Opposition to US in Iraq will continue
July 24, 2003 Edition -1
Robert Fisk
Saddam's sons may be dead, but the Iraqi forces of resistance to the US-led invasion are a live threat, writes Robert Fisk.
So they are dead. Even Baghdad exploded in celebratory, deafening automatic rifle fire at the news.
The burnt, bullet-splashed villa in Mosul and the four bullet-ridden corpses found after a four-hour gun battle between Iraqi gunmen and US forces have boosted America's hopes - however vain - that the death of Saddam Hussein's two sons, Uday and Qusay, will break the guerrilla resistance to Iraq's US occupation troops.
A 14-year-old child killed by the Americans - one of the four dead - is thought to be one of Saddam's grandsons. The house was owned by Mohamed el-Zidani, a tribal ally of the Husseins.
Qusay was a leader of the Special Republican Guard, a special target of the Americans. The two men evidently fought fiercely against the 200 American troops who surrounded the house.
The Americans used their so-called Task Force 20 to storm the pseudo-Palladian villa on a main highway through Mosul.
Task Force 20 combines both special forces and CIA agents. This is the same Task Force 20 that blasted to death the occupants of a convoy heading for the Syrian border earlier this month, a convoy whose travellers were meant to include Saddam himself and even his two sons.
The victims turned out to be only smugglers.
American intelligence - the organisation that failed to predict the events of September 11 2001 - was also responsible for the air raid on a Saddam villa on March 20 which was supposed to kill Saddam.
And the far crueller air raid on the Mansour district of Baghdad at the end of the air bombardment in April, which was supposed to kill Saddam and his sons, but only succeeded in slaughtering 16 innocent civilians.
All proved to be miserable failures.
In a family obsessed - with good reason - with their own personal security, it is odd that Uday and Qusay were together. How did they allow themselves to be trapped?
The two so-called "lions of Iraq" (courtesy of their father) in the very same cage?
Saddam's early life was spent on the run. But he always travelled alone.
In adversity, the family had learned to stay apart, just as they had during the 1991 Gulf War and during last March's invasion of Iraq.
Even in power, Saddam and his sons were in hiding.
So even if DNA testing proves that the corpses are those of Saddam's sons, will Iraqis believe it?
And will it bring the guerrilla war to an end?
First, even with Uday and Qusay dead, Saddam is clearly still alive.
Though Uday was both a cruel man and a psychopath, they were appendages to the king, assistants in the monster's cave. Saddam lives. And his voice is still heard on tape throughout Iraq.
It is his fate of which Iraqis are waiting to hear.
Secondly, and far more importantly, there is a fundamental misunderstanding between the American occupation authorities in Iraq and the people whose country they are occupying.
The US believes that the entire resistance to America's proconsulship of Iraq is composed of "remnants" of Saddam's followers - "dead-enders" or "bitter-enders".
Their theory is that once the Hussein family is decapitated, the resistance will end.
But the guerrillas who are killing US troops every day are also being attacked by a growing Islamist Sunni movement which never had any love for Saddam.
Much more important, many Iraqis were reluctant to support the resistance for fear that an end to American occupation would mean the return of the ghastly old dictator.
If he and his sons are dead, the chances are that the opposition to the American-led occupation will grow rather than diminish - on the grounds that with Saddam gone, Iraqis will have nothing to lose by fighting the Americans. - The Independent, London
