Saddam's legacy of fear lives on

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Saddam Hussein was dead, but his legacy was more alive than ever.

As Iraqis across the country awoke to the news that the former dictator had been hanged, the bitter remains of his rule defined their responses.

For Shiites, long oppressed, it was a moment of intense release.

"This chapter of Iraqi history is over," said Mouwaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser, speaking on national television early Saturday. "Let us forget it and live with each other."

Sunni Arabs were skeptical. After three years of grinding violence and abuses by the Shiite government security forces, trust has all but fallen away, and few feel genuinely represented by the government. Most, in fact, are afraid of it.

"I'm not part of their world," said Yusra Abdul Aziz, a teacher in the Sunni Arab enclave of Mansour. "They are not speaking about Iraq. They are speaking about themselves."

Their reactions showed just how far Iraqis have drifted apart in the three years since Saddam's capture. And while he has long faded from relevance in the life of everyday Iraq, in many ways the country is living the legacy that he built.

The new Iraq appears capable of inflicting only more of the abuse it suffered for so long, perpetuating it with overwhelming brutality. People disappear in the night. Bodies with drill holes surface in trash heaps. Government forces moonlight as killing squads.

As vicious as he was, Saddam also held the country firmly together. Beyond military control, there was a subtle social glue: Iraqis of all sects loved to hate Saddam together. Now that he is gone, Shiites are afraid to joke with Sunnis about him, and Sunnis feel they are being blamed for his crimes.

Ahmed Hillu, a 32-year-old tailor whose suits hung on the walls of his narrow shop in Sadr City like a mute chorus, recalled watching from a hiding spot in an empty area in northeastern Baghdad as elite members of Saddam's regime gunned down large groups of Shiite opposition members. He was 6 at the time. That area, an old dam called Qasr Attash, is now one of the most common body-dumping grounds for Shiite militias.

Saddam spared almost no one in his murderous ways, but Shiites were particularly abused as a group. That systematic mistreatment seems to have left lasting scars that carry through to the current day, infusing neophyte leaders with an uncompromising and emotional approach to running things.

"When they put the rope on his neck, did he remember how many innocent people he killed?" said Husam Abdul Hussein Jasim, a watch store owner in Sadr City, on whose wall were swinging synchronized pendulums. "He's like a Satan."