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American Kurds in North Texas celebrate
Saddam's execution
30.12.2006
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December 30, 2006
They had waited so long for this moment, hardly
daring to dream it would happen.
VIDEO from CBS
Texas, December 29, -- Bakhtiar Dargali, a Kurd
whose relatives were cut to pieces before his eyes
by helicopter gunships as they cowered in a cave.
Salah Mahous, a Shiite Arab who escaped from prison
and fled Iraq after refusing to be an informant for
the regime.
Omar Barzani, a member of the storied tribe of
northern Iraq that began the struggle for Kurdish
independence in 1903.
Iraqis and North Texans both, they waited Friday
night for the announcement that
Saddam Hussein had
hanged at the gallows for his crimes.
Mr. Dargali invited several families to his home in
Plano, where they huddled around the television set
tuned to the Kurdish satellite channel.
"The old Iraq is gone! That's it; it's like spilled
water!" shouted Mr. Dargali, before he was even
sure. "We are going to pray for a new chapter in
Iraq and in Kurdistan. Hopefully, this will put some
sense into Saddam's supporters that the game is
over, it's over!"
Mr. Dargali, 46, an environmental engineer, had fled
his mountain home of Rowanduz in 1976 as a teenager
during a fierce chapter of the decades-long fight
between the Kurds and the Iraqi regime.
He had nightmares for years after he came to
America. Back in Kurdistan (northern Iraq), it only got worse
for his relatives and countrymen as tens of
thousands of Kurds were exterminated in chemical
weapons attacks, bombing raids and burned villages.
"If Iraq is to have any chance of progress, unity,
reconciliation, monsters like Saddam must go," Mr.
Dargali said. He opposes capital punishment in
general, but this is a special case. "This guy is a
butcher. He is like Stalin and Hitler.
"Throughout Kurdistan and here in Texas, they feel
relieved and happy. ... The souls of his many
victims will be at ease."
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Many North Texas Kurds said they were torn between
wanting Mr. Hussein killed – the sooner the better –
and wanting him put on trial for the Anfal campaign
of the late 1980s against the Kurds.
But as soon as they knew for sure about the
execution, the celebration began, along with phone
calls to congratulate their relatives on a new
beginning for Iraq.
"We've been waiting for a long time. Not just us ...
those who lost their lives. Thousands of kids who
lost their fathers, the women without husbands.
They've been waiting for this day," said Mr.
Barzani, a Texas representative of the Kurdish
Democratic Party.
The rumor all across Kurdistan on Friday was that
Mr. Hussein had already been executed, Mr. Barzani
said.
"There is no family in Kurdistan not affected by
Saddam Hussein, executed or put in a mass grave or
disappeared," he said. "I want to thank those who
lost their lives for this day to come true for the
Kurds. For these men and women still losing their
lives to make Iraq safe."
'Saddam faced justice'
Karim Chaid, 46, an Arlington engineer and professor
from Basra, said: "We are happy, not because we want
to kill, but because Saddam faced justice.
Hopefully, it will be a roadmap for the future.
"All this misery, foreign interventions, what the
country is going through, is all his poor handling
of the country and the way he has ruled for 40
years. This is his legacy."
But Dr. Chaid had mixed emotions about the execution
because of the short-term upsurge in violence it
would surely bring.
"We don't want to somehow aggravate terrorism in the
country. You don't want others to look at him as a
martyr.
But we need to shut this chapter and move on."
There would be more violence among his supporters,
agreed Issa Shini, a 36-year-old Wal-Mart manager
from Allen. Mr. Shini, a Kurd originally from the
Dohuk area of northern Iraq, said Mr. Hussein should
have been executed three years ago when authorities
captured him.
"All the Iraqis, Kurds and the Arab, Sunni and the
Shia, they suffered a hard life under Saddam
Hussein," he said.
His daughter Awaz, 18, wanted to dance when Mr.
Hussein was first captured. "I am so happy he is
finally going
to pay for what he has done," she said.
Uniting, near and far
Across North Texas, rain and thunder pounded the
night, and far away in Iraq, the snows fell as some
families held vigil in the night and others dreamed
of waking to the news at dawn.
Three dozen people had gathered at Mr. Dargali's
home. After the announcement, they were ecstatic.
"We are having a big party here," he said. "He will
be in the garbage of history."
Mr. Mahous, a 48-year-old auto inspector from
Irving, said he was kept in hiding for three years
before he was handed a life sentence after a
15-minute trial. He escaped from Basra and settled
in Texas in 2000 as a refugee.
"I hope now they will live in peace, Sunni and Shia,
no more of this terror," he said.
The great feast of the sacrifice of Abraham, the
Muslim holiday called Eid al Adha, begins this
weekend. As Kurds and Arabs alike celebrate the
holiday, at prayer in the mosque, visiting family,
bringing meat and fruit to the poor, they will have
something else to be jubilant about, Mr. Shini said.
"It will be a great day for all Iraqis to see Saddam
hanged. We should consider that as a new day for the
Iraqis, a holiday."
dallasnews com
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