WI: The Arab Spring comes to Saddam's Iraq

So, lets say that by some POD (Al Gore being president is the most obvious one, but I'm sure there are others that would work) the US does not invade Iraq in 2003. And lets further say that the low-key protests movement in Egypt continues to build, Mr. Bouzizi still sets himself on fire, and the Tunisian and Egyptian regimes fall.

How would Iraq be looking right now? I'm sure it would be seeing protests in some form, but what kind, and what degree of intensity? Would the opposition be as sectarian as the OTL post-Saddam politicians were? Would the Saddam regime go quickly like Mubarak, or (my guess) hang on for the moment, like Yemen or Syria?

Thoughts?
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
So, lets say that by some POD (Al Gore being president is the most obvious one, but I'm sure there are others that would work) the US does not invade Iraq in 2003. And lets further say that the low-key protests movement in Egypt continues to build, Mr. Bouzizi still sets himself on fire, and the Tunisian and Egyptian regimes fall.

How would Iraq be looking right now? I'm sure it would be seeing protests in some form, but what kind, and what degree of intensity? Would the opposition be as sectarian as the OTL post-Saddam politicians were? Would the Saddam regime go quickly like Mubarak, or (my guess) hang on for the moment, like Yemen or Syria?

Thoughts?

It depends on whether UN sanctions had been lifted or not. If not, than Saddam would have continued to channel public outrage at lackluster living conditions against American and its allies. He was always very good at that.
 
No matter what the revolution gets crushed. Saddam was never one to hesitant to slaughter his own people, and was very efficient at it. Gassing entire villages, hey no sweat. The Arab Spring comes ITTL and Saddam would just as likely crack down before things even started. It'd look more like Bahrain than Egypt. You certainly would never see Saddam peacefully step down from power, so at best it's another Libya.
 
I agree with WolfBrother, Saddam Hussein has all of zero sense of humor about rebellion against his regime. He will quite eagerly kill anyone dead if they dare to try, thus setting the standard for Al-Assad to wind up looking MERCIFUL in comparison to the wholesale slaughter we'd see going on in Iraq.
 
Maybe the best POD is Saddam's sudden death during the run up to the Iraq war. Uday takes over, and makes enough concessions to avoid the war, and has a slightly-less iron grip, thus facing serious rebellion at this point.
 
Maybe the best POD is Saddam's sudden death during the run up to the Iraq war. Uday takes over, and makes enough concessions to avoid the war, and has a slightly-less iron grip, thus facing serious rebellion at this point.

Why either Uday or Qusay would not be just as bad if not worse than their father is something I find difficult to believe. I guess we could hope for a Bashar Al-Assad type of successor to Saddam's Hafez Al-Assad but it seems unlikely.
 
There was a difference between Uday and Qusay: with Uday, when he killed people, it was for jollies. When Qusay killed, as Don Vito Corolene once said, "It was business." And if Saddam set them, along with somebody like Chemical Ali, to crush any protests or uprisings, they'd do so, and gladly.
 
There was a difference between Uday and Qusay: with Uday, when he killed people, it was for jollies. When Qusay killed, as Don Vito Corolene once said, "It was business." And if Saddam set them, along with somebody like Chemical Ali, to crush any protests or uprisings, they'd do so, and gladly.

900 currently have been killed from the Syrian uprisings. If they happened under Saddam, Uday, or Qusay you can add at least two zeros to that number. Saddam had a security force of Republican Guards and Fedyeen Saddam willing to liquidate towns or whole cities and they did so as brutally as anything history has recorded. The thousands dead in towns and cities like Halabja are a testament to the fact the man and the security force he built up were one of the most brutal of the 20th century. He might not have the death count of a Stalin or a Hitler, but that is only because Iraq and the nations Saddam invaded like Iran, and Kuwait's population is so much smaller then that of Europe.

As for Uday the man was a modern day Caligula that had his own torture chamber for fun and to incetivise Iraqi sports stars to do well or they get a trip to Uday's chamber. He also loved raping and branding women with a U on their face so everyone knew Uday had them. So, they became outcasts in Iraqi society.

If he was to take over expect him to have even more fun with daddy gone, but with someone like Chemical Ali to be running the affairs of state and keeping the people in abject terror at all times. An Iraqi once told me that the citizens of Baghdad would take drugs like valium every day at work to help avoid getting angry and making a slip of the tongue that might imply they are unhappy with the government which if it got back to the secret police they and their family and even their close friends could be tortured and killed.
 
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There was a difference between Uday and Qusay: with Uday, when he killed people, it was for jollies. When Qusay killed, as Don Vito Corolene once said, "It was business." And if Saddam set them, along with somebody like Chemical Ali, to crush any protests or uprisings, they'd do so, and gladly.

The problem was both of them were quite happy to do it though, Uday was the Caligula but Qusay was the Godfather. Either way, you could argue that Saddam was much the same in terms of he killed who he needed to and didn't go much farther than that, still a vicious demon mind you, just not a sadistic one like his Uday. I actually had never heard the Qusay thing before thanks for the instruction but just one thing about Saddam...

His sons were a lot more murder-happy than Hafez Al-Assad's sons (well, Basel might've been pretty bad) and we'd still see a pretty brutal Iraqi regime under Qusay than we would see under anyone else, either way, it would make Bashar's own crackdowns forgotten in comparison...
 
Even though they died together on 22 June 2003 (knocking ex-POW Jessica Lynch's return to her hometown off the lead on the news), both brothers actually despised each other. Each had a branch of the security forces under their control, replete with their own prisons. Uday also ran the Saddam Fedayeen (you know, the idiots in Toyota pickups who'd charge M-1 tanks with only AKs and machine guns-and died in the thousands) as his own private army. When somebody took a shot at Uday back in the late '90s, a professor of mine asked me who had tried to kill Uday. I replied "Open the Baghdad phone book: he's made so many enemies." Qusay was the chosen successor after the failed hit, and was less brutal in public than his brother. (some say Qusay was behind the hit, but no proof was offered) Qusay's favorite hobby? Feeding political prisoners into a wood chipper-feet first. If Saddam died pre-2003, there would've been some kind of power struggle-and the losers would be carried out-feet first. Qusay would've had more support in the Baath Party and the military to get that support-and both bodies despised the Fedayeen Saddam, feeling that it was a waste of resources better used elsewhere.
 

birdboy2000

Banned
Idle speculation: Iraq has a ton of oil. OTL an American government invaded anyway, and a Gore administration might lead into a Republican one during the Arab Spring.

If Iraq's massacring protesters, might there be foreign intervention there instead of (or in addition to) Libya?
 
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