The capture of Al-Qaeda’s second in command in Iraq is, on the face of it, a significant coup for the Iraqi government and the US-led coalition. Hamid Juma Al-Saedi and 20 of his men were apparently captured last week in Baquba, not far from where Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was killed by a precision-guided bomb in June. According to official reports, under interrogation Saedi has revealed much about Al-Qaeda’s Iraqi operations and led to the capture of further terrorists. But has this blow to the terror group left it “severely wounded” as an Iraqi government spokesman claimed yesterday? Zarqawi’s replacement, Abu Ayyub Al-Masri, remains at large and, as a leading Baghdad columnist commented after the news broke, Al-Qaeda has proved a hydra-headed monster, capable of regenerating itself quickly and more terribly than before.

Iraqis are bracing themselves for a similar increase in the already horrific level of attacks which followed Zarqawi’s slaying. Among the Shiite majority, there will be grim satisfaction that, according to the authorities, Saedi was the architect of February’s bombing of Samarra’s Golden Mosque, a terrorist crime which pitched the confrontation between Sunni and Shiite communities onto a new level of violence. Nevertheless, many Iraqis may be reflecting today that Al-Qaeda’s evil designs have already been achieved. Though the terrorists’ suicide attacks continue on a daily basis, the core of murder and destruction is now being perpetrated by Shiite gangs and die-hard Baathist insurgents. Al-Qaeda’s amoral analysis that it can strike at the hated Americans by butchering ordinary Iraqis has the extra benefit of setting two Iraqi communities at each other’s throats. The humiliation of President Bush and his knuckle-headed Mideast policies is therefore being achieved in torrents of innocent Iraqi blood.

Even supposing for one moment that Al-Qaeda’s Iraqi operations were to be smashed as a result of Saedi’s arrest, is there much more that these heartless terrorists could do to plunge Iraq further into chaos? There is a faint glimmer of hope. Maybe, just maybe, the destruction of the greater part of Al-Qaeda’s local operations could bring to their senses the Shiite and Sunni leaders who are currently bent on violence. It might be that they could accept the reality of a politically pluralist Iraq with a representative coalition government. But unfortunately there are now too many other variables in the mix including ruthless criminal gangs — which kidnap and extort and smuggle — taking advantage of the general chaos.

It is important to remember that over and above the endless daily carnage, this is a looking-glass war of propaganda and misinformation where nothing is ever going to be quite what it seems. News that Saedi is singing like a canary may be entirely false, intended to panic Masri and other Al-Qaeda leaders into moves that will expose them to the US-run intelligence community. The harshest judgment, however, may well be that this coup is too late to matter.