The blue-domed memorial Saddam Hussein built in Baghdad to honour Baath party founder Michel Aflaq, a Syrian Christian who started the movement that dominated Iraq for decades and governs Syria today, has been turned into a shopping centre for U.S. soldiers.
Aflaq’s tomb, sitting at the centre of a vault adorned with Koranic verses and Arabesque designs, has been boarded up to make way for a barber shop, a store selling kitschy Iraq souvenirs, a pirate DVD vendor and a ring of other stores.

The new mall at Aflaq’s tomb, located on what is now a U.S. military base in central Baghdad, has thus sealed off a powerful symbol of the deep, and often strained, shared history between Iraq and Syria, one which is being tested in a new feud between Baghdad and Damascus.

Last month, Syria and Iraq recalled their ambassadors after Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki accused Syria of sheltering mebbers of the Iraqi Baath party whom he blames for backing attacks that killed around 100 people in Baghdad last month.

The Aug. 19 bombings marked a U-turn in the slow improvement of relations between Iraq and Syria, which for decades had stunted diplomatic relations. Since 2003, they have been at odds over U.S. and Iraqi accusations that Damascus has allowed foreign insurgents to stream across its border into Iraq.

Damascus refused Maliki’s demand that Syria turn over Iraqi Baathists believed to be behind the August attacks and accused Iraq of being ungrateful for its efforts to care for hundreds of thousands of Iraqi war refugees now living in Syria.

But Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must be unnerved by Maliki’s request at the United Nations for a formal inquiry into the attacks.

Shining a global spotlight on Syria for a second time - in addition to the U.N. tribunal into the death of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri - must be an uncomfortable prospect for Assad’s secretive, controlling regime.

The Iraq-Syria squabble also underscores the difficulties that Maliki, and Iraq generally, are having in dealing with powerful elements from the Iraqi Baath party, many living in Syria and Jordan, ahead of an election next year and beyond.

The United States has been pushing Maliki to bring a wider spectrum of Iraqis into efforts to reconcile the country, and has even held unilateral talks with former Baath party members who might one day try to take part in the political process.

But Maliki, a member of Iraq’s Shi’ite Arab majority marginalised under Saddam’s Sunni Arab-led regime, spent decades fighting the Baath party - at least in part from exile in Syria - and it will be hard for Sunnis or Shi’ites to easily forget the sectarian crimes of the last six years.

Which brings us back to Aflaq. Born in Damascus in 1910, Aflaq was educated in Paris before he helped found the Baath party in the 1940s, hoping to wed Arab culture with modern, secularist politics and a rejection of western imperialism.

The Baath party took over in Damascus in 1963, but Aflaq later fled to Baghdad and aligned himself with the rival Iraqi branch of the party. Saddam gave Aflaq, his ideological compass during 24 years in power, a place of honour in Iraq and named him the party’s general secretary. In 1989, Aflaq died in Paris - Saddam claimed he was secretly converted to Islam before his death - and he was buried in Baghdad.

During that time, Syria and Iraq spied on and used political dissidents as leverage against each other. What the two countries may share most now is the need to climb down from their latest neighbourly crisis. Assad’s government is reaching out to the West and Washington, under President Barack Obama, is seeking to engage Damascus for the first time in eight years.

Maliki, meanwhile, is facing pushback on his tough Syria stance from senior officials who could well turn out to be rivals in January’s national elections.

Struggling to stamp out a weakened but active insurgency, Maliki may also not want to risk anything that will further deteriorate security and undermine his main selling point - improved security - when voters go to the polls in January.

In 2003, when U.S. troops stormed into Baghdad and the statues of Saddam Hussein were pulled down, I think I must have been elated like many other Iraqis. Today, after the six years of bloodshed and slaughter set off by the U.S.  invasion, it’s hard to remember that feeling, which must have been one of enormous relief and joy.  Instead I am left with mixed emotions, grateful that the horror of Saddam’s rule ended but also deeply saddened by the horrors that followed his fall.

  I was eager to live in an Iraq without Saddam. I always hated his brutal rule of Iraq. He had taken us into wars in which hundreds of thousands of people were killed. Iraqis might also easily face death if they spoke out against Saddam or criticized his government. But if you kept your mouth shut and did not join any political party other than his now outlawed Baath party, you most probably would have been left alone.
    When Saddam was ousted by the invasion, and Baghdad fell to U.S. troops on April 9, 2003, I thought then that Iraq would finally be at peace after a long period of tough times. I never imagined what followed. It never crossed my mind that tens of thousands would be slaughtered simply for being a Shi’ite Muslim or a Sunni, the two Islamic sects in Iraq. Millions would flee their homes. And that bombs laid by insurgents would mow down thousands more.
    I sometimes wondered why did we get rid of Saddam if the killing continued, although for different reasons?
    The violence has begun to ebb, but still my relatives and friends are scattered to the winds.
    As an Iraqi journalist I have explored the social impact of war on my country. I have interviewed orphans and widows, and people whose limbs were blown off by bombs. It has left my heart full of more pain than I ever thought it could bear.
    I have also seen Iraq, amid the violence and fear, embrace new freedoms in politics and also in life: we have cellular telephones and satellite television, both restricted or banned in Saddam’s time. Saddam’s government had long lists of forbidden items.  One of them was satellite television. Anyone caught watching international news shows could be sent to prison for six months.
    It is clear to me that Iraqi society would not have been allowed to develop had Saddam remained in charge. Now despite the dark years that have passed, we can at least cling to hopes of better times. We have a parliament that we elect, and not one-man rule.
    This week, an Iraqi appeals court reduced to one year a three-year prison sentence handed to an Iraqi journalist who dared to throw his shoes at former U.S. President George W. Bush. I was impressed and had to raise my hat to the independence of the judiciary. I asked my parents what they thought the journalist’s sentence would have been had he committed the same offence during Saddam’s times. My mother answered: “He would not only have been executed without trial but all of his family would have been erased from the Iraqi map.”

By Waleed Ibrahim
Before making a recent speech, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said the following: “I was given a specific time in which to talk, so I have to be brief. I was informed that there are other people speaking after me.”

I was shocked. Did I just hear an Iraqi leader sound and act as if he were
an ordinary citizen who had to make way for others? Maybe he was joking, but he looked serious. Could this really be an Iraqi leader who wasn’t going to pontificate on and on to his heart’s content?

During the reign of the former president Saddam Hussein, who was deposed by the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, no one even dared to look at their watch while he was speaking. Saddam’s speeches
lasted at least an hour. Sometimes he would speak for many.

In that speech he gave a short while ago, the prime minister of the post-invasion Iraq, Maliki, spoke about federalism and autonomy for the provinces. He said he believed authority should lie with the central government, not with local executives, but he told Iraqis it was up to them to decide. “I am stating my opinion as an Iraqi person, the decision is yours,” he said in the televised speech.

His opinion? Not a diktat? When Saddam was around, people used to say: “When Saddam has spoken, Iraq has spoken.”

Maliki’s apparent deference to the Iraqi people gives some Iraqis hope that a country still reeling from car and suicide bomb attacks may be on a path toward eventual, durable democracy. A history of authoritarianism in the Middle East and Iraq’s legacy of dictatorship suggest it won’t be easy.

Maliki’s increasing assertiveness as violence drops across the country and U.S. forces prepare to withdraw from cities by the middle of next year and the country as a whole by the end of
2011, has given some of his political opponents — and partners — cause to wonder about his ambitions. But many Iraqis are hopeful.

Ali al-Sai’di, a 75 year-old Iraqi professor living in Jordan, fled abroad during Saddam’s reign. He fled Iraq again after Saddam was toppled and Iraq descended into a frenzy of sectarian bloodshed.
“It is a golden opportunity that is in our hands now … If democracy succeeds in Iraq, all these sacrifices will have been worthwhile,” he said.

Millions of Iraqis, still struggling with little electricity and the threat of violence, are undoubtedly sceptical. But many, cheered by the drop in violence and the prime minister’s tone and demeanour, say they are willing to give hope a chance.

I still remember what my father-in-law told me that fateful day in 2003, as we sat riveted by the sight of American soldiers on television pulling down the iconic statue of Saddam Hussein from its pedestal in a Baghdad square.

My father-in-law, whose brother had fled Iraq after being jailed for a few days after Baathists took the power in 1969 and who was never a Saddam supporter, was reflective.

“The only thing I fear is that a day will come in which we will regret Saddam’s fall,” he said.

During a visit a couple of months ago to Jordan, where my children, my wife and her parents have lived in self-exile for almost two years, I asked my father-in-law whether he had come to regret the end of that era.

“Unfortunately, yes,” he said, his voice filled with disappointment. Since then, I haven’t been able to drive his response from my mind.

For five years, I have been asking myself the same question: how did it come to be that Iraqis like my father-in-law, driven to live as an illegal immigrant outside Iraq, rue Saddam’s fall?

I can say without hesitation that many Iraqis share my father-in-law’s feelings. Not because they supported Saddam, although there are many who still do, but because the hopes of a better life that were born in April 2003 have been crushed.

Iraqis today spend a great deal of time comparing their lives today to the situation before 2003. It’s not a winning comparison. Unbelievable bloodshed, a lack of basic services from electricity to clean water, and widespread unemployment have made life hellish for many Iraqis.

It is true that there is less violence today than there was a year ago, but assassinations, bomb attacks and other grim acts still occur on a daily basis. All this casts a dark shadow on the security situation in Iraq and reminds us of the fragility of Iraq’s vaunted turnaround.

A conversation with any person on any Iraqi street will be one marked by disappointment. Anger is particularly sharp at Iraq’s political class, which is now locked in a fierce power struggle at the highest levels while most ordinary Iraqis struggle to simply get by.

Many Iraqis describe their regret for having voted in parliamentary polls in December 2005 for politicians they now feel have little regard for anything but their own advancement.

After waiting for decades for democracy, many believe it has brought nothing but chaos and bloodshed, the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis and the displacement of millions more. Three successive governments that have ruled since 2003 have delivered empty promises but little more.

These concerns and many others are what lie behind a growing desire for a strong, powerful ruler like Saddam. Many Iraqis believe that they need such a strongman to bring stability to this complicated country.

An Iraqi I once interviewed in Baghdad commented to me that the only thing that had changed in Iraq since 2003 was that we had replaced one dictator with many.

One of my Iraqi colleagues, who stayed here in Baghdad when his family fled to Amman three years ago, says we don’t have a future because there is no clear vision of what Iraq can become.

Even I, someone who makes a living from the printed word, cannot seem to find the right terms to describe how so many Iraqis came to long for Saddam.

With such unbelievable destruction and death across Iraq, it makes one wonder whether in 10 or 20 years we will be gazing up at statues of Saddam in an Iraqi square once more.

Iraq’s leaders have overcome many hurdles in their struggle to rebuild their country after the ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003.  But agreeing on the fate of the “ethnic tinderbox” of oil-producing Kirkuk is a particularly testing one.

Why has Kirkuk proven to be such an obstacle? For many, settling its fate seems to be an easy task.

The dispute largely revolves around Kurdish demands to incorporate the city into their autonomous northern Iraq region.  Arabs and Turkmens want the city to remain under the control of the Iraqi government as it has always been.

For an outsider the dispute might seem to be an administrative question of who will manage the city but Kirkuk’s fate has taken on national and regional dimensions since U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam. It has fuelled the ethnic conflict between Arabs
and Kurds and drawn in regional powers, especially neighbouring Turkey.

Kurds look at the city inhabited by Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens as their historic capital, while Arabs and Turkmen argue it equally belongs to them.

While Sunnis and Shi’ite Arabs are locked in a power struggle across the country, they are united in rejecting ceding the city to the Kurdish autonomous region.

But Kirkuk is more than a piece of real estate inheritance. The city sits on a sea of “black gold” — Iraq’s biggest oil field, which has become more lucrative with crude prices above $100 a barrel.

From a regional perspective, Ankara opposes Kurdish control of Kirkuk not only out of concern for the rights of fellow Turkmens in Iraq but also because it will bolster its own Kurdish minority’s demands for autonomy.

Watching an independent Kurdistan gradually taking shape across its border, Ankara fears that Kirkuk’s oil could strengthen the autonomous region in the face of a weak central government in Baghdad, and realise Kurdish aspirations for a region-wide Kurdish state, possibly encompassing southern Turkey and parts of Iran and Syria.

After years of trying and failing, Iraqi leaders are trying to reassure friends and foes that they are close to a deal on the future of Kirkuk. But even if parliament adopts a compromise hammered out behind closed doors, it is difficult to see how it will be implemented.

Five years after the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, Iraq is throwing open its oil sector to foreign oil firms  in a way Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and others in the region are reluctant to. Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani says no company will have any special privilege.

Some  analysts take a different view. They reckon U.S. and British oil majors are in a strong position to help develop the world’s third-largest oil reserves. Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell and BP head the queue. They have already built up a relationship with Iraq’s oil officials by negotiating short-term technical deals.

Now Iraq is inviting bids for long-term development contracts at its biggest fields, the “backbone of its industry” in the words of Shahristani. He believes Iraq could become the world’s second- or third-biggest oil producing country, rivalling Saudi Arabia and Russia.

Are U.S. and British firms obvious choices as partners because of their expertise? After all, before the U.S.-led invasion Iraq often preferred Russian firms. Or are U.S. and British firms reaping the benefit of their governments’ policies?