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Saddam as elusive as Osama
10/09/2003 13:04 - (SA)
Baghdad - United States commanders say they have every man searching every minute of every day for ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, and readily admit they cannot find him.
If they're looking for clues they might as well ask local shop keeper Salah Mahmud.
"He is everywhere. When nobody was looking for him, he changed his location every two days," said Mahmud, who runs a photo shop on Saddam Street. "So nowadays, he is changing three or four times a day."
Five months after capturing Baghdad, US officials do not hide their frustration at their failure to find Saddam, who has a $25-million bounty on his head.
"Every single soldier, every service member of the coalition is looking for Saddam every minute of every day and we are doing everything we can to find him," a senior official of the US-led coalition said Tuesday.
Besides the need to prove the old regime is truly dead, the search has political implications for US President George W Bush. Polls show 62 percent of Americans feel the war will not be a success until Saddam is captured or killed.
Blind alley
The last confirmed sighting of Saddam was on April 9, shortly before the first US troops entered Baghdad and ousted him from 24 years in power. The massive manhunt has since led down one blind alley after another.
The arrest of several top aides fuelled speculation that the Americans were closing in on Saddam. It reached fever pitch after US forces killed his sons, Uday and Qusay, in a raid on a villa in Mosul on July 22.
Ten days ago US troops, backed by helicopters, moved into a neighbourhood of the northern city of Mosul after intelligence reports said Saddam might be hiding there.
The raid came a day after the former dictator's most recent alleged statement on an audio tape in which he denied any involvement in the August 29 car bombing in the holy city of Najaf that left 83 people dead, including a revered cleric.
But again the search proved fruitless.
US commanders have stepped up their effort to penetrate the world of the fugitive leader, even recruiting some of his former intelligence agents, according to Ali Abdul Amir, spokesperson for the pro-US Iraqi National Accord.
A matter of weeks
Wafiq al-Samarrai, a former Iraqi dissident and one-time chief of Iraqi military intelligence before falling out with Saddam, said the Americans will eventually succeed in arresting his old boss, perhaps in a matter of weeks.
"Especially if he continues to try and send messages. From my personal point of view I have the impression that he is in Baghdad, Samarrai said. "I think the Americans are able to find Saddam Hussein but they need time.
"Even for me its hard to believe he is still hiding while there is a price on his head," he said. "The important thing is to catch Saddam Hussein."
But even Samarrai is perplexed at the failure of the Americans to nab Saddam after offering such a sizeable reward for information leading to his arrest.
"Given the fact that all Iraqis hate him, how come they still can't find him?" he asked.
Conspiracy theories on what happened to the once all-powerful leader provide lively banter in the street cafes of this occupied country.
Near Mahmud's photo shop a group of men and women who own small businesses in the same area are convinced Saddam is receiving help from outside forces.
He can't trust Iraqis
"He is protected by Arab mercenaries from Syria, Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan because he can't trust anymore the people from Iraq," speculated Fatma Al-Zuru.
She said it was impossible to believe that the Americans did not know where he was hiding.
"They brought Saddam to power and surely they have found him and now they are protecting him," Zuru added.
In Al-Adhamiya, a Sunni neighbourhood, old men playing cards inside a coffee shop point to the deaths of Saddam's prized sons as the main argument to support theories he was no longer in the country.
"If he stayed inside the country, he would have reacted after Qusay's and Uday's death," said one.
- AFP
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