More than two months after the older son of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq was shot by unknown assailants on a Baghdad street, the circumstances and significance of the assassination attempt are still fueling a fierce debate with important implications for U.S. policy.
Iraq watchers were given a rare glimpse of the wounded Uday Hussein this week, when the 32-year-old appeared in a wheelchair, his left leg bandaged and apparently disabled, in pictures aired on the television station he owns.But officials in the Middle East are waiting to see whether the United States, especially under the new tenure of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, will exploit the shooting as a crack in the Iraqi regime or will stick to its more cautious policy of containment.
The first difficulty for analysts here and elsewhere has been identifying reliable information. No one knows who tried to assassinate Uday Hussein. He is so widely viewed as a brutal thug that few have trouble imagining a likely suspect.
Moreover, the significance of Uday in Saddam Hussein's inner circle is unclear. Father and son are said to have fought viciously over the years, and Saddam Hussein is reported, at different times, to have stripped his son of responsibility, burned his favorite cars, and briefly banished him.
But at the same time, Saddam Hussein has always ruled from within the family, and Uday is owner of a television station and publisher of a key newspaper in Iraq as well as head of the country's Olympic Committee. He has massive security, vast sums of money at his disposal and enormous personal power.
He has been known to enter nightclubs and grab any woman he chooses and to maim or even kill them or their husbands if challenged, according to associates who have defected, including a man named Latif Lahia who lives in London and says he was Uday's official double for years. Uday is also widely reported to have killed a favorite servant of his father's in 1988 and to have shot seven bullets into the leg of his father's half-brother, Watban Ibrahim Hassan, in 1995.
Last year, when his two sisters and brothers-in-law, who had defected to Jordan, returned home on promises of safety, he personally led the battle in which the two brothers-in-law and many others related to them were slain.
"It is true that government in Iraq is a family affair," said Radwan Abdallah, a Jordanian political scientist. "But it is also true that Saddam is number one, and everyone else is zero. Nonetheless, this attack has significance. He has to rely on someone, and his last resort is his family"
But a former Jordanian official who knows both Iraq and Saddam Hussein argues that Uday has been a liability to the president, who never regarded him as an heir. The former official said that Saddam Hussein's power has nothing to do with his family and everything to do with his ability to keep his military content.
The details of the attack on Uday Hussein are vague. Iraqi dissidents, Jordanian intelligence agents, and Western diplomats, all referring to a mix of witnesses and other sources, tell differing versions.
All agree that the attempt occurred on the evening of Thursday, Dec. 12 in the tony Mansour section of Baghdad, a few hundred yards from the headquarters of the secret police. All agree that Uday himself was driving.
But whether Uday was in a white Mercedes or a red Porsche, whether he was alone or with a young woman or young man, whether he had just sent his bodyguard on an errand to fetch a videotape or a girl, whether he was going to a party, whether there were cars of bodyguards behind him, is all unclear.
Competing versions allege that the street was crowded or cordoned off, that Uday often traveled alone or never did, that the attack did or did not involve hand grenades. Did the assailants get away in a Toyota and a pick-up truck? Did they go to Iran? There are many versions but few clear answers.
Haroun Mohamed, a spokesman for the Iraqi National Accord, an opposition group based here, said that Uday Hussein has a pair of French doctors looking after him, and that a Cuban orthopedist who once treated Saddam Hussein is on the way.
Mohamed said that Uday's bladder had been removed and that two bullets are still lodged at the base of his spine.