IN his Soapbox article of June 19, Saros Kavina would have us believe that Saddam Hussein made "life intolerable for most of the population of Iraq".
Well, that was not my experience during my time in the country in 1982.
Iraqis are the most difficult Arab people to work with and will oppose most suggestions out of hand which may be the reason Saddam ruled with a rod of iron, especially since he came from the minority Sunni sect.
The people seemed quite content with their lot, financed by oil revenues. Those who wished to retire early could do so after working for 25 years. Retirement income was state funded and I saw an elderly chap dressed like a tramp pull a wad of Iraqi Dinars from his pocket when buying a side of beef in the local market.
As foreigners, my colleague and I weren't allowed to drive since in the event of an accident the foreigner was, by definition, in the wrong. So the Oil Ministry provided us with a Kurdish driver called Mustafa.
I believe the British missed a great opportunity to trade with Iraq at that time. The Iraqis liked British goods, Clarks shoes were in abundance and so too were Marks and Spencer's clothes with the St Michael labels crudely removed.
In Samara, one of their holy cities, we requested a beer and were told they didn't have any. Mustafa had a word with them and beer arrived but in porcelain beakers. We were told that in Samara, as a holy city, beer was officially banned so it was served in porcelain beakers so that people couldn't see what we were drinking.
In a Mosul supermarket, a Kurdish chap had his trolley stacked so high with boxes of beer he couldn't see over the top and was looking round the side. Mustafa said: "Kurdish people like beer." We also saw a lady in traditional dress pull her top open and put her baby on the breast while walking down the street.
Iraq was a real cosmopolitan mixture of people and habits. The Baghdad Observer was published in English and was a bit of a propaganda publication. It did not mention an attempt to kill Saddam at the Hotel Baghdad and nobody at the Baiji oil refinery or the Oil Ministry admitted to knowing anything about it. Our info came from the chaps working behind the bar in our hotel – a few of their friends worked as bar-tenders in the Hotel Baghdad.
That Saddam was a nasty piece of work there is no doubt, but it was the only way to hold together this tribal mixture of Arabic people. He was no threat to the West and he wanted to trade with the UK, US and Europe. Reading the press and seeing TV reports about Iraq now, I am convinced that most of the problems with Islamist extremism would never have occurred if Saddam Hussein had remained in control and I sincerely believe the world is less safe with his demise.
