Saddam Hussein as the Lesser of Two Evils

By Lisa Beyer

The old man who sat before a steaming cup at the Baghdad Coffee House in the heart of Bahrain's Indian bazaar was of an age where he no longer cared that government informers might overhear him. "Listen to me," he demanded, urgently tapping a Westerner on the knee. "Any time an independent Arab leader looks strong," he boomed, "the West beats him down. They did it with Nasser. They have run a vilification campaign against Assad. And look what they did to Arafat. It dates from the Crusades, and it will never change." The man, a retired printer, paused. "Saddam will not win this war," he said, "but we hope he gives the West a hard time trying."

The Bahraini was expressing a point of view echoed elsewhere in the Arab world. As war in the gulf looks ever more probable, the uneasiness and frustration of ordinary citizens are beginning to bubble over. The looming prospect of battle has sobered some of the more exuberant supporters of Saddam Hussein's bold defiance of the West, yet in certain quarters -- especially in Jordan, Yemen, the Sudan and the Maghreb -- his following remains strong.

More important, to be anti-Saddam is not to be pro-West. Many Arabs who condemn Saddam for seizing Kuwait also consider the foreign presence in the gulf an equal if not greater abomination. "Even if Saddam was wrong," says a senior official of a Tunis-based Arab organization, "we can't allow the United States to simply come and destroy a brother Arab state."

Such sentiments are deeply rooted in the past. Arab humiliations at the hands of Europeans, most recently during the colonial period, have given rise to a visceral antipathy among many Arabs to any involvement by outsiders in their affairs. This is aggravated by the fact that the main foreign player in the region now is the U.S., the No. 1 supporter of Israel. "In the minds of certain groups," acknowledges a member of the Saudi royal family, "the U.S. is the devil incarnate."

Washington's motives in the gulf are frequently dismissed in the Arab world as contemptible. High-minded dissertations by U.S. officials on the sovereignty of nations and the sanctity of the new world order evoke smirks in the suqs of such cities as Algiers, Tunis, Damascus and Amman. "All the Americans want is control of the oil," says Abdul Hamid Sadiq, a Syrian archaeologist. Principle, he adds, means nothing to a country that "ignored the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the occupation of Jerusalem and the daily maiming and killing of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and West Bank."

It does not help Washington's cause that Desert Shield aims to secure and restore monarchies that many Arabs consider anachronistic. Even in the gulf states, where the vast majority of citizens are grateful for protection from Saddam's hordes, there is some bitterness on this point. "What does the West think?" asks a retired Omani municipal worker living in Bahrain. "That we want to be servants to these corrupt ruling families forever?"

Washington's future designs are also suspect. Many Arabs fear that the U.S. and other foreign powers will exploit the Middle East's current instability to establish a new, permanent foothold in the region. Some believe that the West actually provoked the crisis to create this opportunity. One far-fetched theory has it that the U.S. and perhaps other allies advised the Emir of Kuwait to ignore Iraq's demands for economic reparations and then gave Saddam a wink and a nod to encourage him to overrun the country. Says a Bahraini civil servant: "There is no doubt in any of my friends' minds that the Americans set the gulf up."

In Saudi Arabia, the country that appeared to be next on Saddam's hit list, support for the alien troops is conditional. The vast majority of Saudis are relieved that the foreigners are protecting them from attack. But most people do not want to have their territory used as the launch pad for an offensive push into Kuwait or Iraq, an option that is clearly under consideration within the Bush Administration and the Saudi royal family.

Naturally, Saddam is getting some of the blame for the perilous state of affairs. The vicious plundering of Kuwait has hardened the views of Saddam's detractors, who are many in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the gulf states particularly. Asks Gehad al-Farnawany, an Egyptian housewife: "How can he claim to be a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad and then ((send his troops)) $ into houses to rape women?" Though Saddam's support remains firmest among Palestinians, whose frustrated cause he has trumpeted, some are appalled by the tales of Palestinian guest workers who have returned home from Kuwait and Iraq. "His men beat me, spat on me and robbed me of all my savings," says Muhammad al-Arabi, an agricultural worker who recently left Iraq penniless for Cairo.

Still, the systematic destruction of Kuwait does not arouse great outrage or sympathy among all Arabs; the poor are particularly unmoved. The Kuwaitis, especially the ruling royals, are regarded by many Arabs as undeservedly rich, self-indulgent and spoiled. Nor has Saddam's seizure of foreign hostages prompted much indignation. Saddam's sins are constantly measured against those of the Israeli leaders, who, Arabs point out, regularly detain Palestinians for no good cause. So, goes the popular logic, the hostage score is a draw.

Whatever his transgressions, many Arabs believe that at this stage in the conflict, Saddam's belligerence is justified. "You have to understand the Arab psychology," says Sari Nusseibeh, a Palestinian professor of philosophy from East Jerusalem. "What Saddam has done is wrong, but we cannot condemn Iraq for standing up to Western military intervention." In other words, Saddam was wrong to invade Kuwait, and the West was wrong to get involved. But now Saddam is right in standing up to the West's wrong.

Such reasoning gives a glimpse into the source of Saddam's powerful appeal among ordinary Arabs. "Saddam's support, let's face it, is very, very large," says Ghassan Salame, professor of Middle Eastern politics at the University of Paris. "It's not that the man is personally charismatic. It's that he's viewed as someone who is shaking an unacceptable status quo." Even in Syria, whose authoritarian President Hafez Assad despises Saddam and tolerates no dissent, the Iraqi has a following. "Saddam is a hero in Syria because he is breaking the head of the U.S.," says Issam al-Lahham, a rug merchant in Damascus. "He is sticking his finger up its nose. He has made America crazy."

With Arab instincts already so conditioned against the West, the outbreak of shooting could bring a cataclysmic reaction from the Arab masses. Terrorist attacks on Western targets are a likelihood. Internal challenges to Arab governments supporting Desert Shield are a possibility. "A military victory against Iraq will be difficult to handle," says Francois Burgat, an Arabist at the Center for Economic, Legal and Social Research Studies in Cairo. "Any regime that shares in the defeat and humiliation of another Arab army will find itself in a very bad situation." Even if he is trounced, Saddam Hussein may yet shake the status quo.

With reporting by Aileen Keating/Bahrain and James Wilde/Damascus, with other bureaus