WASHINGTON, 31 December 2006 — Reaction in Washington to the execution of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad early yesterday was varied. Some officials welcomed the swift death of the Iraqi dictator, while others were appalled at the seeming lack of sensitivity in killing Saddam on the first day of the Eid Al-Adha holiday.

“Frankly, I think this that is was smart for them to do it just before the Eid, because everything closes down, so this will lessen the informational impact on it. Obviously we had warnings over the last several days, so no one is surprised; he doesn’t have that much support,” a State Department official familiar with Iraq said on the condition of anonymity.

“I just heard on CNN that Libya has declared three days of national mourning, but I think most Arab leaders will not want to be associated with him, they know what he was — more than anybody.

“But the fact that a dictator can be brought down and killed, as the result of a court action, is something new is the region, which is probably unsettling to many of the authoritarian rulers in the region,” said the State Department official.

“Any kind of support that there was for him, was as a symbol for the Arab nation. Arabs know that he was a monster, no one sympathized with him.”

But not all agreed.

“Saddam’s death was anti-climatic,” said Abdulwahab Al-Kebsi, director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at the Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy.

“I thought that when the war started and Saddam was caught, that the trial and execution would culminate into something so major — not just for the Iraqi people, but for the Arab people overall. Here was this tyrant, who would face a trial by the people, and would be executed, and would serve justice. And it did not turn out like that.

“Now, I see his death disintegrating into sectarian differences, and it seems like Shiites are celebrating and Sunnis are saddened by it, and it’s not just in Iraq. It seems that this is happening all over the Muslim world,” said Al-Kepsi.

“I am really disturbed to see it taking a sectarian line. Also, I have to confess that I am surprised by the choice of day for the execution to happen. On the day of Eid, and here we are talking about celebrating the Haj, the unity of the Muslim people — people from Iran, Morocco, Pakistan, everywhere — Haj is the most important day that demonstrates the unity of the Muslim people. Now, instead of focusing on the unity and caring for each other, today we are talking about the execution of Saddam.”

The State Department official said he felt that Jordan would face the greatest problems following Saddam’s death given the large community of Baathist Iraqi exiles that it hosts.

“The country that will have the biggest problem is Jordan, because that’s where his family — his two daughters and his divorced wife are residing. And that’s where his biggest supporters are — there are at least three-quarters of a million of Iraqis in exile in Jordan, and many of these exiles are Sunnis, who left right after the invasion. They have a lot of money and are probably running a lot of the insurgency in Iraq, and I think that’s something to watch.

“The Shiites are crowing, they’re dancing in the streets, and this is not going to do wonders for the sectarian unity in Iraq. There have already been bombings in Iraq, and no one knows if that is a reaction to the killing, or just ongoing killings,” said the official.

Many foreign observers have noted that Saddam was still on trial for his Anfal campaign against Iraqi Kurds whom he gassed and killed in 1988, and that it would have been better if the Iraqi government had waited until his trial was finished before killing him.

Al-Kepsi said he agreed with some of his Kurdish friends, “who feel cheated by not having the rest of the trial continue to find out what happened with the alleged use of chemical weapons against civilian population in Kurdistan. Are we ever to find out what happened, or is the execution of Saddam going to mean the end of any further talk about it?”

But a semi-retired State Department official said the Saddam trials will continue: “Given the disarray yesterday on what and when this was going to happen, I think the Iraqis made this decision themselves — and this is really the only salient aspect of this story to me. That he was going to be executed is not in question, and that there will be some Sunni reaction on the ground is not in question, but I think it will be passing.”