Saddam's Capture Brings New Challenges

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Jan 5, 2004

Byline: Jamie Dettmer, INSIGHT

For such a big event the central character in it appeared an unworthy opponent. Disheveled, bewildered and projecting an air of baffled mental absence, Saddam Hussein seemed to have stepped straight from British poet Philip Larkin's grim poem about geriatrics, "The Old Fools."

And these are the first signs:

Not knowing how, not hearing who, the power

Of choosing gone. Their looks show that they're for it:

Ash hair, toad hands, prune face dried into lines.

But would Adolf Hitler have looked much different if he had ended up in the hands of Allied forces? Thinking that you are a god able to do anything you like, then finding out you are a mere mortal, can shock the system as it clearly did to Saddam when dragged from his underground lair.

The Nazi thugs who were captured and packed off to Nuremberg to face justice came across as equally shambolic creatures that is, until they had a few weeks of three square meals a day and some rest between clean sheets.

And like many a captured Nazi, it didn't take long for Saddam to rediscover some of his old swagger. Twenty-fours hours after being hauled from his "spider hole" near Tikrit, he was trading insults with four members of Iraq's governing council, who questioned him at Baghdad International Airport. "He showed that he learned nothing and forgot nothing," said one of those present.

Who can doubt that a Saddam restored to power would be every bit as venal, evil and dangerous as he was before being ousted? And who could resist celebrating at news of his capture? Well, Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean for one. His downplaying of Saddam's capture came across as unnecessarily begrudging, although the former Vermont governor may have a point when questioning whether the seizing of Saddam will lead to a diminishing of attacks on U.S. forces and others in Iraq. The surge in violence in Iraq following the former dictator's seizure appeared to give some empirical backing to Dean's skepticism.

While some Pentagon officials, including Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, argue that Saddam's capture could lead to a decline in attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, few American commanders on the ground believe Saddam or his henchman Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri were orchestrating guerrilla attacks. Along with independent experts in the field, such as investigators from the International Crisis Group, they suspect the armed resistance is coming from a myriad of enemies harboring different motives.

And the astute and well-informed Iraq expert Patrick Cockburn of the London Independent argues: "If anything, the guerrillas will now probably try to inflict more casualties on the U.S. in order to prove they are still in business despite the capture of the former Iraqi leader."

But to pooh-pooh the capture of Saddam as some sideshow is as much a mistake as to be triumphalist about it. His capture at least ties up one loose end. And his seizure could help the interim governing council to persuade Sunni Muslims that the time has come to let go the past and to accept that the balance of Iraqi politics has changed forever. Better to make the necessary political deals with the Kurds and Shiites than to resist and come off worse later, is the argument council members now can deploy.

Saddam's seizure also provides an opportunity for justice to be secured by those who suffered at his hands. Sadly, for tens of thousands that justice will be posthumous. Even so, too many grotesque dictators have escaped retribution for their acts and to see one having to face a judicial reckoning is something both critics and supporters of the Iraq War can applaud together. That is, if the judicial process chosen is transparent and fair and satisfies in its rigor and outcome key international players and the Iraqis themselves.

That could prove difficult. While there is an international consensus that the Iraqis must be at the center of any judicial process used, considerable disagreement remains about how best that can be achieved. One model under discussion is based on the Sierra Leone trials of individuals accused of atrocities in which the defendants are being tried by judges from Sierra Leone but with the assistance of the United Nations and international advisers and jurists.

However, a similar approach may not be possible in Iraq, if the ultimate punishment Saddam could face is the death penalty. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan already has rejected the idea of the United Nations being involved in a tribunal that can sentence Saddam to death. Pointing out that the United Nations never has set up or been involved in a court which carried the death penalty, Annan remarked: "So as secretary-general ... I am not going to now turn around and support a death penalty." The Europeans, including privately the British, are of the same mind.

For the interim governing council and the Bush administration the death penalty would be the appropriate punishment. "I think he ought to receive the ultimate penalty ... for what he has done to his people," President George W. Bush said. "I mean, he is a torturer, a murderer, they had rape rooms. This is a disgusting tyrant who deserves justice, the ultimate justice."