So what happens now in Iraq?

IF one man is going to be feeling as though all his Christmases have come at once, it is George W. Bush. The US president may have been trying to avoid sounding triumphalist - only the gleeful "Ladies and gentlemen, we've got him" from his administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, gave the game away - but the capture of Saddam Hussein marks the completion of what at times has seemed almost like a personal vendetta.

Few would doubt that beneath his sober "In the history of Iraq, a dark and painful era is over" speech there lurks a savage joy.

Tony Blair, too, will be mightily relieved this week: for once, at last, there has been good news out of Iraq.

It is news that was marred by the latest atrocity in the ravaged country - a car bomb at a police station in the town of Ramadi west of Baghdad on Sunday killed at least 16 policemen and two civilians, among them a seven-year-old girl.

So it is far too early to claim closure in Iraq.

Haleh Afshar, the Iranian-born Professor of Politics at York University, is one of the country's leading experts on the Middle East, and she has few illusions.

"I am delighted that he has been arrested," she says, speaking on the phone from London. "I detest him. He waged an eight-year war against Iran, and has killed more Iranians than I will ever be able to count.

"I think there will be a lot of Iranians too who will be delighted. I was walking past Downing Street and there was an Iraqi man standing with a placard saying 'hooray'. There are a lot of people who are going to be pleased that he has been caught. But I don't think that this marks the end of difficulties in Iraq."

Bush has made great play on the fact that Iraqis will never again have to fear the return of Saddam. "I'm sure that it is good news that he's not going to come back," Prof Afshar says. "But I'm not convinced that many people in Iraq thought he would come back."

His capture, when he was dragged out of a hole in the ground by US soldiers on Saturday, may have had great propaganda value for the Americans. But it is unlikely to lead to the end of terrorist activity in the country.

A hunted, fugitive Saddam, holed up in a series of hideaways with a bag of money, could not have had much hand in co-ordinating the wave of attacks against US and British servicemen and Iraqi police that have turned the country into a virtual war zone in the months since the fighting officially ended, she points out.

Prof Afshar suspects that much of that is the work of anti-US extremists - some of whom may never have supported Saddam, yet find it impossible to accept the presence of a foreign power in their country.

There is huge local dissatisfaction in a country which has been ravaged by war, where nothing works and in which the Iraqi Governing Council is seen by many as a US-imposed leadership with little real legitimacy.

The danger is that with Saddam gone rival groups will jockey for power in the country - Kurds, and Sunni and Shiite Muslims - and that in the power vacuum following Saddam's disappearance, these factions could become more extreme.

The American policy in the country is not helping, Prof Afshar adds, because there is a feeling among many Iraqis that they are being treated as second-class citizens in their own country.

"They the Americans employ Iraqis, but they employ them as inferior citizens," she says. "They are not paying them proper wages. They are training these police, and then they are leaving in droves because they cannot support their families. There is inequality of treatment."

The spectacle of US companies - and some British ones - growing fat on the profits of 'rebuilding' the country doesn't help, she adds. "They are plundering this country."

The result is greater disaffection than ever among ordinary Iraqis. "I am very, very worried, because I don't think you can fool the Iraqis," Prof Afshar says. "I don't think they feel they are being given a fair deal. They would have trusted a government from Iraq, but the Government chosen for them... there is no sense of legitimacy.

"I worry that this kind of treatment paves the way for extremism, which is the worst of all alternatives."

Iraqi extremists may or may not be aided by Osama bin Laden's al Qaida, but Bin Laden is unlikely to seek revenge for the capture of Saddam, Prof Afshar says. "Saddam was always secular, and anti-Islamist."

But al Qaida elements in post-Saddam Iraq may still exploit the power vacuum to stir up feelings against the Americans and the British.

The problem American faces is that it needs a Government in Iraq that it can continue to deal with after it leaves the country. The best system of government for the Iraqi people may be a federal state made up of the three main population groups - Kurd, Sunni and Shiite.

"But this does not suit the West, because they want one strong man with whom they can negotiate," Prof Afshar says. A man, presumably, like - but not too like - Saddam himself, who was, until the first Gulf War at least, a friend of America.

So what does the future hold for Iraq? Prof Afshar hopes that American and British troops will be able to pull out of the country. "And maybe they will. But I don't think that what they will leave behind will be a secure and stable country."

The real sticking point in the search for a lasting peace in the Middle East is that many people there feel that in American eyes there are two kinds of citizen of the world: the Western citizen and the Middle-Eastern citizen.

"And as long as that exists, it will not be possible to solve this problem," she says.

Saddam photos intended to humiliate

MUCH as she detests Saddam Hussein, Prof Afshar admits she was deeply uneasy about the way in which he was ritually humiliated on TV screens around the world.

When Saddam showed TV images of US soldiers surrendering, she points out, there was almost universal outrage and condemnation in the West. "It was degrading, and all the governments in the West were up in arms at the way these prisoners of war had been treated."

But the images of Saddam screened across the world were far more degrading and humiliating, she says. And if it was wrong for Saddam to show images of western soldiers being humiliated, then it was also wrong for us to show images of the fallen dictator being humiliated in turn.

She was not surprised, however, at the meek way in which the fallen dictator surrendered. "I don't think you can fight if you're in a hole in the ground!"

Despite the rejoicing in Washington and London, she insists, the capture of Saddam does not give the war on Iraq legitimacy. It was supposed to be about weapons of mass destruction, not the removal of a tyrant - and so far none of those have been found.

Justifying the war on the grounds that it led to Saddam's removal would be wholly wrong, she says - because there are many other tyrants in the world just as bad as the Iraqi dictator. "What about Korea? What about Azerbaijan? Where are you going to stop?" she says.

"Getting rid of Saddam wasn't the reason given in this country or in the US for going to war. It was about weapons of mass destruction - and we are still waiting."

What happens next will be revealing, says Prof Afshar. She points out that if there were weapons of mass destruction, and if Saddam were to co-operate with his captors and reveal where they are, he would not be the first fallen dictator to cut a deal with western powers that allowed him to live out his life in comfort.

Hardly the closure that Saddam's countless victims will be seeking. But who knows? We will have to wait and see.

Updated: 10:06 Tuesday, December 16, 2003