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Times change in Tikrit

In 2002, palace was off limits to reporters covering the election - now they're told it's not safe to leave it

BY MATTHEW MCALLESTER | STAFF CORRESPONDENT

January 28, 2005

TIKRIT, Iraq - Etched into the pastel plasterwork, high above the men sitting around a huge conference table, were the Arabic initials of Saddam Hussein, the man whose home this was two years ago. The cavernous room was inside one of the 19 vast palaces the now-imprisoned leader built for himself in his hometown.

Translating for the American general chairing the meeting was one of Hussein's former army brigadier generals. To the American's right was another of Hussein's generals, this one proudly noting that he had fought the Americans until the last day of the invasion in 2003. He is now the deputy governor of the province that includes Tikrit.

The main topic of discussion: Sunday's elections. Imperfectly, but remarkably, democracy is about to come to Tikrit.

It was a very different Tikrit that greeted busloads of foreign journalists on Oct. 15, 2002, the last time this reporter visited Hussein's storied hometown of 130,000 people, mainly Sunni Muslims who were treated with generosity by their leader. That was voting day, too, and Hussein won 100-percent approval from his people to carry on as president for another seven years, his aides said.

On that day, ruling Baath Party officials herded journalists off the buses, into a hotel next to the palace compound for morning coffee and then off to a packed high school, where hundreds of semi-delirious Tikritis jostled to stuff their ballots into boxes, some piercing their thumbs to vote with their own blood.

It was clearly a show organized by the ruling Baath Party for the foreign press, and yet it was impossible to dismiss the feeling that some, or perhaps a lot, of the enthusiasm was real.

The whole day encapsulated the total control Hussein had over his country and, in its absurd absolutism - he won more "yes" votes than there were registered voters - a transparent mockery of his deluded rule.

"This referendum is very important because everybody in Iraq loves Saddam Hussein," explained an engineering student named Ali Hussein, 21, inside the school that day. "South, west, north, east, in every region. I don't think any person would write 'no.' It's impossible."

Then, Hussein's astonishing palace complex was just beyond a nearby wall and yet strictly off-limits to reporters. This week in another Tikrit trip for journalists organized by the government - this time the American government - the situation was inverted.

Because Iraq's roads are too dangerous now for foreigners to travel on, the American Embassy in Baghdad has been organizing daily helicopter rides to Iraqi cities so reporters can see for themselves how preparations for Sunday's elections are coming along.

Officials explained Wednesday morning to reporters waiting to be ferried in Black Hawk helicopters to Tikrit that on this trip, they would be permitted inside the palace complex that was forbidden two years ago, but not outside. It was too dangerous to leave the grounds, they said.

And so there were no meetings with potential voters, election workers or candidates - other than the appointed Iraqi officials who had been invited to the palace for their monthly meeting with Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste, commander of the 1st Infantry Division, which operates in four of Iraq's 18 provinces, including Salahadin, which includes Tikrit.

Evidence of preparations for the elections was, apart from the meeting, out of sight. According to those who had been outside the walls of the complex recently, the evidence was there, mainly in the form of heavily guarded schools being prepared as polling stations.

A coalition official who has been working closely with the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, the body overseeing the elections, said there were enough workers to manage the polling sites. They were safe, she said, because "thousands" of Iraqi security forces were protecting them.

Some schools, however, have been attacked recently, said Maj. Neal O'Brien, a spokesman for the 1st Infantry. Attacks on Iraqi security forces have been increasing in the past few weeks, he said, as have arrests of suspected insurgents in the area.

Former general Abdullah Hussein, Salahadin's deputy governor, estimated that 40 percent to 50 percent of registered voters in the province would cast ballots Sunday. The rest are unwilling or are too intimidated by insurgents determined to undermine the elections, he said. His own about-face, from fighting the Americans to meeting cordially with them, came when he saw Iraqis looting after the fall of the regime.

In October 2002, the general voted for Saddam Hussein twice, he said, grinning. "I was prepared for number three." But with the regime's fall, Abdullah Hussein saw the future now lay in trying to rebuild Iraq and bringing democracy to a land that had never known it, he said. He is running for election to the provincial council.

Former brigadier general Sa'ad Hariz, 48, a surgeon in Saddam Hussein's army, hated his president and, on that day in 2002, managed to sneak out of the voting line, he said. He now works as Batiste's translator.

It's a dangerous job, but Hariz is a smiling, unstoppable optimist. The insurgents' intimidation isn't preventing him from doing his own bit of campaigning for the small party - there are more than 100 names on the ballot - he supports. He has hundreds of posters at his home in town, he said, and he has managed to sneak about 20 out to friends or up onto walls.

It frustrates him that many people in Tikrit and elsewhere in the Sunni Triangle, the geographic heart of the insurgency, plan to boycott the election or feel too intimidated to vote.

"The people here don't realize that boycotting is just a way of not exercising their rights," he said, standing in another of the splendiferous and tasteless halls built for his former president.