To the dismay of many in the West, the Gulf War ended with Saddam Hussein still in control, still defiant and determined to use any means of striking back. This book sounds an urgent note of caution: a future Iraq without Hussein could be even more unstable and more problematical to the security of the United States.
This book is an account of the forces - historical, religious, ethnic and political - that produced Saddam's dictatorship. Hussein, ruling by terror rather than persuasion, has pitted the various ethnic groups, religious interests and tribes against each other and in so doing achieved the destruction of Iraq's middle class and civilised society. After he goes, however, the country could be the site of conflict even more vicious than the Balkan wars.
