Shadow of Saddam lives on in Iraq

BAGHDAD: Dozens of Iraqis crowding a Baghdad street fought to glimpse the red-haired man in a glass coffin, hoping to witness the end of a long-feared member of Saddam Hussein’s regime.
The furore over the dead man — who might be Saddam’s deputy Izzat al-Duri, though his identity has still not been determined — is yet another sign of the influence the dictator exercises in Iraq more than 12 years after his overthrow.
Saddam and his Baath party still haunt Iraqi politics, where links to the former regime can wreck careers, as well as battlefields across Iraq where his former officers have played major roles in militant groups fighting the new government.
Pro-government forces killing the man who may be Duri was “no less important” than the 2006 execution of Saddam himself, said Sheikh Jassem al-Jazairi, an official in the Ketaeb Hizbullah militia, which handed over the body to the government.
Shouts of “Death to Baathists” accompanied the body’s departure in an anonymous white van after the chaotic handover, which was guarded by dozens of heavily armed masked militiamen backed by Saddam’s nemesis Iran.
The Baath took power in a 1968 coup, dominating the country until the overthrow of Saddam’s regime by the 2003 US-led invasion.
But “the Baath is still active, and everyone who says the Baathists are finished and the Baath party is over defies the truth”, said Ihsan al-Shammari, a political science professor at Baghdad University.
“A symbol like Saddam or Izzat al-Duri may disappear, but many of the Baath leaders are still active and are trying to overthrow the democratic political system in Iraq,” Shammari said.
Baathists have played a major role in insurgent groups that battled US-led forces and later those of the new Iraqi government, and reportedly in the Islamic State (IS) Jihadist group which led an offensive that overran large parts of Iraq last year.