“The people who were dancing after Saddam’s statue fell were all Shiite, they don’t love Saddam because he is Arab and they are Persian. Saddam is a good man,” declared the Egyptian’s Tunisian friend.

The rest of the table’s four occupants nodded in agreement and it was agreed that Iraq is the land of the Arabs, and that the Shiites must return to their “native” Iran, and the Kurds are a menace.

I sat across from this group of North African Arabs, and wondered how many of my fellow Iraqi “Persian” Shiites would be able to understand this group’s ethnocentric discussion conducted primarily in French.

You see, unlike this group of North African Arabs, the “Persian” Shiites of Southern Iraq do not speak French; they prefer Arabic.

To the casual bystander, the two statements quoted above might not seem related at all, but to those who are part of the Iraqi opposition, the statements above highlight the plight and very complexity of our struggle. Our struggle has not just been against our own dictator, it has also been against our fellow-Arabs and Muslims and their “sympathizers” in Washington.

It is not surprising that some of Saddam’s greatest supporters were non-Iraqi Arabs. For them, Saddam is the embodiment of a strong and defiant Arab standing tall in front of a bullying United States and Israel. It is easy for non-Iraqis to love Saddam and dismiss the Iraqi opposition as a gang of Persian and Kurdish thieves.

Their leader, Saddam, is perfect, so those who oppose him must be corrupt and deceitful. Never does it occur to them that Saddam has killed more Arabs and Muslims than Israel and Sharon put together. It seems as if they are incapable of internal reflection.

One by one, every nation of the world chose to skillfully forget the defiance of hundreds of thousands of martyred Iraqis. The Western allies quickly pointed out that it wasn’t their mandate to take out Saddam in 1991, and the rest of the Arabs/Muslims shamefully declared that the 1991 uprising was an internal matter of Iraq. No one, neither Arab nor Muslim, cared while Iraqis wept alone in the dark silence of the desert. Where were the crowd-filled streets of Damascus, Cairo, Beirut, Amman, Rabat, Gaza, Ankara, Islamabad, and Jakarta when Saddam was butchering the people of Iraq?

Was the scene of thousands of dead Iraqi Kurds clutching their dead infants and the slogan “La Shiite Ba’d Al Youm” (No more Shiite after today) painted on Iraqi tanks cruising by the rotting dead bodies of Iraqis that forgettable? Was that not gruesome and compelling enough?

I painfully recall watching a Jordanian man cover his face, and an Egyptian weeping as the statue of Saddam came crashing down. I couldn’t decide whether I should be happy or angry: Here I am, an Iraqi, witnessing the fall of my brutal oppressor and there are my Arab brothers weeping and hiding their face on our moment of triumph and victory. Would they have rather seen Iraq under the continued rule of a man who killed Iraqis for over three decades? Why? Are we, the people of Iraq, not their brothers anymore?

The hypocrisy doesn’t quite end here, but also includes the use of targeted and shameful character assassinations. In a recent interview with Larry King Live on CNN, Abu Dhabi TV’s Jasim Al-Azzawi called Dr. Ahmed Chalabi a “felon and convict”. It is almost as if Azzawi was pre-programmed to short-circuit once Chalabi’s name was mentioned. He sounded more like the ex-Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf, than a journalist providing an insightful perspective.

Does Azzawi even know the facts behind Petra Bank, or is he just ecstatic to hear something negative about one of Saddam’s most vocal opponents? Does he know that the verdict was that of a pro-Saddam Jordanian Military Court, and was reached after just one day of examining the “merits” of the case? Hasn’t Azzawi, in his career as a journalist, ever heard of political sabotage?

Or is it that Azzawi, like Sahaf, thinks that his audience are a bunch of incompetent Arabs who just don’t deserve to know the truth? Sahaf clearly thought so when he lied to the entire Arab world by proclaiming that the Americans were not even remotely close to Baghdad.

It is categorically and conclusively wrong to prejudge Chalabi as being corrupt and a tool of the US. Such are the accusations of those who hate Chalabi, not of those who are objective and able to employ logic and reason in their perspectives. Chalabi is hated because he represents secular democracy and a staunch commitment toward political equality for all. To Chalabi’s critics, anyone desiring political equality for all, and the rule of law is an enemy and an American puppet. They excel at functioning in political junkyards and are incompatible with change. After all, rallying around an 80-year-old sectarian Adnan Pachachi to be Iraq’s next leader doesn’t exactly qualify as appreciating change.

Or is it because they think that the Arabs do not deserve political freedom and change?

The Arab world desperately needs to change, it needs to accept and value its own people. The region is governed by many regimes that do not represent, listen to or have any regard for their own people. The region has become sharply divided between those who govern and those who are governed, the rich and the poor.

This great internal divide is precisely what Chalabi wants to bridge. His vision, and that of many other Iraqi secular democrats, is about building an Iraq of the people for the people. His vision for Iraq rests on the rule of law, an independent judiciary, respect for human rights, equality for all before law and state, and the establishment of a transparent and pluralistic democracy. This vision should be welcomed as a breath of fresh air and an opportunity to bring about positive and lasting change.

(The author is a member of the Iraqi National Congress.)