CAIRO -- As American deaths mount in Iraq, there is little sympathy in the Arab world for the plight of the U.S. occupiers.

Still embittered by the invasion and shocked by the ease of America's military victory, few Arabs outside Iraq voice condemnation of the daily attacks on U.S. soldiers, Iraqi oil and water facilities or even the United Nations' Baghdad headquarters.

Some Arab analysts believe the current armed attacks on U.S. forces are just a foretaste of things to come.

"Happiness probably isn't the right word," Cairo University political science Professor Muhammed Kamal said of the Arab response to the problems encountered by U.S.-led occupation forces in postwar Iraq. "But I think people do feel some sense of satisfaction."

Most Arabs acknowledge that the Iraqi people seem to be deeply relieved to be rid of Saddam Hussein and his repressive Baath Party.

"Saddam isn't coming back," said Tawfik Abdel Hamid, a young Cairo clothing store clerk. "If he did, his own people would kill him."

But while there is little sympathy for the old regime, there is a certain admiration among Arabs for the increasingly sophisticated guerrilla operations, which U.S. officials believe are largely the work of Hussein loyalists.

The attacks are "a natural response," Abdel Hamid said. "They have a right to defend their country. From (the American point of view) they're liberating the country. But from the Iraqi point of view, this is an occupation."

Arab governments, meanwhile, aren't leaping to ease America's burden in Iraq.

The Arab League has refused to recognize the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council. On a swing through Arab capitals this week, a delegation from the council failed to gain official recognition from several Arab governments.

Some Arab analysts believe the current armed attacks on U.S. forces are just a foretaste of things to come.

In an article last week in the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, prominent Lebanese journalist Ali Ballout, who boasts a 30-year personal relationship with Hussein, said the former dictator had a long-standing plan for a protracted post-invasion guerrilla war.

Iraqis protest, Tuesday, August 26, in front of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) headquarters based at a former presidential palace of Iraq's deposed leader Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. (AFP/Rabih Moghrabi)

Starting shortly after America's "Desert Fox" bombing campaign, which was launched the day U.N. weapons inspectors withdrew in December 1998, Hussein organized and distributed weapons, funds and instructions to three "militarily and financially autonomous" resistance groups: Al Mujahedeen (the religious fighters); Al Ansar (the supporters); and Al Muhagiroon (the emigrants), Ballout said. The groups include former Baath Party elements, military veterans and non-Iraqi Islamic volunteers.

As the scale of the shadowy guerrilla campaign grows, some Arab commentators are warning that the resistance to the occupation is building its own momentum and could draw other parties who are now on the sidelines, such as Shiites or nonradicalized Arabs, into the conflict.

"The military presence of the United States in Iraq is a huge magnet that attracts a very wide array of militants, and possibly even prompts some people to become terrorists," said an editorial Monday in the Daily Star. "The manner in which Washington carried out 'regime change' in Baghdad -- and continues to warn other nations -- provides further reasons for militants to go to Iraq and fight America."

Diaa Rashwan, an expert in Islamic fundamentalism at the Cairo-based Al- Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said the presence of a huge U.S. force controlling a formerly sovereign Arab country had created "an ideal target" that could open a new front in al Qaeda's war against the West.

"Militants ask: 'Why would I go to Washington? The Americans are right here,' " he said.

Rashwan added that the selection of recent attack sites -- oil pipelines, the Jordanian Embassy and the U.N. compound -- stems from more than just a search for soft targets.

"They want to create the impression that the Americans can't protect anything -- not the oil pipelines, not even their friends," he said. "Their message is that the price is very heavy to be America's friend in Iraq."

An even more dangerous dynamic, Rashwan believes, could be America's tenuous relationship with Iraq's Shiite majority. After decades of oppression at the hands of Hussein's Sunni-dominated government, Iraq's powerful Shiite clerics seem eager to take a leading role in the new Iraq.

Shiite leaders have called for cooperation with the U.S. forces -- for now - - and U.S. officials seem eager to maintain goodwill with the Shiites.

But the alliance is fragile, and the splintering of that relationship would spell "the beginning of the end" for America's control of Iraq, Rashwan said.

However, despite the increase in attacks and the dangers of a continuing occupation, few in the Arab world believe that any form of Iraqi resistance could actually drive U.S. forces out of the country.

"These operations will increase. Soon, the suicide bombings will start," said Gamal Abdel Wahed, a Cairo florist. "It will be Palestine again. It will be Lebanon. The Americans won't leave, but there will be a lot of losses."

©2003 San Francisco Chronicle

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