The humiliating images of Saddam Hussein's capture by US forces risk increasing Arab support for the Iraqi resistance and sharpening their appetite for revenge, analysts said on Monday.
"I felt extremely humiliated," said Egyptian writer Sayyid Nassar, who interviewed Saddam three weeks before the US-led invasion of Iraq on 20 March. "I felt it was not only a humiliation of Arabs but of all humanity.
"By shaving his beard, a symbol of virility in Iraq and in the Arab world, the Americans committed an act that symbolizes humiliation in our region, where getting shaved by one's enemy means robbing him of his will," he said.
"It's also a humiliation for all Arab leaders and a message telling them that he who does not enter the poultry yard of the Americans will experience the same fate," he said.
Saddam's arrest "will not destroy the Iraqi resistance against the US occupier," and will encourage "feelings of Arab solidarity with the Iraqi fighters," he predicted.
"On the contrary, the resistance will grow and change shape," he warned. 以下略
Nevertheless,or perhaps because of this ignominious end, the Arab world will be full of conspiracy theories. Some will say that he`s been in American custody all along and was pulled out of a hole at an appropriate time. You will hear plenty of reasons why the United States supposedly pulled this rabbit-out-of-a-hat trick eight months after firing those first vollews in Iraq. It was timed to deflect attention from the worsening situation in Iraq,some will say;it was aimed at securing the 2004 wlection for President Geore W.Bush, and so on. _______________________________________________________
Mona Eltahawy is an Egyption writer based in New York.