The Sons are Dead, But
Resistance Will Grow
By
Robert Fisk
Independent
24 July, 2003
So
they are dead. Or are they? Even Baghdad exploded in celebratory, deafening
automatic rifle fire at the news.
The burned, bullet-splashed
villa in Mosul, the four bullet-ridden corpses, 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, all conspired
to produce an illusion last night: that the unidentified bodies found
after a four-hour gun battle between Iraqi gunmen and US forces must
be those of the former dictator's sons--because the world wants them
to be.
Of course, they
might be dead. The two men are said to bear an impressive resemblance
to the brothers. A 14-year-old child killed by the Americans--one of
the four dead--might 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 obviously 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. But 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 the two sons supposedly killed yesterday. The
victims turned out to be only smugglers.
And American intelligence--the
organisation that failed to predict events of 11 September, 2001--was
also responsible for the air raid on a Saddam villa on 20 March, 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.
And in a family
obsessed, with good reason, with their own personal security, would
Uday and Qusay really be together? Would they allow themselves to be
trapped. The two so-called "lions of Iraq" (this courtesy
of Saddam) 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. 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?
Firstly, even if
Uday and Qusay are dead, Saddam is clearly still alive.
Though Uday was
both a cruel man and a psychopath, they were appendages to the king,
mere 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 United States believes that the entire resistance
to America's proconsulship of Iraq is composed of "remnants"
of Saddam's followers, "dead-enders", "bitter-enders"--they
have other phrases to describe them. 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
importantly, 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.
Robert Fisk
is a reporter for The Independent and author of Pity
the Nation.