During Saddam’s rule, every town big enough to have a public school or a police station had at least a few larger-than-life portraits of the leader. Here in Tikrit, the centre of Saddam’s ancestral region, his visage has been particularly prominent.During the past few weeks, as US tanks have moved through, those portraits have been smashed, and ripped in acts of anger across the country. But not in Tikrit. Even though hundreds of US Marines rolled into town on Monday morning, nobody has dared to deface Saddam’s portraits here. Large tile mosaics still show the ousted president standing next to a flag, wearing a fedora, toting a hunting rifle — as shiny as they were a few days ago. ‘‘The people are afraid,’’ said Jaleel Ahmed, a 75-year-old retiree, as he walked down a deserted street. ‘‘They think his relatives may come back to kill them.’’ Here in the shadow of two massive palaces whose compounds are larger than the surrounding town, the fear that defined the three-decade rule of Saddam’s Baath Party is as pervasive as ever. So too is the adulation of a population that lived large on Saddam’s generosity. The hospital here has advanced diagnostic equipment, while those elsewhere lack bed sheets. Tikrit’s public schools have carpeting and flush toilets. Many received cash subsidies from the ex-president. Many hard-core Saddam supporters are believed to have fled to Tikrit, and their apparent refusal to change their stripes has the potential to vex a new government. Nothing has changed in Tikrit, save for dozens of armoured Marine vehicles parked around key intersections: Nobody had anything bad to say about Saddam. ‘‘We hope he will come back,’’ said Mohammed Reghli, 35, as he sat on a plastic chair in front of a hardware store with about a dozen other men. ‘‘We grieve his departure. He is the son of this town.he remains in our hearts.’’ A few residents said they have seen former Republican Guard soldiers and Baath security agents driving around town in pickup trucks. The security men, who used to be able to disperse a group with a glare from afar, have not said or done anything since the Marines rumbled into town, the residents said, but their continued presence has been enough to make opponents careful. Even those without direct connections to the old government and who were speaking without fear of being overheard refused to castigate Saddam. ‘‘He didn’t hurt us,’’ Saud Abdullah, 48, a merchant, said over a cup of coffee. When Saddam was in power, he said, ‘‘if you walked straight and harmed nobody, nobody harmed you.’’ (LAT-WP)
