LONDON, 4 October 2003 — Finding Saddam Hussein would not stamp out resistance to the US-led occupation or necessarily simplify the task of stabilizing a traumatized and divided Iraq.

But it would hearten the Bush administration and lay to rest any lingering Iraqi fears the deposed ruler could return.

“Saddam is politically if not physically dead for Iraqis,” said Mustafa Alani, an Iraq analyst at London’s Royal United Services Institute. “No one is fighting to bring him back.” He said people who brandish Saddam’s portraits in the Sunni Muslim towns of central Iraq do so to vent their fury at US troops, not from genuine loyalty to the elusive former dictator.

Alani said tracking down Saddam was important for US public opinion and would reverberate in Arab capitals, but, like the killing of his sons, would not quell anti-American attacks. The deaths of the sons, Uday and Qusay, in July may have put paid to any dynastic hopes the Baathist leader had nurtured, but the aftermath suggests they were not directing the insurgency.

Violence worsened with bombings of the Jordanian Embassy and UN offices, and attacks on local police, politicians and others seen as useful to foreign efforts to reorder the country.

Phebe Marr, a US scholar and author of “The Modern History of Iraq”, said grabbing Saddam would have strong symbolic value, dent opposition to the US-led administration and counter what she said were sometimes overbleak impressions of postwar Iraq.

“It would be a big feather in our cap and show Iraqis that Saddamism is finished,” she told Reuters from Washington. “It would reduce the violence, but not end it overnight.” Marr said an intense manhunt had Saddam on the run, probably using his money and clan network to evade capture, with little control over guerrillas who have killed 84 US troops since President George W. Bush declared major combat over on May 1. The best-organized fighters are probably from Saddam’s security services or Baath Party, but may now be more inspired by nationalism than past loyalties. Islamists are also active, mixing with militants infiltrating from abroad, she said.

If the fight against occupation now has a life of its own, drawing on discontents in many Iraqi communities, seizing Saddam would not automatically make it easier to govern a land in which Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds and other groups are jostling for power.

“Saddam’s tried and tested method was to terrify people and buy them off, but no other government could do it,” said Gareth Stansfield, an Iraq scholar at Britain’s Exeter University. He said the United Nations was now wary of involvement in Iraq, even though the United States is now seeking a new Security Council resolution that would enhance its role.

The US-sponsored Iraqi Governing Council wants to take control, but has yet to convince many Iraqis of its legitimacy.

Stansfield said it was hard to see how the anti-occupation violence could be ended without the departure of US troops. Putting more on the ground might simply create more targets.