ABSTRACT
Saddam Hussein's regime enforces its ruthless control over Iraq's population through the systematic abuse of human rights, and the scale of these abuses has important implications for both a "centrist" and "peripheral" strategy. They raise the risks inherent in any strategy that attempts to accommodate Saddam or any other centrist regime that uses similar techniques to stay in power. The best available sources on Iraq's abuses of human rights seem to be the annual US State Department reports on Human Rights and the work of the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights. Both indicate that the Iraqi regime has a long history of executing its opponents, and nothing has changed since the Gulf War. It is such reports that led the UN Special Rapporteur to state that the Iraqi regime's "aim of killing is a political one, with the objective of silencing dissent and suppressing opposition" in his October 1994 report to the UN General Assembly.
