Divisions deepened by Saddam's death

A week after Saddam Hussein stood on the scaffold at Camp Justice in Baghdad and was taunted during his final moments on Earth by followers of the militant Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr, none of the emotions that were aroused have faded.

On the contrary, the revulsion which was felt in the West and among Sunni Muslims has grown even greater.

Many Sunni Arabs are outraged by the timing of the execution
Yet so has the sense of triumph among Shias in Iraq and elsewhere.

In death as in life, Saddam continues to divide his enemies.

His execution has acted like an explosion along the seismic fault-line between the two leading forms of Islam.

Under Saddam, who was himself a Sunni and ruled through the Sunni minority, Iraq counted as a Sunni country even though the clear majority of the population was Shia.

When he invaded Iran in 1980, soon after the Shia Islamic revolution against the Shah, the Iran-Iraq war was seen by many people in the Muslim world as a Sunni-Shia one.

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