Thursday, July 24, 2003

What after Uday and Qusai?

Uday, the eldest son of Iraq's toppled leader Saddam Hussein, leaves a hospital in Baghdad on June 9 1997 following his recovery from an assassination attempt. His younger brother Qusay is seen walking beside him.

PV Vivekanand

THE BIGGEST question being asked after the US confirmed the death of Saddam Hussein’s two sons, Uday and Qusay, as well as Uday’s 14-year son on Wednesday is: Does this mean security and stability in the country and an end to the mounting daily attacks – an average of – against US soldiers occupying the country?
Hardly likely.
Indeed, the departure from the scene of Uday and Qusay might result in a slight scaling down of attacks, if only because the Saddam loyalist groups that stuck with the family after the Saddam regime was toppled in April might find themselves without a cause.
However, Saddam loyalists are not the sole or even major source of Iraqi resistance attacks. Those who insist otherwise and say the deaths of Uday and Qusai meant the beginning of the end of Iraqi resisance might learn if they look closely at the post-war scene in Iraq that the Iraqis do not really need Saddam as the rallying figure.
Many of them – suffering from the chaos, threat to life, and lack of water, food and power as well as steady jobs -- have more than enough reasons to be hostile to the American forces and this hostility is turning to attacks against US soldiers in the country.
Most are motivated by nationalistic pride while others could be fuelled by an urge to retaliate for what they see as an open American hostility towards Arabs and Muslims.
The cycle of violence is only likely to exacerbate and strengthen the resolve on the two sides and it is more likely that it would soon be an intense war of attrition between Iraqi guerrillas and American soldiers.
Quite simpy, Saddam and his loyalists are not the the only enemy the Americans face in Iraq face and .there was no evidence the brothers were directly guiding the guerrilla war.
Even if few heed Saddam's call to arms, aired in a tape apparently recorded before Uday and "crown prince" Qusay went down fighting US forces, analysts doubt that he and his sons alone have been behind all the guerrilla attacks that claimed two more American lives on Wednesday.
Grievances over the US invasion could fuel low-level warfare for some time.
"Is the resistance only coming from Saddam loyalists? No," said Hafez Alwan Humadi, assistant dean of the political science department at Baghdad University.
Many Iraqis with no love for Saddam or wish to see him back have been angered by the US occupation, including those who have lost family, property or privilege through the war, he said.
Saddam's supporters, on the other hand, seem to be a rapidly diminishing band, reducing his prospects of emulating Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan and eluding US capture or a bullet.
However, there are indeed those who feel bitterly indignant about the US presence in the country and the way the occupation authorities deal with the situation.
"They (Oday and Qusay) are Iraqi people," said Waad Hamadi, 43. "We would not have told the Americans (about their whereabouts)."
Hamadi called the man who is believed to have led the Americans to the hideout of Saddam’s two sons in Mosul "a traitor."
Seed Badr, 50, a gray-bearded taxi driver wearing a blue Arab robe, cursed the Americans. "This is terrorism. They are killers."
Indeed, there were many who said they would have preferred to see Uday and Qusay captured alive and put on trial.
Uday and QusaY seemed to have been sold out by a once trusted associate for big dollar rewards. Even if Saddam, with a $25 million price on his head, is far away from the northern city of Mosul where they died, his time may be running out.
"The net is closing around Saddam," said Frank Umbach, security analyst at the German Council on Foreign Relations.
"Iraq is different from Afghanistan where the opportunities to escape and hide are much greater...Saddam Hussein is also hated by much of his own population."
Larry Korb, a former assistant US defence secretary now at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, said the example of the informer in Mosul could sway more Iraqis behind the US troops, creating a domino effect of tips.
"People have been hedging their bets. Now, they're liable to come over to our side," he said. "If this guy who supposedly gave the intelligence (on the sons) gets the money -- and stays alive -- it could encourage other people to turn in Saddam.
"Somebody is going to know where he is."
Many Iraqis, whether out of a desire to be sure he is truly gone or to see him humiliated and brought to justice, would like to see Saddam taken alive. But the man born into poverty who revelled in the gun culture that cost the lives of so many Iraqi leaders before him is unlikely to give them satisfaction.
"We want to have a trial so he can pay for his crimes and we want him to be humiliated as he humiliated us," Humadi said. "(But) he will not surrender. Maybe he will commit suicide."
His sons and teenage grandson took on a huge US force including rocket-firing helicopters. Some analysts suspect Washington would rather not have to deal with the complications of capturing Saddam and holding him in captivity.
Yet even with Saddam eliminated, US troops face problems.
"I do not think that Saddam and his two sons are a very important part of the resistance," said Wamidh Nazmi, a politics professor at Baghdad University. "If they have any role it is a minimal one."
"Yes, you had many people in the Republican Guard, the army, the security forces who did better under Saddam," said British journalist and Saddam biographer Patrick Cockburn. "But they may not have been fighting to get Saddam back. They may have been fighting for other reasons: nationalism, Islamic fervour and local friction with the Americans or with those co-operating with the Americans."
Various groups, including at least one claiming affiliation to Bin Laden's Al Qaeda network have made claims of responsibility for attacks.
Western security experts also doubt that the deposed ruling clan and its shattered Baath party power structure has been capable of organising a co-ordinated resistance campaign from their -- probably -- scattered places of refuge.
That means what has been happening so far may not be greatly affected by the deaths of Uday and Qusai.
Most analysts do not think there would be any major impact from the deaths of Uday and Qusai.
US officials have concede there could even be "revenge attacks." A group of masked men appeared on an Arab television channel on Wednesday vowing retaliation.
But many doubt Saddam has sufficient followers left or the resources to mount any credible threat in Iraq or abroad.
At the same time, the possibility remains high that Saddam might stage a spectacular "last" attack to inflict maximum damage to the US occupation forces
Some American soldiers hope that resistance attacks may be stemmed if only because the deaths reduce the morale of the people who are attacking.
But others believe that while some people will be demoralised, others will be emboldened and take more drastic measures
However, the world leaders who voiced hopes that the death of Uday and Qusai would bring security and stability to Iraq would have known within themselves that it was wishful thinking. The crisis in Iraq could be loosely attributed to Saddam’s autocratic and oppressive rule but it would not end with even Saddam’s demise.
Moscow stood out among world capitals when it said only the development was still no guarantee for the future security and reconstruction of Iraq and "the restoration of the very basic needs of the Iraqi people."
"We judge any set of events first of all by how they affect the actual situation," said Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Yury Fedotov.
"The regime in Iraq has changed and the main efforts must now be focused on the process of reconstruction, an end to crime, the formation of state authorities, and the restoration of the very basic needs of the Iraqi people."
But Fedotov added in reference to the sons' death: "It is difficult for me to say how this fact can affect the future situation in Iraq."
The killing was also seen as showing the desperate measures US forces were resorting to as they grapple with anarchy in post-war Iraq.