Saddam's Tribal Leader Arrested in Iraq

A Reuters news story from October 21 reports that the leader of the late Saddam Hussein's tribe has been arrested in northern Iraq for providing funding to Iraqi insurgents battling coalition and Iraqi security forces. The announcement of his arrest was made by the United States military after a joint operation in which Iraqi forces took the lead while U.S. troops provided advice and assistance.

The Reuters story says, "Iraqi troops backed by U.S. advisers over the weekend detained Diyah Adib Hassan Albu Nasir in his home in Baiji, near Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, under an arrest warrant, and also detained his son. Nasir 'is suspected of funding insurgent activities for several terrorist organisations in northern Iraq,' the U.S. military said in a statement."

Tribal ties run deep in Iraq, and it's a pretty safe bet that the United States and the Iraqi government are a long way from stamping out the Saddam loyalists, some of whom are operating out of northern Iraq and some of whom have taken refuge in Syria. It is believed by many analysts that uncaptured top tier members of the former Saddam Hussein regime are providing significant levels of funding to Sunni insurgents in Iraq.

Reuters continues, "Albu Nasir is the name of the tribe of former Iraqi leader Saddam, who was ousted in the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Saddam was executed by the Iraqi government in December 2006. The sectarian violence unleashed by the U.S. invasion has subsided but attacks by insurgents, including Sunni Islamist al Qaeda, and other violent groups continue on an almost daily basis, claiming dozens of lives every month."

Remember the execution of Saddam? The Iraqi government didn't do us or themselves any favors with their handling of the execution. Saddam loyalists (and there are a significant number among Iraq's Sunni population) were deeply disturbed by the sight of a Shia mob chanting "Moqtada, Moqtada" as Saddam stood on the gallows. The reference was, of course, to radical Iraqi Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who has opposed the presence of coalition forces in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

"Al Qaeda largely retreated to the northern province of Nineveh after Sunni tribal chiefs in its former strongholds in western Iraq turned on the group and allied themselves with U.S. forces. But Saddam's home province of Salahuddin, especially around Tikrit, 150 km (95 miles) north of Baghdad, remains volatile."

Old habits die hard, and as previously noted, tribal ties run deep. It could be more than a generation before real progress is made among those closely tied to Saddam Hussein.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LL4682.htm