Future Uncertain as Saddam Unearthed

WASHINGTON - U.S. President George W. Bush celebrated a second victory in Iraq here Sunday with confirmation that occupation forces had captured fugitive former president Saddam Hussein on Saturday evening at a farmhouse outside Tikrit.

But even the normally cocky U.S. commander-in-chief, who addressed the nation by television from the White House, stressed that the former Iraqi dictator's arrest will not mean a quick end to the occupation's armed resistance.

”The capture of Saddam Hussein does not mean the end of violence in Iraq,” Bush declared solemnly at the conclusion of a short statement that described Saddam's detention as ”crucial to the rise of a free Iraq”.

Bush's resignation to more resistance reflected much of the reaction to the day's news, as lawmakers and analysts described the capture as a potentially major breakthrough that would not necessarily, however, prove decisive.

Indeed, some specialists warned even before Sunday's announcement that Saddam's death or detention would prove largely irrelevant to the difficult problems faced by U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq, both because loyalty to Hussein -- or even to his Ba'ath Party -- had ceased to be a catalyst for the insurgency long before and because the complex internal political situation in Iraq has begun to fuel more tension and violence in any event.

Some even suggested that Saddam's capture might actually create new problems for the occupation by empowering sectors in the country's Shi'a community to test the occupation and back up their demands for direct elections to a new Iraqi government with more militant tactics.

”Now that it is perfectly clear that (Hussein) is finished,” noted Iraq specialist Juan Cole, who teaches history at the University of Michigan, ”the Shiites may be emboldened”.

”Those (Shiites) who dislike U.S. policies or who are opposed to the idea of occupation no longer need be apprehensive that the U.S. will suddenly leave and allow Saddam to come back to power.”

”They may therefore now gradually throw off their political timidity, and come out more forcefully into the streets when they disagree,” Cole wrote on his website Sunday.

Saddam, of course, had been target number one for U.S. invasion forces, who actually tried to kill him in two ”decapitation” air strikes in the course of the war. U.S. commanders expressed great confidence that they were closing in on the former president after his two sons, Uday and Qsay, were killed in a four-hour shootout at a house where they were hiding in Mosul.

But over the days and weeks that followed, the trail apparently went cold, although U.S. military officials told reporters consistently they believed Saddam had gone to ground somewhere around Tikrit.

In the end, that proved to be correct; tipped off by Iraqi informants, U.S. commanders said they found him in what they described as a 2 x 2.5 m. ”spider hole” built under a farmhouse outside the city where Saddam grew up.

The bearded fugitive reportedly offered no resistance to U.S. troops, and Iraqi political leaders who were taken to the scene Sunday described his attitude as defiant. Videotape taken by his U.S. captors showed him being examined by medics, possibly for head lice.

Commanders said they did not broadcast his capture until they could determine positively through DNA testing that it was indeed the former dictator.

Although military commanders have long insisted that resistance to the occupation was being carried out primarily by ”Saddam loyalists”, they had never ascribed to him any actual leadership role, apart from his status as a symbol, particularly for Ba'athists.

That appeared to be borne out by the circumstances of his capture. Not only was Saddam bedraggled, he also lacked any apparent means of electronic or satellite communication, such as a telephone, with his supporters.