Former ambassador recalls life in Iraq before Saddam

Friday, April 4, 2003 | 10:52 a.m.

Kenton Keith remembers Iraq before Saddam Hussein, before the 1968 coup that brought the Baath Party to power, when a young Saddam was the shadow of the party's then-general.

In that Iraq, what he considers the real Iraq, the people living in the cradle of civilization were the most educated and artistic in the Middle East, Keith says.

Now Keith, former ambassador to Qatar, is preparing to return to postwar Iraq as part of a U.S.-led interim government.

The senior vice president of Meridian International Center in Washington, D.C., Keith has been selected by the State Department to head the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baghdad once the war ends.

But while much of the reconstruction team is already in Kuwait preparing, Keith is one of a handful of State Department choices the Pentagon is resisting, according to the New York Times.

The 36-year career foreign service employee told 25 invited guests at an Urban Chamber of Commerce dinner in Las Vegas on Thursday about his anticipated role in rebuilding Iraq and the possible obstacles to it.

"The Pentagon may have other ideas," he said.

The ambassador was scheduled to speak in Reno tonight, but he expected to be called overseas at any time.

"It can't last much longer," he said of the war.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Keith was called on to act as media liaison in Pakistan for the coalition forces fighting in Afghanistan. He also has served in countries all over the Middle East and earned two meritorious service awards, one of them for a 1991 Middle East Peace Conference in Madrid.

Since Sept. 11, Keith has spoken out against a war with Iraq.

"If the administration had been as good at building coalitions as going to war, we would have been better off," he said. "The truth of it is, in this administration there are different points of view."

The biggest problem facing the United States after the war is perception of the nation as a world bully, a problem that has sowed distrust in Iraq since 1967, Keith said.

Keith was still in his 20s when he was sent to Iraq by the State Department in 1966 on his first assignment.

"I discovered a country that was fascinating in so many different ways and people who are fascinating in so many different ways," he said.

Iraqis, he discovered, are the best educated, the best writers, the best artists and the best musicians in the Middle East.

"It taught me the basic sophistication of the Iraqi people," he said, noting that people took education and culture seriously.

Then why would Iraq stay under the thumb of a tyrant like President Saddam Hussein?

Keith said that colonialism set in under Great Britain and created a class of people who spoke beautiful English, read Shakespeare and invited the Royal Shakespearean Theatre Company to Iraq. "They were the elite," he explained.

The lower classes went to military school and might become officers or join a political party, such as the Baaths or extremist Muslim groups.

"They have the guns, they have the organization and they have a bone to pick, because they never were part of the elite," he said.

And that image is the only one Americans know, because the American media never show it any other way, Keith said.

"The Iraqi people have never had the leadership they deserve," he said.

In his first diplomatic position, Keith invited young Iraqi architects and engineers to his home in Baghdad. He thought he could build a cultural bridge between the two countries.

The State Department sent 16mm films of NFL games -- a month after they had aired on American television. Add to that popcorn and beer and "people came out of the woodwork" for his get-togethers, he said.

A 1968 coup brought the Baath party to power, led by a general who spoke English, knew jokes and came to cocktail parties, Keith said. A young Saddam Hussein was by the general's side.

"He was always the muscle behind the general," Keith said.

If democracy takes root in that part of the world, it will not be the brand in the United States or Great Britain, but more like Qatar, a model already operating.

"Democracy in that part of the world is a system of competing institutions where people have legitimate say in the process and people have the ability to rise to positions of responsibility," Keith said.

Freedom of religion, freedom to assemble and freedom of speech exist in Qatar today.

While the old leaders reaching back to the Ottoman empire and the British colonial rulers are aging, there is a new generation in the gulf waiting to take control, he said.

If Keith is called, he expects no great revolution or transformation.

"You start to build a small reputation, start to build a small Rolodex from the people you have tea with, and they are all solid people," Keith said.