Both Iraq and Somalia have been ruled by ruthless dictators who squeezed their nation’s resources to the last drop, building hollow military machines=
INSIDE AFRICA
BY BASHIR GOTH, Khaleej Times, 18 April 2006=
A POPULAR story says that when Hajjaj Bin Yusuf Al Thaqafi, the notorious tyrant, the butcher of many Muslims and the viceroy of the Ummayad rulers in Iraq, was about to die he wanted to do something that would make the people yearn for his reign and pray for his soul despite the atrocities and the genocides he committed against them.
He ordered that those who carried his coffin to the graveyard should take a straight path and should demolish every building, house or mosque they encountered in their way, regardless of who owned it. When the order was carried out, the affected people thought that it was Hajjaj’s successor who ordered this destruction and brought such unprecedented calamity on them. They spontaneously started cursing the new viceroy and asked God’s mercy on Hajjaj’s soul saying: “Salamullah Ala Hajjaj or May peace be upon the soul of Hajjaj.”
It is a tragedy for a nation to survive under the highhandedness of a tyrant who inflicts untold misery on it, but a far worse tragedy is when the moment of deliverance arrives, that the new saviours usher in a situation that makes the era of their predecessors’ reign like Plato’s ideal city; A situation where instead of breathing a sigh and nursing their wounds, people look back at the old days with nostalgia and yearn for its return.
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