Press Back to Old Stereotypes on Iraq

Russia has reacted to the latest crisis surrounding Iraq with unanimous, strong condemnation of what the daily Segodnya called "U.S. aggression" and an almost equally single-minded expression of sympathy for Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Such views were shared by Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who said he agreed with the government's protest against the U.S. air strikes in southern Iraq, the Russian Foreign Ministry as well as much of the democratic press. Even Izvestia, for example, published a list of American strikes on Iraq from 1992 to the present without making any reference to the reasons for these actions -- Iraq's violation in each case of UN Security Council resolutions.


In a short NTV Independent Television interview, human rights leader Sergei Kovalyov was alone in making reference to the actions of the Iraqi leader: "As long as there exist fascist regimes, counteractions, including the present ones, are inevitable." Other democratic leaders spoke on the program but they were drowned out by leaders from the extremist Liberal Democratic Party who stated: "America is fighting against Russia in Iraq" or "The United States is once again trying to establish its fascist world order, inciting crises in various countries that do not suit its politics."


The heated debates in Russia over the problems of Iran and Kuwait and the figure of Saddam, debates which have lasted some six years, seem to be running in favor of the opposition. Controversy began in Aug. 1990 when former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev took the unprecedented step of condemning the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait as an act of aggression, rather than seeing it as an "anti-imperialist" action, and helped further the creation of a wide, international coalition. It was not easy for Moscow to take such a position at that time, since it was opposed by both Russian generals and powerful specialists on the Arab East. A year later, slogans could be heard from the barricades of the White House: "GKChP [the communist leaders who attempted a putsch against Gorbachev] -- off to Baghdad!" Today, such people are not in Baghdad but in the State Duma. And the national-communist majority in the Duma is still host to Saddam who, as recent events have shown, has not changed at all. The United States has not changed its resolve in standing up to the Iraqi leader either. What has changed is Moscow.





Alexander Shumilin is a Cairo-based correspondent for Novoye Vremya. He contributed this comment to The Moscow Times.