HOW HE SEES IT In Iraq, road will not be smooth

By JAMES P. PINKERTON
LONG ISLAND NEWSDAY
The capture of Saddam Hussein is great news for the cause of international justice. And it's great news for President Bush, at least in the short run. But the longer-term impact on Iraq itself -- and on Bush himself -- is unclear.
To be sure, the Saddam era is over. Presumably the Americans will turn the ex-dictator over to some sort of Iraqi tribunal, where he will be held accountable for the death of more than a million people -- and where no Johnnie Cochran-type will derail the course of his just punishment.
But the Saddam era has, in fact, been over since April -- and yet America's problems in Iraq have worsened since then. More Americans have been killed since Bush declared an end to "major combat operations" than before. Indeed, the capture of Saddam in a tiny hole in the ground, without so much as a cell phone, puts the lie to the notion that he was directing the resistance efforts.
And so while many will be celebrating Saddam's capture as a "turning of the corner" in Iraq, it's worth remembering that the same optimists were predicting the collapse of anti-American fighting after the death of Saddam's sons, Odai and Qusai, back in July.
Four factions
The point is that the Iraqi resistance consists of at least four factions. First, there's the much-discussed Fedayeen Saddam. Pentagon propagandists like to link all anti-American violence to these Baath "bitter-enders," but they probably aren't the deadliest group. Like Saddam himself, the Baathists don't seem interested in dying in a blaze of glory. If they did, they had plenty of chances to do so back in March and April.
The other three factions are more dangerous, and they will stay more dangerous, because they never had much loyalty to Saddam & amp; Co. The second faction is the Iraqi Islamists, both Sunni in the north and Shiites in the south. These true believers are more likely to be suicide bombers, because they might be looking for a martyr's passage to heaven.
A third, and related, group is made up of foreign fighters. Their numbers and motivations are obscure, but it's a safe bet that most of them don't plan on returning to their home countries alive.
Fourth and finally, there is the general category of those who feel that their honor has been injured by the U.S. occupiers. Last month The Baltimore Sun quoted a U.S. defense analyst who warned of a backlash against tough tactics: "Every time you kick in a door and roust a family, you've created a revenge group of 40 guys."
So while the first resistance group, the Baathists, might well be demoralized by the capture of Saddam, it's hard to see how the other three factions will be affected at all. Indeed, to some extent, the non-Baathists might now feel emboldened to pursue their violent campaigns, since they can no longer be accused of paving the way, however inadvertently, for Saddam's return to power.
More violence
In other words, expect a week of nonstop celebration in the United States, followed by the painful realization that the bombs and attacks are still continuing in Iraq. Indeed, Bush himself, having learned his lesson after the landing on the aircraft carrier in May, was careful to caution Americans that Saddam's capture "does not mean the end of violence."
Such violence, of course, will complicate the creation of a stable pro-American government in Iraq. The conventional wisdom in Washington is that the White House will arrange the virtual withdrawal of U.S. troops -- at least from the hot zones -- by the middle of 2004, so that Bush can stand for re-election on a platform of zero casualties abroad and much prosperity at home.
But Bush's path to a second term might yet be bumpy. The Shiites, who make up 60 percent of the Iraqi population, have figured out that holding an honest election in Iraq would put them in power for the first time in the nation's history. And the top Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Sistani, is a near dead-ringer for the late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran, and his political views seem similar, too.
Which is to say, Shiite control of Iraq is anathema to the secular and pro-Western officials we have installed in Baghdad. And so a power struggle is being waged. If elections are delayed or subverted, as seems likely, that power struggle could become a civil war.
Meanwhile, the U.S.-funded Iraqi police and army are honeycombed with quitters, deserters and informers. Without the active combat participation of Americans, the government in Baghdad would fall to the ayatollahs, just as the government of the Shah of Iran's regime fell a quarter-century ago.
Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service