They might loathe him, and would love to see him gone, but Saddam Hussein’s neighbours fear his demise could set off a political earthquake far beyond Iraq. The idea of ‘‘regime change’’ haunts each country, from Turkey to Saudi Arabia, in different ways. Their common nightmare is that Iraq could fragment chaotically into ethnic and religious cantons, wreaking havoc on delicate regional balances. Saddam has 3 doubles: German TV BERLIN: A German TV network said on Thursday it had made a scientific study of 450 photographs of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and concluded there are at least three doubles posing as the Iraqi President. The ZDF public TV network, working with a German coroner, said it took the photographs and film clips of Saddam which it had in its archives and used facial recognition technology to determine that men said to be him were lookalikes. ‘‘In the film sequences since 1998 only the doubles appear,’’ said Dieter Buhmann, a Hamburg coroner. ‘‘He himself has not been seen again.’’ But ZDF said the original Saddam reappeared on Iraq TV on Saturday. It also quoted what it said was a former Iraq intelligence official describing how he had recruited doubles for Saddam. ‘‘It was a practice started for security reasons because Saddam travelled a lot at the time and had contact with the public,’’ said the former intelligence official, now living abroad in opposition. (Reuters) Their chief concern is Saddam’s overthrow will unleash a wave of anti-US hatred and a popular backlash against any government siding with Washington. Iran, Syria, Turkey and Saudi Arabia have good reasons to be alarmed at the possible repercussions of US President Bush’s policy of ousting Saddam, analysts say. They are concerned that a post-war Iraq might disintegrate, with Shiite Muslims taking over the south and Kurds controlling the north, leaving a Sunni Muslim-dominated rump in Baghdad. No clear US strategy for a post-Saddam era has emerged and the US backed Iraqi Opposition has little credibility in the region, so Arab states are right to be fraught, analysts say. Saudi Arabia’s rulers, linked to the strict Wahhabi Sunni sect, mortally fear any Shiite power centre in southern Iraq that could spur dissent among their own Shiite minority. Turkey has jitters about any Iraqi Kurdish lunge for independence, fearing this could revive secessionist aspirations among its own restive Kurds in the south-east. Syria, deemed a rogue state by US, and Iran fear they could be next in line for ‘‘regime change.’’ (Reuters)
