IRAQ Dissenter dares to tell his side

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
BAGHDAD -- Over lamb chops in a busy Baghdad restaurant, Ahmed looks around nervously, falling silent when anyone comes close enough to listen.
Dining with a Westerner can raise suspicions. Even now, after decades under the rule of President Saddam Hussein, Ahmed fears he will make the mistake that will bring the authorities to his door.
"If you are arrested," Ahmed said, "your life is over."
Ahmed is no subversive. "That is not my character," he said. But he does resist quietly, carving out a small circle of freedom in which his family and a few friends can say what they really think about Iraq's "beloved leader."
Within this circle, they mock Saddam, remember the dead and the disappeared who have run afoul of his government, and hope aloud for something better to come along.
Ahmed is a pseudonym for an Iraqi businessman and father of three who lives in Baghdad. Even speaking to a foreign reporter about life here entails risk. But at a time of international scrutiny of Iraq and its government, Ahmed agreed to provide an intimate picture of his life during the reign of Saddam.
Ahmed's candor reflects a growing willingness among some Iraqis to speak out. For a few days earlier this month, after a general amnesty for Iraqi prisoners, scores of Iraqis approached the Ministry of Information in Baghdad and a police facility on the city's outskirts, demanding to know why their relatives had not emerged from prison. The demonstrators mixed their complaints with praise for Saddam, but such protests are unprecedented in this city.
A quiet dissent
During more than seven hours of interviews, Ahmed never mentions Saddam's attempts to acquire biological, chemical or nuclear weapons, but he talks at length about life under Saddam's dictatorship.
Some specifics of Ahmed's account cannot be confirmed, including allegations that the government has imprisoned and executed people known to him. Attempts to verify such details would likely compromise Ahmed's anonymity and safety. But his assertions are consistent with the accounts from exiled dissidents, human-rights organizations and scholars.
He was interviewed without the presence of Ministry of Information "guides" with whom foreign journalists in Iraq are required to work.
Ahmed seemed most at ease driving a reporter around Baghdad at night. His vehicle offered privacy. He seemed certain that it wasn't bugged. On the road, speaking his mind about the government, he seemed to breathe more freely.
Ahmed has a narrow, oval-shaped face and close-set eyes. He combs his thinning black hair over his balding head and wears a trim, slightly graying mustache. He doesn't stand out. He wants to escape notice, to be an innocuous "gray man."
But he has lived this way a long time, maybe too long. "You can do that for a temporary period, but what about your whole life?" he asked. "You can't. You get fed up. You make mistakes."
Under scrutiny
A few years ago, he found that he was being searched intensively every time he left or arrived in the country; his work demands frequent travel. Security officials were leafing through every document in his possession, unpacking his luggage item by item, and threatening to confiscate his laptop to read the contents of its hard drive.
A friend in the security services confirmed Ahmed's suspicion -- his security file contained an instruction to search him carefully, perhaps because someone had submitted a negative report about him. Perhaps he had said the wrong thing, seemed disloyal, made a mistake.
This time a bribe cleaned up the file. But Ahmed worries that he has moved one step closer to arrest. What happens next time? What if money won't be enough?
Ahmed was a teenager when the Iraqi Baath Party seized power in 1968, ending a decade of frequent coups d'etat that followed the 1958 overthrow of a British-imposed monarchy. The party touted socialist economic principles and made broad appeals to Arab unity and renaissance.
But the immediate goals of its leaders, which included the young Saddam Hussein, were political vengeance and consolidation. The party persecuted communists, those loyal to a competing pan-Arab leader, members of the country's small Jewish community, and even dissident Baathists. Many were accused of spying for Israel or Iran.
Some were hanged in public, others shot dead and strung up. Ahmed remembers that year because he went to Baghdad's Liberation Square to see the bullet-ridden corpses for himself. He describes the scene dispassionately; the faction's threat was still personally distant.
Crackdown on group
But in the early 1970s, during his first year at university, Ahmed was "in touch" -- not "involved," he emphasized -- with an Islamic-oriented political group.
One day, members of the group began to disappear. Most were jailed for several months and then released. Some were killed. The hand of the faction, which by now had Saddam as its behind-the-scenes strongman, had nearly grasped Ahmed.
Ahmed's parents took steps to dodge the crackdown, seeking to protect their two sons from arrest. He and his family are Shiite Muslims, as are the majority of Iraqis. But because of the divide-and-rule policies of the country's Ottoman and then British overlords, the Sunni Arab minority has dominated the politics of modern Iraq. The secular Baath party has never tolerated Shiite political activity aimed at promoting an Islamic state.
The family moved away from their predominantly Shiite neighborhood. They also burned their books -- anything political, philosophical or religious. "We shrunk ourselves back," he said.
During this time, just as he was deciding on a career, Ahmed realized that surviving the government would be his life's most severe challenge. But he also saw that survival did not have to mean support.
Steering clear
While at university, Ahmed was advised to join the Baath party to win permission to study abroad. He refused and stayed in Iraq. "I didn't want to be used against my friends, my family," he said, referring to the intentions of party leaders. "They want to use you; they want you to be their eyes."
After earning a master's degree in 1976, Ahmed completed 18 months of compulsory military service. Then he found another way to reject the government: He declined to work for the government and found a job in the Baghdad office of a foreign company. As in many developing countries, joining the bureaucracy in Iraq is considered a path to a secure and prestigious future. But Ahmed knew he would never advance to a senior position without becoming a Baathist. He also thought working for a foreign company would allow him a greater measure of privacy and autonomy. It did, but not right away.
In 1979, Saddam became president and quickly led Iraq into a bloody, eight-year war of attrition with Iran. During the 1980s, Ahmed spent an additional 71/2 years in the army.
Shortly after Ahmed was forcibly called up in 1982, an army officer suggested that he join the party. If not, the officer said, Ahmed would be sent to the front. A small opportunity to defy the government had presented itself. "What," replied Ahmed, "are all those people up there defending the country not party members?" The officer seemed nonplused at his impertinence and told him to shut up.
Ahmed says he spent five wasted years at the front but never had to fight the Iranians. In 1988, when the cease-fire was announced, he and his comrades emptied their rifles into the air in celebration.
The conflict was pointless, he said. "The only effect of the war was dead bodies." Iran acknowledged that nearly 300,000 people died in the war; estimates of the Iraqi dead range from 160,000 to 240,000.
Gulf War
The suffering continued with Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the ensuing Gulf War. United Nations sanctions paralyzed the economy -- and the Iraqi branch of Ahmed's company -- until the government agreed in 1996 to a U.N. program that would allow it to use oil money to buy food and medicine, begin rebuilding the country and pay war reparations.
Ahmed began to have more to do at the office.
Because of the U.N. oil-for-food program, business is good now. But survival demands accepting the intrusions of the regime.
Ahmed suspects his international phone calls are monitored; he knows his e-mails are read by the authorities. He once complained to the state-run Internet service provider that his messages were taking days to reach their recipients. An official advised him to write more simply, presumably to speed the work of the intelligence agents vetting Ahmed's e-mail.
With President Bush threatening to depose Saddam, Ahmed has begun to consider an American intervention in Iraq's affairs, one that might end Saddam's rule. Would he support the United States in such a war?
The quandary pains him. "This is the critical question," he said, rubbing his eyes and forehead. "We want change but we want it a different way." He is skeptical about the aftermath -- the prospect of a U.S. occupation followed by the imposition of a leadership made up of members of the exiled Iraqi opposition.