Iraqi Exiles Say No to Saddam

Oct. 15, 2002 -- The last time Ramadhan al-Badran publicly opposed Saddam Hussein was with a gun in the reed-filled marshes along the Tigris River in southern Iraq, where he heroically, but hopelessly, attempted to resist the Iraqi army. This time, he's taken to the ballot.

A resistance fighter in the doomed Shiite uprising in southern Iraq after the Gulf War, al-Badran was in Washington over the weekend to "vote out" Saddam in a symbolic, long-distance participation in today's real referendum on the Iraqi presidency.

After weeks of a colorful, state-sponsored campaign urging Iraqis to "show their love" for their president on Oct. 15, millions of Iraqi citizens today are expected to cast their ballots in a referendum to endorse Saddam for another seven-year term.

But in a number of cities across the United States and Europe, Iraqi exiles are attempting to show their love for "real democracy" in mock referendums to say "no" to Saddam.

A resident of Orange County, Calif., 37-year-old al-Badran was so enthused about the opportunity to express his opposition to the Iraqi dictator, he brought his wife and kids — including his 5-day-old son — along with him to Washington.

Ousting the strongman who has ruled Iraq for the past 23 years is not that easy of course, and al-Badran isn't kidding himself. But thousands of miles away from his home city of Basra in southern Iraq, al-Badran insists he's only doing his bit.

"It is symbolic of course, we don't actually expect to oust Saddam," he says. "It's just that we are a part of Iraqi society and we've all been hurt by him, one way or another. And today is a different time. It's the first time Iraqis can see some attention being paid to them by the international community, and we are just trying to demonstrate our support."

Organized by a coalition of Iraqi human rights groups and pro-democracy campaigners, the mock referendum saw Iraqi exiles in five American and eight European cities set up mock voting boxes to collect ballots.

By Sunday night, out of a total of 2,152 mock votes cast in the United States, 2,129 voted "no" to Saddam, 19 put in a "yes" vote and four had no opinion. Iraqi exiles who could not make it to the mock referendum voted electronically at the Web site www.notosaddam.com.

‘It’s a Joke’

Back in Iraq, the results of the referendum are expected to be starkly different. In the last referendum on the Iraqi presidency, held in 1995 — a poll that had no opposing candidates or independent observers — Saddam won 99.96 percent of the vote.

Iraqi exiles, however, dismiss such results. "It's a joke," says Ala Fa'ik, an Iraqi-American who helped organized the protest vote in Detroit over the weekend. "Everybody has to go out and vote for him. You don't have a choice — or your rations are canceled."

Growing up in southern Iraq, where most of the population belongs to the Shiite sect of Islam, al-Badran says he never had any illusions about what Saddam's Ba'ath Party officials were capable of doing. Shiites, he says, were subjected to both political and economic discrimination in order to keep them in line with the Sunni-dominated power base in Baghdad.

Relatives and neighbors often disappeared into Saddam's notorious prisons, sometimes never to be seen again, he says. And during the crippling eight-year Iran-Iraq war, he watched as thousands of coffins on speeding taxis made their way from the border to the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala for grim burials. Iraq, though rich with oil, was convulsed by wartime hardships.

By the time Saddam invaded neighboring Kuwait in 1990, al-Badran and his friends were having no truck with the Iraqi dictator's ambitions.

So, when the call for Shiite resistance came after Saddam's defeat, al-Badran joined up.

Trapped in the Marshes

Those were the early days of the resistance, when Saddam's regime was still reeling from its defeat by the allied forces. But weeks later, Saddam gathered his loyal forces and the might of the Iraqi military hit the inexperienced, inadequately armed Shiite fighters.

For al-Badran and his comrades, it was weeks of desperate resistance as they fled into the marshes east of the Tigris and were surrounded by Saddam's forces.

"They came behind us, to the left and to the right of us. In front of us was the river and the city [of Basra]," al-Badran told ABCNEWS.com. "We couldn't do anything — we were just boys, some high schoolboys. For four days, we stayed in this siege and tried to fight as they came closer and closer and closer."

Luckily for al-Badran and his friends, they managed to make their way to an army camp, where they found Iraqi soldiers' uniforms. Donning the uniforms, they crossed the enemy lines back into Basra, then fled for the refugee camps in neighboring Saudi Arabia.

Avoiding History’s Mistakes

That was 11 years ago, and if al-Badran feels betrayed because U.S.-led coalition forces did not support the revolts in spring of 1991, he's not complaining.

But these days, as Washington's war drums beat louder and the Bush administration talks about a "regime change" in Iraq, he says he does not want to see history repeat itself.

"The international community should have stood up for us a long time ago, but it's never too late," he says. "We appeal for help to bring freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people — they have suffered enough."

Although he still has family back home in Basra, al-Badran supports a U.S.-led military strike on Iraq. "The Iraqi people know what war looks like," he says. "When civilians get hurt, it's for two reasons. One, it's a mistake — and mistakes are very rare. Two, the regime itself gets civilians killed by putting them near military sites."

Opposition Groups Come Together

In his desire to have Saddam overthrown by an outside force, al-Badran is joined by some of the largest Iraqi exile groups that have, in the past few months, been working to come up with a unified platform.

In August, leaders from six opposition groups, ranging from secular groups to Kurdish groups, met with State Department and Pentagon officials in Washington to discuss the Bush administration's policy of ousting Saddam.

It was a historic attempt to bring together diverse groups that many experts have accused of being more interested in fighting each other than Saddam's regime.

The two Kurdish parties, the KDP (Kurdistan Democratic Party) and PUK (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan), for instance, have had bitter rifts in the past, including a series of violent clashes between their fighters, or pershmergas, in the mid-1990s.

Iraqi Shiite Islamic interests are represented by the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution, an umbrella organization of various Shiite groups that is currently based in the Iranian capital of Tehran and is sponsored by Iran.

But many secular Iraqi Shiites, as well as the minority Sunnis, not to mention Washington, are not keen to see an Islamic organization dominate a future Iraqi government.

Among the Kurdish parties, the PUK's Jalal Talabani also has close ties to Tehran and has been known to cooperate with the regime in Baghdad against the rival KDP.

The most prominent organization is the INC (Iraqi National Congress), an umbrella group that includes the KDP, the PUK and the monarchist CMM (Constitutional Monarchy Movement). It is headed by Ahmad Chalabi, a U.S.-educated, wealthy Shiite exile.

But while Chalabi is an old hand at organizing the Iraqi exile community and has had a long — if sometimes rocky — relationship with the State Department, some experts believe he lacks grass-roots reach inside Iraq.

Trying to Avoid a Bloodbath

For the moment, however, the groups seem to have agreed on the rhetoric for a future Iraqi state. "We are committed to a pluralist, democratic future government and the establishment of a transitional constitution that will establish law and order and all aspects of civil society," says Entifadh Qanbar, a Washington-based INC spokesman.

But as the Bush administration works on its plans for a post-Saddam Iraq, experts worry that in the immediate aftermath of a regime fall in Baghdad, there could be a period of score-settling and bloodletting.

"Given the problems with the Iraqi leadership, there is a very serious potential problem of retribution," says Phebe Marr, an Iraqi specialist and former instructor at the National Defense University. "It could get very messy."

Amid reports that Bush is considering an occupation of Iraq along the lines of a post-World War II Japan, Marr warns that in the event of an ouster, the United States would have to infuse considerable support in nation building.

National reconstruction is expected to top the agenda at a meeting of Iraqi opposition groups later this month in Brussels, Belgium. At the meeting, the leaders are expected to discuss the recommendations provided by what is being called the Future of Iraq project, a State Department endeavor comprising about 15 working groups that have been discussing issues as diverse as the justice system, war-crime issues, democracy and federalism as well as economic and social reconstruction.

‘I Come From the Roots’

But while experts and opposition leaders in exile frenetically work out the fate of millions of Iraqis in meeting rooms across Europe and America, many Iraqi exiles are not so sure if they are being represented in the talks.

"I come from the roots and I feel these guys come from the other end," says al-Badran. "Do I think these groups represent me? Yes and no. Yes, because we're all committed to a change in the regime and democracy for the people. No, because they have been created for their own ideology and they don't 100 percent represent all of the Iraqi community."

Some Iraqi-Americans who oppose a military campaign against Iraq are upset with the pro-war stance adopted by a number of opposition groups in exile.

"If they want a change in Iraq, why don't they go there and change things for themselves?" asks Kaduri al Kaysi, an Iraqi-American from Bloomfield, N.J., who recently returned from a humanitarian mission in Iraq with the New York-based International Action Center.

"These [opposition] groups, they have lived outside Iraq for 20, 25 years, no one's been there since," he says. "I'd like to see change too, but not this way. These people, they live in the U.S. and Europe. They don't know how the people are suffering."

Experts believe that only three organizations — the two Kurdish parties and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution — have grass-roots reach inside Iraq, a prospect that has raised concerns in Washington circles.

But despite his reservations about some of the opposition groups, al-Badran believes the time has come to put their differences behind them.

"We are just regular people, we don't belong to any political party," he says. "But we must come together, because we need each other."