Analysis: Verdict May Not Stop Violence

Iraqis hold up image of Saddam Hussein and a national flag as they protest his death sentence verdict, in his hometown of Tikrit,130 kilometers (80 miles) north of Baghdad, Sunday, Nov. 5, 2006. Iraq's High Tribunal on Sunday found Saddam Hussein guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to hang, as the visibly shaken former leader shouted "God is great!" (AP Photo/Bassem Daham) (Bassim Daham - AP)

With their minority community under siege since they were ousted from decades of power, many Sunnis have rallied around Saddam, forgetting the abuses suffered by all communities under his hard-line rule.

Thus, Saddam's execution could turn him into a martyr for some Sunnis, who consider the trial simply a smokescreen for the failures of the Americans and their Shiite and Kurdish allies.

"I believe that this trial is politically motivated and not a judicial one," said hardline Sunni cleric Harith al-Dhari. "If Saddam is charged with crimes, then the trial should be postponed until the occupation ends."

But the fact is that Sunnis are likely to remain unhappy even if Saddam were to live. It is their diminished role in the post-Saddam Iraq that most distresses them.

Saddam also matters, without question, to the majority Shiites: The violence has reinforced the determination of the Shiites and Kurds, who suffered immensely under Saddam's brutal rule, to put an end to any chance that the former regime might make a comeback.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, hailed the verdict, proclaiming that it marks "the end of a dark era and a beginning a new epoch" where the rule of law "will be supreme."

Yet al-Maliki's real problem is the burgeoning civil war _ and he will make little progress at any unified government, much less a united country, until he can convince Sunnis that they have a future in the new Iraq.

In short, until Iraq's communities reach political agreement on the future of their country, chances for peace appear bleak.

And that could take a very long time.

"You need to look at it in the long term and in the long term, I think the Iraqi people are going to be proud that they gave (Saddam and his defendants) a fair trial," said Christopher Reid, who served as an adviser to the Iraqi court.

But, he adds, acknowledging the current violence: "You can't look at this thing in the short term."

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Robert H. Reid is correspondent-at-large for The Associated Press and has frequently reported from Iraq since 2003.