BBC: Saddam Hussein's Baath party is banned in Iraq, but the doors of its office in the heart of the Syrian capital, Damascus, are wide open.
"That's our hero," says Khudeir Rashidi, the party spokesman, pointing at Saddam Hussein who looks down from portraits on the walls.
Iraq's dictator may be dead, but his supporters in Damascus insist that his party lives on.
"We have millions of members in Iraq who are working for the cause," Mr Rashidi says.
The cause, he says, is the liberation of Iraq from the American occupiers through military resistance.
"We have many weapons, we manufacture bombs, we are working very effectively underground," he says.
Baath 'threat'
The true extent of the involvement of the Baath party in the armed insurgency back in Iraq is very difficult to measure.
There is little doubt that the party has a wide and powerful network of former members, if only because virtually everyone had to join its ranks under Saddam Hussein.
Sceptics argue that despite its outreach, the Baath party is politically decapitated, morally bankrupt and ideologically irrelevant - in other words very much a thing of the past.
But the Iraqi government says Baathists pose a real threat. >>> | Friday, March 05, 2010
