Iraq's two contrasting birthdays

By Jim Muir
BBC News, Baghdad

Saddam Hussein's birthdays used to be public holidays

There were two important birthdays in Iraq in recent days.

The overthrown President, Saddam Hussein, celebrated - if that's the word - his 68th anniversary, but in captivity, held by the Americans at a jail near Baghdad, following his capture nearly 18 months ago.

And Iraq also saw the actual birth - after a long, hard labour and many last-minute complications - of the government that is replacing him, the first to be freely elected since his downfall two years ago.

In his latter years in power, Saddam Hussein's birthday was a major national occasion.

The former leader reportedly writes poetry nowadays

It was a public holiday. There were fireworks over the Tigris in the evening, and decorations and celebrations at Baath Party and government offices everywhere.

Schoolchildren, kitted out in gleaming new clothes, were bussed in to the presidential palace to be kissed and patted by Saddam Hussein, resplendent in a white suit - or was it, perhaps, one of his many rumoured doubles?

But the gigantic birthday cakes were real enough.

Saddam Hussein may have allowed himself a wry smile at the memories, as he spent his 68th birthday locked in his small, bare room in an American jail near Baghdad airport.

It is unlikely he had any birthday treats. He is not allowed to watch television or read newspapers.

Iraqi officials say he has taken to reading novels and writing very bad poetry.

New leader

But by all accounts, he was allowed to watch TV, or at least a recording, for a special occasion just several weeks earlier.

Iraq forces are frequently targeted in attacks

It was the inauguration of the man who has succeeded him as President of the Iraqi Republic, Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani.

For more than five decades, Mr Talabani had been active in the Kurdish insurgency against Saddam Hussein's government and those before it.

The two men were locked in a fateful struggle that was not always hostile.

In 1991, I remember being with Mr Talabani and his peshmerga fighters in his refuge at a ruined school in a ruined village in northern Iraq.

It was just after the Kurds had risen against Saddam Hussein in the wake of his Kuwait adventure.

The Baghdad forces struck back. Almost the entire Kurdish population fled into the mountains and the peshmerga stayed behind to hold off the Iraqi army.

One night, Mr Talabani vanished and nobody would tell me where he'd gone. Then he suddenly appeared on Iraqi TV, kissing Saddam Hussein on the cheeks.

Far from feeling betrayed, his fighters danced and sang. They thought this must mean the war was over. It wasn't. But it was worth trying.

'No death warrant'

Now, Saddam Hussein has gone and Jalal Talabani is president in his place.

Mr Rumsfeld met with Saddam Hussein recently, Iraq's media say

I asked him how he thought Saddam would have felt, watching his inauguration.

He said he didn't know, but he thought he must be feeling very sorry, because he had made many mistakes and lost all of Iraq.

Although scores of thousands of Kurds were killed by the Baathist regime, Mr Talabani, a human rights lawyer, says he will not personally sign Saddam's death warrant, though he won't pardon him either.

It is not known whether Saddam Hussein was allowed to watch on TV the birth of the democratically-elected government that was approved by the new parliament on his birthday last Thursday.

If he was, he would have noted that it is the Shia and Kurdish communities, which he suppressed so ruthlessly, that have taken over. His once-powerful Sunni minority has been largely sidelined.

But he may have taken some comfort from the obvious difficulties the Shia prime minister has had in putting together a national unity government that would include the Sunnis.

Bizarrely, he had to leave seven ministerial positions empty, hoping to fill them very soon with credible Sunni figures.

'Rumsfeld's offer'

The very next day, Saddam Hussein may also have heard the extraordinary series of car bomb explosions which greeted the first day of the new government and highlighted the huge challenge facing it.

They also reinforced the conclusion drawn a few days earlier by the top American military official in Washington - that the insurgency is as strong today as it was a year ago.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also said it would be the Iraqis who would defeat the insurgency, and that the struggle must involve political and economic elements as well - in other words, hearts and minds.

That's why it is so important for credible Sunnis to be drawn in to the new Iraqi government, because it is in the Sunni community that the insurgency is rooted - whether it is the strand made up of former regime loyalists or the radical Islamic jihadis, some of them from outside.

It is the Jihadis who steal a lot of the limelight with their spectacular suicide attacks. But security officials believe networks of Saddam Hussein's loyalists are doing the bulk of the damage.

So an Arabic newspaper report that also came out on Saddam Hussein's birthday may not have been as fanciful as it seemed.

It said that on a recent visit to Baghdad, Mr Rumsfeld secretly met Saddam Hussein, and offered him a deal: his life would be spared and he could go into exile, if he made a broadcast calling for a halt to the insurgency.

Saddam Hussein's reported response: absolute rejection and a demand for an immediate American withdrawal and war reparations.

I haven't seen the report denied, though doubtless it has been. But given the situation, it would have been a logical offer to make. Stranger things have happened.