Among the collection of Saddam Hussein images which used to litter Iraq were two 10-metre bronze statues of the dictator on a rearing horse which stood on the entrance arch to the main palace in his home town of Tikrit.
They disappeared last week, blown up by troops of the US army’s 4th Infantry Division. The metal will be taken to Texas and used for a memorial to the division’s fallen soldiers. Before it was carted off, soldiers stamped on Saddam’s head and posed for snapshots.
This small act of triumphalism is no compensation for the fact that the man remains at large, taunting the Americans with voice recordings calling for resistance.
Tikrit is the centre of the hunt. Banks of laptops are set up in the entrance hall of Saddam’s palace on the banks of the Tigris. M16 rifles lie on the floor as men and women in fatigues tap out situation reports. The division covers a huge swath of Iraq from Kirkuk in the east to the Syrian border.
Two more search operations ended last week. Army computers collate a battery of the latest statistics from Operation Ivy Serpent and Operation Soda Mountain — 1 210 people detained, more than 6 000 mortar rounds discovered plus 1 400 rocket propelled grenades, explosives, AK-47 assault rifles and other weapons. But the man they really want escaped again, and what the statistics do not tally is the number of new enemies the offensives may have created.
”American soldiers break into our homes, and take money. They address us rudely. My husband was made to stand outside. Every family is allowed to have one Kalashnikov for self defence. They took ours,” said Umm Tahsin, as she waited with other women at the US-appointed Iraqi governor’s office yesterday.
It was a measure of one change that she felt no fear in expressing dissident views in a building which was thronged with US officers and troops. She and the other women had come to collect a one-off welfare payment of about $16.
Asked if she thought Saddam was still alive, she shouted: ”Inshallah. God willing. We want him back. Life was better in his time.” She was not a member of Saddam’s tribe, she said. ”I’m an Iraqi”.
Wail al-Ali, who was chosen as Tikrit’s new mayor by a group of 25 local leaders, said: ”Anyone who thinks Saddam Hussein is coming back is stupid.”
Only a few people supported the former dictator, he said. ”Even the blind can see what Saddam Hussein did, taking Iraq into so many wars and doing little even for this town, no sports club, no decent hotel.”
A native of Tikrit, Ali belongs to the generation which joined the Ba’ath party before Saddam distorted its ideals. He resigned in 1976, though he managed to carry on his career as a diplomat in the foreign ministry, and later in the ministry of education.
He believes the searches are counterproductive. ”They turn people against the US,” he said.
Like his counterpart in Falluja, another mainly Sunni town with a large US base, the mayor of Tikrit has asked the Americans to move their headquarters out of the city. But US officers say it is too early.
Despite the differences over US patrolling, the Americans and local residents agree that Tikrit has seen fewer attacks on US troops than Baghdad. Occasional mortar rounds are fired at the US base from long range. Grenade attacks are sporadic. But in this alleged hotbed of resistance no US soldier has yet died.
A US soldier of the 1st Armoured Division and an Iraqi interpreter were killed and three soldiers wounded in a gun and bomb attack in Baghdad on Monday. – Guardian Unlimited