Friday, February 23, 2007
Crossed swords destroyed
(Newsweek) It's the postcard image of Baghdad: a pair of gigantic crossed swords clenched in massive fists. On Tuesday afternoon in the International Zone, 10-foot bronze chunks cut from one fist were stacked haphazardly at the base of the monument, the first step in bringing the swords down. "I was very shocked when I heard they started destroying it," says Mustafa Khadimi, executive director of the Iraq Memory Foundation (IMF), an organization that has meticulously documented the atrocities of the former regime.
The Iraqi government has yet to issue an official statement about the dismantling of the swords, but the effort is clearly already underway. Khadimi says Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki made the decision to bring down the monument last week in coordination with a governmental body named the Committee for Removing Symbols of the Saddam Era. Representatives from the IMF have sent letters of protest to the Iraqi government as well as UNESCO. "We need to use these two swords as proof to further generations to show what happened to Iraqi people," says Khadimi.
Like Saddam's bungled execution, a hasty decision to dismantle the monument could inflame sectarian tensions. Many Sunnis, whether they supported Saddam or not, will likely interpret the move as a direct snub by a Shiite-led government. Not exactly the kind of message the government should send while enforcing a new security plan. "The timing doesn't serve anything," says Wamidh Nadhmi, a political science professor at Baghdad University. "This would be a defeat for the whole idea of reconciliation."
Labels: al-Maliki, crossed swords, Hands of Victory, Iraq Memory Foundation
