While the U.S. military has done its level best to purge Iraq of any and all images of former President Saddam Hussein, the officials now ruling the country have been forced to print new 250-dinar bills bearing the deposed dictator’s face, reports Reuters.
Because of the stigma surrounding 10,000-dinar notes – including predictions the bills will be declared worthless in the future – the residents of Iraq have demanded they be allowed to change the bills into the seemingly more reliable 250-dinar notes. The central bank, then, was forced to begin printing vast quantities of the lower-value bills, complete with the dapper image of a young Saddam.
 Hussein’s image on a 1-dinar note. |
According to the Reuters report, merchants and banks have been redeeming the 10,000-dinar notes for only about 70 percent of their value.
“It was not possible to change [the design of] the banknotes for the time being,” Faleh Salman, the acting central bank governor, told Reuters in his office in an annex of the central bank compound. “There is no national authority in Iraq at the moment to change the design of the banknotes.”
Iraqis have gathered outside the bank, demanding they be allowed to change the larger-monetary bills into 250-dinar notes, which are worth about a quarter of a U.S. dollar.
“I came to change these notes because nobody will take them,” said Zainab Mohammed, an elderly woman veiled in black, according to Reuters. “But nobody will let us in. What am I supposed to do?”
Salman tried to calm the crowd, telling him truckloads of the new bills are on their way. He blames speculators for fueling the hysteria, Reuters said.
“People are trying to make a profit by saying the notes will become worthless, then buying them for less than face value,” he told the news agency. Asked how many 250-dinar notes were being printed, he replied: “That’s my secret.”
U.S. and British officials say new notes will be designed and printed once an interim Iraqi administration is in place – sans Saddam Hussein’s mug.
