Loyalists express disappointment
ADWAR, Iraq -- In the town where Saddam Hussein was captured, a 50-year-old woman named Bahija Asaad Taha gave voice to the morning-after feeling of grief and letdown. "We have lost a father," she said.
"I am in mourning," said a weeping Dhahira Sarhan. "Saddam Hussein is the crown on our heads," added a third woman, Naziha Awad.
Only after the first wave of sorrow and defiance had run its course did a different picture emerge -- of recriminations over Hussein's favoritism, unkept promises, and disappointment that he gave up without a fight.
In the markets, teahouses, and private homes of Adwar, the town north of Baghdad where Hussein's hiding place was uncovered by US forces Saturday, people said they were uncertain about the future and feared the worst was to come.
Many said guerrilla attacks on US forces would increase, while others maintained they would now dissipate.
"There's an end to everything," said a somber Safa Saber al-Douri, 36, a former air force pilot, now a grocer.
He said that when he saw Hussein on television he became sure the former Iraqi dictator was never behind the resistance.
"He didn't look like someone who was in charge, meeting with the resistance and directing it," said Douri. "He was hiding all alone in a ditch with not even a bodyguard."
Wazir Batan, 22, predicted more attacks, fueled by disappointment with the Americans.
"Look at the line," he said, pointing to a long line of cars outside a gas station. "There is no gas, no electricity, no oil, no security. What's there to be happy about?"
They also showed a touch of disappointment at seeing their hero looking aged and disheveled.
"He was always so elegant," Taha recalled. Then, lest she sound disrespectful, she hastily added that the captured Hussein in his long gray beard and shaggy hair reminded her of Omar al-Mukhtar, the great Libyan independence fighter. "There is no man like him," she said.
There were rumors that in the event of his capture, Hussein would take poison, blow himself up, or fool the Americans into arresting one of the many doubles he reputedly maintained. "Everything they said about him turned out wrong," said Taha.
Adwar is the heart of the Hussein heartland -- a military town where practically every man is a military officer, past or present. It is 15 miles from Hussein's home town of Tikrit and is said to have a special place in Hussein's sentiments because it was from here that he swam across the Tigris River when he was a dissident fleeing arrest in the 1960s.
Taha said four of her sons were soldiers, as was her late husband, struck down by disease. Two of the sons are also dead, one of illness, another in a car crash. And here the conversation turned rancorous toward Hussein. "He promised to give every officer a car. But he didn't give any to my sons," Taha said. "He only gave cars to the more senior Ba'athists."
She said that after her son died of an illness while serving in the army, his house was robbed. She said she went to Hussein, expecting him to order a search for the criminals or to give her compensation. But she said he told her that since her son died of an illness, not in battle, she wasn't entitled to special treatment. He gave her a mere 250,000 dinars, which she said wouldn't buy even a TV set.
"I left very angry and upset. He could have sent out his police to find the thief if he wanted to," she said, speaking in her home.
Still these accusations do not overshadow the adulation people in Adwar still feel for Hussein.
"He is a Muslim. We lived a lifetime under him, for 35 years. We consider him our father," said Taha. "And also, he is a brave man. He is the only person who wasn't afraid of America."
"Saddam is like a member of our family," said her son, Douri, the former pilot. "You could be mad at your father if he treats your brother better than you, but you will be upset when he dies."
Looking to the future, his mother took a pragmatic line. She said everything depended on the ability of the Americans and Iraq's post-Hussein government to provide the basics, like security, electricity, and jobs. "Trust me," she said, "if they give us everything, we'd forget Saddam in a minute."
