The Boston Globe December 15, 2003
Hussein Captured Impact On Attacks
Attacks On Us Forces Expected To Continue Nationalism Is Seen As Root Of Insurgency
By Susan Milligan, and Bryan Bender, Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent
Robert Schlesinger of the Globe staff contributed to this report from Washington.
WASHINGTON - The capture of Saddam Hussein will deliver a sharp psychological blow to his loyalists, but is not likely to incapacitate the broader array of angry citizens and militants from other Arab countries who have been fighting the American occupation, military analysts said yesterday.
Hussein could provide valuable information to authorities about the roots of the insurgency and whether it was planned before the war, and the image of the unkempt, defeated-looking former dictator might well dishearten those who nurtured dreams of a resurgence of Hussein and his Ba'ath Party.
Still, few analysts believed the arrest would end the attacks on US forces, and some pointed out that the very conditions of his capture - practically alone, hiding in a shallow hole - cast doubt on the notion that he was leading the insurgency.
Violence, they said, is likely to continue through a mix of Islamic jihadists, former criminals, and foreign fighters battling an occupying force that is unpopular with many Iraqis.
As if to underscore the point, a car bomb exploded yesterday outside a police station near Baghdad, killing at least 17 people and wounding 33 more. A US soldier also died while attempting to disarm a roadside bomb south of the capital.
Today amid the celebrations, the violence continued. A car bomb exploded at a police station north of Baghdad, killing at least nine people, an official told Reuters. Another car bomb was found near a police station in Amiriyah neighborhood of the capital.
"I've never believed it was Saddam-driven - I think his control over the insurgency has been slim to none," said Ian Cuthbertson, director of the counterterrorism project at the World Policy Institute. "This is nationalism."
Americans "were not popular before we got there, and we haven't done anything to become more popular since we arrived," Cuthbertson said.
President Bush tempered his celebration with a warning that the attacks are likely to continue. Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of US forces in Iraq, also cautioned that the violence would not stop simply because Hussein had been caught.
"We do not expect at this point in time that we will have a complete elimination of those attacks," Sanchez said in Baghdad. "I believe that those will continue for some time. But with the cooperation of all of the Iraqi people and our coalition, I believe that we are now much closer to a safe, secure environment here."
Ending the attacks would be the single most important step toward winning the confidence of the Iraqi people, analysts said.
On the streets of Iraqi cities from Basra to Baghdad and Mosul, citizens have told reporters they long for the order of their prewar lives even as they celebrate the ousting of the hated dictator. .
For the forces who have been battling the insurgency, the capture of Hussein is an important symbolic achievement, counterterrorism specialists say. The remnants of Hussein's regime, many of them believed to be holed up near the Sunni enclave of Tikrit, may become demoralized or even frightened of capture. Local Iraqis may be more cooperative.
"This is likely to be quite damaging, though not fatal, to the other Tikrits and Ba'athists," said James Woolsey, the former CIA director and longtime advocate of a crackdown on Hussein. "We could well be dealing with this Ba'athist triangle insurgency for some time. But for the people who really think they have a chance of breaking our will and coming back to power, this ought to be a great blow to them."
The humiliating vision of Hussein on television having his head checked for lice is also likely to take the steam out of his followers' efforts, analysts said.
"He was out there evading Americans, and now, look at what we see: He looks bad, he was living in a hole, and now he's going to be tried," said Richard Shultz, a former Pentagon consultant who now directs the International Studies Program at the Fletcher School at Tufts University.
Still, some of Hussein's former henchmen may step up their attacks, bent on proving that the loss of their leader will not dampen their mission, analysts said.
"I think there will be a last-ditch effort by terrorists to prove their presence," Rend Al-Rahim, the Iraqi ambassador to the United States, said on CNN's "Late Edition" yesterday.
And a nationalist sentiment still exists among local Iraqis, many of whom are anxious to form their own government.
"My own sense is that the resistance has developed a kind of momentum of its own - there's a kind of latent nationalism to get rid of the occupier even if you don't like Saddam Hussein," said Michael Hudson, a professor at Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary American Studies.
The coming weeks and months could be critical, analysts said, as the coalition seeks to improve street security, move the rebuilding effort along, and set the stage for a departure of US troops.
"The hope is that this is a tipping point and that it will become increasingly clear that the old regime is not going to come back and everybody needs to get with the program," said James [John] Pike, an analyst with GlobalSecurity.org. But "there is no reason to hope that this will result in an immediate cessation of attacks on coalition forces."
SIDEBAR: CUTTING THE DECK THIRTY-NINE OF THE 55 MOST WANTED IRAQIS ARE IN CUSTODY, 13 REMAIN AT LARGE, TWO HAVE BEEN CONFIRMED KILLED, AND ONE HAS BEEN REPORTED KILLED.
© Copyright 2003, Globe Newspaper Company
