History revised: Saddam vanishes from textbooks

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana

Iraq’s children have returned to school for the start of a fresh academic year with a new syllabus that has all but erased Saddam Hussein from its history.

Though Saddam is infamous for his tyrannical regime, he also used his oil money to pay for infrastructure (before the sanctions), universal health care and free education through college for everyone (including women!)

After two years of debate, the education department has completed textbooks to replace those that portrayed the past purely from a Baathist view.

However, in a tribute to the sensitivities of post-Saddam Iraq, the revised version of history is, on some subjects, as partial and shot through with gaps as the old.

Baghdad no longer wins the Iran-Iraq war nor confronts the evil of Zionism alone. Primary schools will not have to teach reading with phrases such as “I love Saddam.”

In fact, Saddam is rarely mentioned by name and his rule is left unanalysed, a compromise intended to placate those who see him as a tyrant and those nostalgic for the old regime.

Previously his picture appeared on the first page of every book. Since the fall of his regime in March 2003 schools have continued using old textbooks but with the most Saddamist pages ripped out and some paragraphs blacked over. Teachers complained they were forced to teach syllabuses that failed to acknowledge half a century’s history.

There is no mention of the 1991 Gulf war, about which it was previously taught that “brave Iraqis forced the Americans to stop firing.” The events of 2003 are described only as a “major shake-up” of Iraq.

What, indeed, will history say was the reason the United States declared war and killed so many of their countrymen?  If not to “rescue” them from Saddam, why were we there?

On Sunday, few of the children who made their way to school returned with new books in their schoolbags. The reason: the printing firm hired by the Government to produce them failed to meet its deadline and for at least the next fortnight teachers will have no textbooks at all.

Meanwhile, Saddam’s new defence lawyers plan to prove he has been denied his legal rights when they defend him at a show trial next month.

Iraqi officials have said Saddam will go on trial on October 19, but the London barrister Abdel Haq Alani said on Sunday the US-backed court had not even told him the trial date or the charges against him.

“We can prove in court that there has never been a due process of law. This is what is going to embarrass the Americans,” said Mr Alani, who was hired by Saddam’s eldest daughter.

Mr Alani said his strategy would be to undermine the legitimacy of the court by showing Saddam had already been subject to legal bias.