- BAGHDAD -- Instead of prompting
a hoped-for national conversation about reconciliation and justice, the
capture of Saddam Hussein has sparked a new round of internecine violence,
laced with suspicion, conspiracy theories, and entrenched hatreds and loyalties.
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- It is too soon to measure the ultimate impact of the
former dictator's arrest, but in the first week Iraqis responded with anger
and violence, ranging from political assassinations to schoolyard fisticuffs
between children of Ba'athists and children of those who were tortured
under the rule of Hussein's Ba'ath Party.
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- On Friday, a Baghdad office of the Supreme Council for
Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shi'ite political party, was bombed before
dawn. The blast caved in the entire cement building, killing a woman and
injuring several squatters inside.
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- Basil al-Azzawi, a retired Iraqi air force general, said
a string of assassinations of Shi'ite clerics, pro-Hussein protests, and
bombings seemed intended to provoke civil war between Shi'ites, who bore
the brunt of Ba'athist oppression, and Sunnis nostalgic for the old regime.
"Whether civil war breaks out depends on how well the Sunnis and Shi'ites
can tolerate each other under difficult circumstances," Azzawi said.
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- Also Friday, in the holy Shi'ite city of Najaf, an angry
crowd attacked and killed Ali al-Zalimi, a former official of Hussein's
Ba'ath Party. Zalimi was thought to have played a role in crushing a 1991
Shi'ite uprising. Revenge attacks in Najaf continued yesterday, when gunmen
fired on a former Ba'athist provincial official, wounding her and killing
her 5 year-old-son.
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- Since Monday, Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims battled across
a Baghdad river separating two traditional strongholds of each sect, Adhamiyah
and Khadamiyah.
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- High school students broke into fistfights over Hussein's
capture. At one school, a vociferous pro-Hussein rally prompted US soldiers
to enter classrooms and arrest more than a dozen teenagers brandishing
textbook photographs of the deposed dictator.
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- Hussein loyalists also were suspected of assassinating
Muhannad al-Hakim, a member of the leading Shi'ite political clan in Iraq,
on Wednesday. He was a cousin of Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme
Council, who holds the rotating presidency of the Iraqi Governing Council.
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- Amriya High School, spruced up in fresh pink and white
paint and new rosebushes, is part of the coalition's showcase school reconstruction
project, designed to win popular support for the occupation authority.
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- But last week, the school played host to one of the more
bizarre juxtapositions of the old and new Iraq.
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- Located in the heart of a middle-class neighborhood called
Hay Mukhabarat, for the former members of the Ba'athist intelligence force
who live there, the school was recently spray-painted by students, who
scrawled on the facade "God Bless Saddam," "Saddam High
School," and "Down With USA."
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- About 150 students chanted "Long live Saddam"
in front of the school Tuesday. Neighbors showed photographs of the demonstration
to coalition forces, who returned the next day to arrest students responsible
for the protest.
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- "They're just kids," said Talal abu Saleh al-Dulaimi,
an engineer from Ramadi repairing the school's electric system who expressed
"deep sadness" over Hussein's capture. "The American reaction
was completely out of proportion."
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- Abu Ahmed al-Taie, a Shi'ite security guard at the school,
waited until he was out of Dulaimi's earshot to say that the students who
protested were mostly children of former Ba'athist hard-liners.
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- "Those who benefited from Saddam are defending him
now. They are desperate," Taie said. "Saddam's arrest is just
the trigger."
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- Iraqis like Taie echoed official pronouncements from
the US-led coalition, which said that in the short run, the humiliating
images of Hussein during his arrest might embolden insurgents. Attacks
against Iraqi civilians have increased to nearly three per day. Coalition
officials attribute the violence to "bitter-enders," stalwart
supporters of Hussein's regime.
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- "They're trying to convince the people of Iraq that
they can't trust the coalition," a military spokesman, Brigadier General
Mark Kimmitt said. "They are intentionally trying to create terror
in the minds of the Iraqi civilians so that they have a better chance of
attracting them to their cause, whatever that may be."
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- It is not only anticoalition guerrillas who have raised
tensions in the capital. Suspicion between Sunnis and Shi'ites was felt
across Baghdad last week, as heavily armed men guarded Friday prayers and
gruffly turned away strangers.
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- At the Sunni mosque across from Amriya High School, an
angry imam spat invective against American troops. "They are taking
our property. They are killing us," he said. "What kind of freedom
is that?"
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- Abdullah abu Jihad, a beekeeper who volunteers as a mosque
guard, swung his machine gun sharply when he spoke of the school principal.
Abu Jihad is convinced he cooperated with the US soldiers who arrested
the pro-Hussein students.
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- "I wish someone would kill him," abu Jihad
said. "He submitted the sons of Iraq to the occupiers."
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- Since Hussein's arrest, his supporters, and even many
who loathe or fear him, have bandied about conspiracy theories surrounding
his capture.
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- One holds that it was not Hussein, but rather a double
who was caught. Another supposes that the ousted leader was drugged by
soldiers, explaining why he did not put up a fight.
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- The most intricate theory holds that US forces caught
Hussein a month ago but announced the capture only last weekend. This is
clear, proponents of this popular notion said, because televised images
of the raid showed a date palm with yellow fruit, which were in season
a month ago.
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- "I can't quite figure out why the Americans would
do this, but I'm sure they did," said an unemployed salesman named
Mohammed al-Azzawi.
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- As Iraqis grapple with the significance of the most symbolic
indication yet that more than three decades of Ba'athist rule have ended,
they must also deal with the specter of communal conflict.
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- Iraqis say a truck bomb apparently headed for a police
station killed at least 11 people early last week, and several more bombing
attempts were thwarted. Iraqis and coalition officials expect a major attack
soon as an answer to Hussein's arrest.
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- "Saddam's capture provoked all this. He was our
leader," said Dulaimi, predicting a new bout of violence and revenge
killings to come.
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- But Entifadh Qanbar, a spokesman for the Iraqi National
Congress, said Hussein's arrest heralded a new era of reconciliation. "These
criminals will receive their proper punishment, so we can start healing
our wounds," Qanbar said. "We have to start a reconciliation
process."
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- In the poor Shi'ite neighborhood of Hay Huria, in Baghdad,
that process may already have begun.
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- Ali Hussein, seated before a fruit stall with six companions,
gleefully contemplated the prospect of Saddam Hussein's execution. "There
should be a fair trial first," Hussein said. "Then he should
be slowly cut to pieces in Tahrir Square," in central Baghdad, "so
everyone could see it."
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- As Ali Hussein fantasized about publicly torturing the
deposed dictator and recounted the recent string of attacks against Shi'ites,
a Sunni neighbor and known Hussein supporter cut in: "You would be
so lucky for Saddam to return to power. Only he could bring order."
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- Without missing a beat, Ali Hussein laughed and expressed
the sort of tolerance that Iraq's provisional leaders hope will carry the
day. "I don't mind him. He's our neighbor. He's lived here for years,"
Hussein said. "We would never hurt him."
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- - Thanassis Cambanis can be reached at tcambanis@globe.com
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- © Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
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