people was a daily phenomenon; students began to disappear from schools and universities, workers from their factories, teachers and lecturers from their classes in schools and universities, doctors and nurses from their hospitals, and Islamic scholars from their mosques and universities. Thousands lost their lives in this way.

He then launched a war against Iran, which lasted 8 long years. The lowest estimates of casualties at that war were ½ a million dead, one million injured, the majority of whom were permanently disabled. On the Iranian side, there were one million dead, one and a half injured.

During that period Saddam accumulated the biggest unconventional weapons arsenal in history. That was done of course with the help of European arms companies looking for quick profit. German, French and Russian arm manufacturers were at the top of the list. That may explain why those three countries are so anxious to keep Saddam in power. They made billions of dollars out of the misery of the Iraqi people.

During that war, although Saddam was busy killing the Iranians, he did find time to kill Iraqis as well. He used chemical weapons against the marsh Arabs. People, as well as wild life, were killed indiscriminately. He also launched a war against the Kurds in the north, which was culminated in the infamous Halabja massacre in which at least 5000 people were killed, most of whom were children, women and old people. That was done on the direct orders of Saddam to his cousin, Ali Hassan Almajeed, who was labelled later by Iraqis as ‘chemical Ali’.

As if that was not enough, he launched the ‘Anfal’ operation, in which 182,000 Iraqi Kurds were killed, many of them were reported to have been buried alive. That campaign was conducted in peace time, so there was no pressure against Iraq from any ‘foreign power’, which is the usual excuse given when the regime commits crimes against humanity.

A mere two years passed after the end of the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam launched another war on another neighbour which was very supportive of his earlier war with Iran. This latest war, which was, like the previous ones, unprovoked, was against a small country called Kuwait, which you may not have heard of if it was not for that invasion.

I do not want to bore you with the story of the invasion of Kuwait, as you all know it, but that invasion brought about the destruction of Iraq, the killing of 100s of 1000s of its people, and what is worse, it kept Saddam Hussein in place. Sanctions were imposed on the country, and instead of trying to ease the hardship of Iraqis, Saddam imposed his own sanctions on the people. He wanted to punish the 14 provinces, out of 18 Iraqi provinces, which rebelled against his brutal rule after the 1991 defeat.

For 5 long years, Saddam refused to cooperate with the UN, which wanted to introduce a system whereby Iraq could sell oil and buy food and medicine. In 1996, Saddam agreed to implement the Oil-For-Food programme. In the mean time Saddam kept building palaces for himself and his family, and celebrated his alleged birthday lavishly. Millions of dollars were spent on that every year, and people were forced to celebrate it. University lecturers were humiliated into holding candles and walking in the streets on Saddam’s birthday.

Since sanctions were imposed, Saddam embarked on building huge palaces for himself all over Iraq. Every palace costs hundreds of millions of dollars. At the same time he was lamenting the imposition of sanctions. Instead of working to alleviate the effects of sanctions, which were brought about by his irresponsible policies, he has used them to justify his oppression, punish those who oppose him, and blackmail the world.

You would think that after all these wars, killings and destruction, which Saddam inflicted on the innocent people of Iraq, he would learn from his mistakes and try to reconcile his people and the world. Not Saddam. Instead, he expanded his security apparatuses and increased his repression of the Iraqi people. New punishments have emerged. Cutting out the tongue of any one who utters a word against the president, cutting the ears, cutting the noses and cutting the hands of people for mere revenge, have become increasingly common occurrences. That may explain why he got 100% in the last ‘ presidential elections’.

Saddam knows that he is detested in the country and abroad. He threatens his people, his neighbours and the world at large with weapons of mass destruction. Saddam has broken every treaty he had signed and every pledge he has made – internally and externally. Why should he start now respecting agreements? It has always been the case that when he is weak, he signs agreements; but only to tear them up the moment he feels strong, under the pretext that they were ‘unjust’.

Saddam never hesitated when it came to attacking others, and he never thought twice about using chemical weapons. He has rarely been rational in taking decisions. It is obvious that such decisions as executing political opponents, bombing the Kurds with chemical weapons, invading Iran, annexing Kuwait, drying up the marshes, and attacking Israel in order to draw it into his conflict with the world, were not rationally made.
Fear of his weapons of mass destruction is justified, because Saddam is aggressive by nature. Many countries in the world have sophisticated weapons, but the likelihood that they use such weapons irrationally is minimal because the decision-making process is not dependent on one person. There are the checks and balances of democratic governments.

Saddam came to power through the most brutal violence, has kept it through the same method, and will never give it up unless he is forced by a military action. Many people say that Saddam was helped to power and armed by the West. If that is so, and in deed it is, there is now an opportunity to correct this tragic mistake, which has resulted in the destruction of Iraq, and the killing of two million Iraqis. The free world has a moral duty to free the Iraqi people.

It will require courage and determination to rid the world of a dangerous dictator, and free Iraq and the region of Saddam’s evil regime. Being anti-war alone would not stop Saddam from launching new wars and killing hundreds of thousands of people. The only way to stop him is to remove him from power.

Although Iraqis do not want another war, most of them recognise that Saddam won’t leave without the threat of force. It is in the interest of the western world to support democracy and freedom in the Arab world. It is the only effective weapon to fight back terrorism.

Terrorism emerged as a direct result of dictatorship, repression, and human right abuses. If the causes are removed, terror will disappear form our lives forever. Removing Saddam can be the beginning of a new peaceful and stable world. I have a dream.

 Speech given at the Chemical Building Theatre, Queen Mary College, University of London, at the invitation of the Students’ Society on Thursday 6th March 2003. Photo: Labour MP Barry Gardener introducing Hamid Alkifaey at a previous event in Wembley Town Hall