Saddam Hussein's palaces in pictures
There is, as yet, no instructed estate agent, but should one come along, their marketing pitch will for once need no over-egging. ‘For sale/rent: 80 presidential palaces, average unit living space half-a-million square feet. Attached gardens featuring disused swimming pools, personal zoos/nuclear bunkers etc. Rooms fitted with thrones and gold lavatories, en suite torture chamber optional. Some bomb damage. Suit megalomaniac or similar.’
Welcome to what its previous owner would no doubt have termed the Mother of All real estate portfolios – the personal palaces and second-to-82nd homes of President Saddam Hussein, High Excellency, Struggler Against Zionist Imperialism, Field Marshal and Commander of All Iraq, to give him just a few of his self-adopted monikers.
Unlike his collection of personal titles, however, the late Baghdad leader’s hoard of property titles has bequeathed a rather more lasting legacy for those who took over when he was deposed in 2003. Hidden behind imposing walls that dominate the downtowns of nearly every city, the palaces have provided the perfect makeshift barracks for US soldiers during the past six years, hosting everything from chow halls and command centres through to internet cafés and Starbucks. Now, though, with US troops completing their withdrawal from Iraq’s urban areas last week, the Chez Saddam chain is up for grabs again. So what will happen to it?
The answer, as with so much of Iraq’s future, is that nobody is quite sure. Officially, the Iraqi government has earmarked many of the palaces for use as bases for its own military and civil service. But with so many buildings, and some of them several times the size of the White House or Versailles, there is still likely to be plenty of spare space, prompting no shortage of suggestions as to what to do with them.
Some Iraqis want them converted into memorials to Saddam’s cruelty, complete with the hooks for hanging people by the hands and cattle prods for dishing out electrical shocks. Some want them converted into six-star Dubai-style hotels or casinos – not perhaps a bad choice, given the general chintziness of the dictator-kitsch decor. Others, meanwhile, want them just flattened. Once again, the Iraqi leader is sowing discord from beyond the grave, as his former subjects find themselves divided over what should happen to them.
‘You people in Europe have kept all the castles of your bad guys, so why shouldn’t we?’ says one former tank commander in Saddam’s armies, who, despite describing the former president as a ‘dog’, retains a grudging nostalgia for the gun-enforced law and order which vanished so dramatically after Saddam’s fall. ‘We should keep them as historical artefacts.’
‘They should be rebuilt for whatever need arises – a museum documenting Saddam’s cruelty, a hospital, a mall, an army base,’ reckons Ahmed Khalid, a former resident of Baghdad’s Azamiyah district, home to a palace belonging to Saddam’s son, Uday. ‘It's a free space, so why not utilise it?’
‘We should knock every single one down completely,’ snarls Ahmad Mohammad, a labourer from east Baghdad. ‘Iraq should not have any memories of that dog Saddam whatsoever.’
We can now make up our own mind, thanks to these through-the-bombhole pictures courtesy of Irish art photographer Richard Mosse, who recently spent a month touring US Army bases, lugging his ancient Phillips 8x10 Explorer bellows camera wherever he went...
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)
Welcome to what its previous owner would no doubt have termed the Mother of All real estate portfolios – the personal palaces and second-to-82nd homes of President Saddam Hussein, High Excellency, Struggler Against Zionist Imperialism, Field Marshal and Commander of All Iraq, to give him just a few of his self-adopted monikers.
Unlike his collection of personal titles, however, the late Baghdad leader’s hoard of property titles has bequeathed a rather more lasting legacy for those who took over when he was deposed in 2003. Hidden behind imposing walls that dominate the downtowns of nearly every city, the palaces have provided the perfect makeshift barracks for US soldiers during the past six years, hosting everything from chow halls and command centres through to internet cafés and Starbucks. Now, though, with US troops completing their withdrawal from Iraq’s urban areas last week, the Chez Saddam chain is up for grabs again. So what will happen to it?
The answer, as with so much of Iraq’s future, is that nobody is quite sure. Officially, the Iraqi government has earmarked many of the palaces for use as bases for its own military and civil service. But with so many buildings, and some of them several times the size of the White House or Versailles, there is still likely to be plenty of spare space, prompting no shortage of suggestions as to what to do with them.
Some Iraqis want them converted into memorials to Saddam’s cruelty, complete with the hooks for hanging people by the hands and cattle prods for dishing out electrical shocks. Some want them converted into six-star Dubai-style hotels or casinos – not perhaps a bad choice, given the general chintziness of the dictator-kitsch decor. Others, meanwhile, want them just flattened. Once again, the Iraqi leader is sowing discord from beyond the grave, as his former subjects find themselves divided over what should happen to them.
‘You people in Europe have kept all the castles of your bad guys, so why shouldn’t we?’ says one former tank commander in Saddam’s armies, who, despite describing the former president as a ‘dog’, retains a grudging nostalgia for the gun-enforced law and order which vanished so dramatically after Saddam’s fall. ‘We should keep them as historical artefacts.’
‘They should be rebuilt for whatever need arises – a museum documenting Saddam’s cruelty, a hospital, a mall, an army base,’ reckons Ahmed Khalid, a former resident of Baghdad’s Azamiyah district, home to a palace belonging to Saddam’s son, Uday. ‘It's a free space, so why not utilise it?’
‘We should knock every single one down completely,’ snarls Ahmad Mohammad, a labourer from east Baghdad. ‘Iraq should not have any memories of that dog Saddam whatsoever.’
We can now make up our own mind, thanks to these through-the-bombhole pictures courtesy of Irish art photographer Richard Mosse, who recently spent a month touring US Army bases, lugging his ancient Phillips 8x10 Explorer bellows camera wherever he went...