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Saddam's card is played out
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| 18 December 2003 |
By Michael Knights
US decision-makers from President George W Bush downwards have been careful to downplay the short-term effect that Saddam Hussein's capture may have on the resistance movement in Iraq.
Interrogations of Saddam are likely to disclose what many coalition commanders and officials already suspected - that operational control over the targeting and timing of resistance attacks devolved to the local level even as the regime fell in April.
The circumstances of Saddam's capture - the relatively small stash of US$175,000 cash found with him and the lack of communications equipment - suggest that the former leader's role was largely that of a symbolic figurehead. Analyses of Iraqi public opinion carried out by Washington think tanks have noted that the myth that 'Saddam will return' had become prevalent, and that the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein were quickly characterised as examples of martyrdom.
A Central Command planner told JIR that the end of Operation 'Iraqi Freedom' left the Iraqi nation occupied but not "decisively bent, bowed, and broken"; encouraging the development of myths that presented the war as "continuing in another form and on new battlegrounds".
Elements of the Ba'athist infrastructure appear to be regenerating to some degree, and of the 'most wanted' Iraqis who remain free, almost all are regional Ba'ath party officials. Hizb al-Awda (Party of the Return), reported to be the largest single resistance movement, appears to be organised along regional Ba'ath Party lines in five key areas within the Sunni triangle.
The coming months are likely to see the realignment of pro-Ba'athist groups and former regime loyalists with other agents of instability in Iraq. Senior Ba'athist leaders, as well as a large strata of mid and low-level loyalists, will attempt to maintain and protect their power and privilege. The heads of three Iraqi intelligence services remain at large, each enjoying considerable contacts in the secular and religious, tribal and criminal establishments of the Sunni triangle. Ba'athist groups such as Hizb al-Awda and various movements describing themselves as fedayeen, revolutionaries, or Nasserites are likely to merge into the growing mainstream of Iraqi resistance groups, which appear to fall either into the ethno-nationalist or Islamist categories. The former category of ethno-nationalist groups will continue to launch attacks as long as Iraq's sectarian and political future hangs in the balance, and while coalition forces are stationed in the country.
Ba'athist Iraq was an unofficial kleptocracy, and organised crime involving former regime loyalists and released criminals are likely to be closely entwined with resistance efforts, as recently occurred in the attack on convoys delivering bank notes in Samarra.
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