So far, despite its very best efforts, the United States has failed to find any Iraqi weapons of destruction. Suspicion is turning to an understanding that this apparently awesome weaponry no longer exists, and perhaps never did. Likewise, despite their best efforts, the Americans have failed to turn up the slightest DNA trace of Saddam Hussein.
Saddam’s disappearance, along with his two sons Uday and Qusay, is extraordinary. As past dictators like Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic and Romania’s Nicolai Ceausescu found, once the reins of absolute power fell from their grip, they became suddenly helpless, with the world turned against them. But Saddam seems very far from getting his comeuppance. Washington thought it might have killed him in the very opening salvo of the war; and again as the invaders approached Baghdad, when a cruise missile destroyed a restaurant at which he was supposed to be dining. But whoever was killed in those attacks, medical evidence does not seem to indicate that it was Saddam.
Despite the continued pockets of armed resistance in the country, Saddam is running a great risk if he remains on Iraqi soil. There is a huge price on his head. His enemies far outnumber his diehard Baath Party supporters. There are more than enough Iraqis who detest the man and his brutal regime.
So where could he have fled to? The US considers Syria a strong possibility, with Iran a less likely hiding place. It is hard, however, to believe that either country would knowingly harbor the world’s most wanted man, knowing as they do that such an action would represent a casus belli for a White House, already drunk with victory and anxious to find excuse for further interventions against its perceived enemies in the Middle East. Last November, Saddam sent Gen. Ali Hasan Al-Majid on a mission to Libya, in which he was rumored to be negotiating a safe haven for Saddam and his family — if they were forced to flee Iraq. But, it is hard to believe that Libya would take such huge risk for no obvious advantage, especially at a time when it is busy trying to mend fences with American and Europe.
So where else? Could Saddam have been in the boot of a limousine in the Russian Embassy convoy that evacuated Baghdad as the American closed in? If he was, the Russians would hardly have continued to hide their most notorious guest. Maybe from Syria, Saddam was spirited to an aircraft which flew him to North Korea. Now there is a country that at the moment doesn’t give a damn what the Americans think about it. Saddam might even have found his way to the Republika Serbska, within Bosnia. Prominent people in this little statelet made no secret of their support for the Iraqi dictator in the run up the US-led invasion.
