main
The Eurasian Politician - April 2003
by "Abu Charma", 26th March, 2003
Our "El Cid" will give the readers of The Eurasian Politician impressions of the ongoing war in Iraq.
It is the seventh day of Iraq's liberation war. I have been following the direct news stream from BBC and various news agencies almost ceaselessly every day. I am living in a new rhythm, which is defined by news reports every full hour, press briefings, and images of the war: tanks thrusting their way without stop through desert, columns of Hummels on their way towards Baghdad, burning oil wells, the Central Command's video clips of missiles hitting their targets, helicopters over the desert, B-52, F-14 and F-18 fighters taking off their airbases and carriers. Monitoring the war that began a week ago has become my main task. In every new news clip I search for an invisible hint, a clue about the advancing of the war, and of the atmosphere on the front. The general image is like a mosaic: often contradictory information from different sources on single events, an ever changing situation, and the amount of the drops of information make me restless.
Regarding the military general situation, the generals think that the war is advancing according to the plans. I am sure myself, too, that we are where the realistic estimations on the war's advance posit us. I have to admit, however, that I have been surprised by the time to time there-and-back character of the advance. My guess was that Basra would have fallen already. Yesterday (25th March) there were news from Basra, telling that an uprising had begun. Today, the situation seems quite "stable" a chaotic situation, except of the quickly worsening water and sanitation catastrophe. But according to Al Jazeera, the situation is calm. According to BBC news today, the paramilitary troops would be fleeing from the city. This would be a splendid piece of news indeed, as then the firing line would be free from houses and hindrances. First signs of an uprising in Basra would surely include fleeing of civilians, i.e. apparatchiks of the Ba'ath, towards north, to get out of the uprising.
The city is now besieged by the Englishmen, who yesterday said they are supporting a starting uprising with artillery fire against the Ba'athist fire. According to some intelligence reports, the Ba'athists have been shooting crowds inside Basra with mortars. It is, however, hard to confirm or deny this. It is clear that it is generally expected that an uprising would soon begin in Basra. On the other hand, betrayal is never forgotten... What happened in 1991 is indeed halting the enthusiasm of the inhabitants to rise against their regime. I fully understand this. If I was Iraqi, I would certainly not take for face value the liberation rhetorics of the Americans and Britons, if I would have experienced such a betrayal... But on the other hand, where liberation is a fact and no longer just a dream, the images of the BBC and other news agencies witness in favor of a liberation: In Umm Qasr, people who have dared to come out of their homes, are smiling and seem moderately glad to receive the food packages that the Englishmen are delivering. The aid column of seven trucks from Kuwait to the Iraqi border village of Sahwan led to the usual kind of pushing and quarrelling for the share of the aid deliveries.
Saddam's regime has, however, surprised us by being no longer as pathetically incompetent in warfare as it was in the last war. Most obviously Saddam has added groups loyal to the regime into the ordinary military units, which may explain the fact that in several places also the regular army has been fighting, defying the expectations of immediate collapse. The Russian system of political officers has indeed been necessary, when recalling the outcome of the Gulf War. Thus, it has become as a some kind of a surprise for the media but even for some experts commentators, that there have been battles at all in the south.
There have been semi-battles and exchange of shooting about Umm Qasr, Iraq's only deep harbor, up until yesterday, partly even accompanied by dramatic news images. The liberation of a village with 4'000 inhabitants has been announced by various sources several times already, and yet the news images have been telling about minor gun fighting there. Umm Qasr has become a kind of joke for us. I wonder how long it will take that there will be a movie about the "Heroes of Umm Qasr" or something like that? The Marines even made a silly incident by pulling Stars and Stripes as well as the Marine flag to the top of an administrative building. Finally political correctness won, and I think the flag master was given a repetition of this war's moral basics: "we are here to liberate, not to conquer", or something. The resistance given in that harbor town, whose name I anyway have learned for the first time now, is most obviously offered by the paramilitaries, small units loyal to the regime, who have been sent to strengthen the local defence. Their irregular strikes give an anxious reminder about vague partisan war in urban surroundings.
Saddam's Fedayeen troops, the Republican Guard, the Special Republican Guard, and the Ba'ath party activists cannot be expected to do anything but fight, because the goal of changing regime has been pushed forward so strongly that it is not only political zeal that motivates them to fight, but also the fate: When the Iraqi regime starts to collapse, those who have been too eager to participate the regime's activities and parades, will be on the people's mercy. The longer Saddam and Co. can postpone the inevitable, the more probable it is that people may even start to forget Saddam's tyranny, as there may be a patriotic wave flooding over. This kind of development has been seen before, so it is not excluded from the worst case scenario.
Today's (26th March) catastrophic missile strike hitting a bazaar or housing quarters was a perfect public relations failure, and if such accidents are repeated, they may even prove strategic failures, as they may awake the enemy's fighting morale, Arab nationalism and religious hatred. A very good news for Saddam, because the images of burn civilian corpses benefit him more than anyone. It has become quite clear by now that Saddam and his lackeys are making this, in their rhetoric, an "Arab" and "Muslim" fight against "crusaders" and "colonialists". Without a Road Map for the Palestinians, some US distancing from Israel, and active diplomacy to launch Israeli-Palestinian dialogue, it is expected that images of busloads of Iraqi emigrants returning from Jordan to join the front will just increase. Honestly speaking, I can easily understand the logic of my "enemies". Every failure and civilian casualty will strengthen the anti-American attitudes. For the Arabs, it is hard to have any good thoughts about the "life insurance of the Jews".
The Iraqi Shi'as have difficulties to trust in the US after what happened in 1991, and even the Kurds cannot have any outstanding confidence in Americans after the times of Reagan, Clinton, and Bush Sr. If I was a Kurd, I would be very careful with my enthusiasm and opportunism after what happened in Halabja, regarding Turkey's war against terrorism, the Iran-Iraq War, the "era of strategic considerations and alliances" and the formal ending of the Cold War. In the funeral of the collateral damages of the Baghdad bombardments, there is a nasty side-taste of Gaza and Beirut. Hysterical masses, fists of anger, gunshots into the air, wooden flag-rapped coffins carried by crowds...
And Saddam knows how to exploit all these sentiments. There are frustrating news about that the regime loyalists have thrown their uniforms away, put on civil clothes, bullet cases in their pockets, and are now driving in taxis around and shooting. Saddam gets no ache in conscience for running own civilians in front of loyalist troops as human shields, or for putting tanks and missiles inside hospitals. When the Americans fully understandably destroy such targets, the responsibility for collateral damages will be thrown upon them. On the other hand, there is always hope for that the population will finally turn against their real butcher. However, we must ask how many of the locals will have the patience to take this chain of thoughts to the end, and conclude where the ultimate evil actually is.
The Americans are in a difficult position. The situation corresponds a hostage drama: The hostage (Iraqi people) should be saved without fatal casualties among the victims (including the Stockholm syndrome). The hostage-taker (Saddam & Co.) should be disarmed, by violence if needed, but still in a way that the release of hostages and taking the criminal to the court will not end up in a situation where the sheriff is convicted for murder and exaggerated use of force. And the hostage-taker should not be left to break out of the besiege with the hostage, or cause casualties to the cops...
The Americans are thereby fighting the war with three limitations, which Saddam does not suffer from: 1) Civilian casualties should be avoided. This must be done even to the excess due to the media factor and for regional stability and moral higher ground. 2) Against all the basic essence and logic of war, even the actions against the enemy cannot be "too efficient". Otherwise the European humanist intelligentsia will occupy all televisions to cry about the "brutality" of war, "unfairness", or "human rights". Schön und Gut, but this wining doesn't change the basic essence and reality of war; it never does. War is predestined for the humankind. There has always been war, there is always, and there will always be. But here, too, the burden and guilt of the horrors of war will not fall upon the real culprit (Saddam), but upon the actors (US and Britain) who naturally protect themselves and carry out the logic of war on their own part.
As early as in the Berlin demonstrations (in summer 2002) Bush was being blamed a "war criminal" for successes in Afghanistan, and now the common "brain-dead" protesting of the Berlin autonomes, and their general hooliganism, have raised real "moral legitimacy" in the eyes of the simple-minded bulk of European people, and among populist politicians, for whom the "common" resistance against war is "gefundenes Fressen" instead of really supporting human rights and human dignity. Reality about Saddam's regime, which is revealed on every step towards Baghdad, will be left in the shadow of general anti-war fanaticism. The "pacifists" won't recall weapons in hospitals, the use of human shields, burning oil wells, murdering political prisoners and dissidents, and so on. Even if Saddam would use the prohibited weapons of mass destruction in the endgame, besides all the presently used prohibited means of fighting, the Western masses would most probably soon recover from a temporary shock and point with their accusing fingers at the US and Britain, instead of Saddam. (Indeed, the news agencies have been hinting that Saddam might use such weapons later, according to unknown Pentagon sources.) I can well imagine the mocking slogans: "Iraq was just defending itself." "What were you doing there anyway?" "Saddam wouldn't have used the weapons without an American invasion." And so on.
Regarding strategy and the war itself, the actual US and British action has again been admirable, although this was easy to expect. The Marines and infantry divisions have advanced to the Baghdad gateways, already. There is fighting going on near Najaf (25th March) and also around the other Shi'ite holy city, Kerbala, against the Republican Guard's armored division "Medina".
26th March, 20:33 p.m. An hour ago the Iraqis tried to break out from Basra with 150 tanks and BTRs towards the Al Faw peninsula. It may look counterattack, but may prove a fatal error for the Iraqis. Most obviously they are trying to reach their oilfields and attack the back of the Alliance. (In the present era of helicopters, such thing as the back doesn't actually exist.) Allied air forces is responding this attack, most obviously with crushing strength. I don't quite get the logic of the Iraqis now: They are attacking on open landscape without air support... It may indeed prove a fatal miscalculation, as I don't know the exact weather conditions in the direction of Basra, but maybe the sandstorm has made the Iraqis imagine that they would have had the chance for a surprise assault. It is clear, however, that the Englishmen will absolutely prefer fighting on open terrain, where the Western know-how and firepower will prove themselves... As an optimist, I could interpret this as a sign about that the regime loyalists don't feel comfortable in Basra anymore... Perhaps yesterday's uprising in Basra has made the Iraqi 51st Division and the Fedayeen Saddam troops fear the worst. However, then the expected direction of an attack would have been towards north, not towards south. If the news is to be trusted, somebody has made a miscalculation.
On the road from Najaf to Baghdad, there have been both sandstorms and heavy fighting, where estimated Iraqi casualties are now between 300-500 and even 1'000 men. There is no information on American casualties, but earlier it was claimed that there were none. It is difficult for me to imagine how that would have been possible in such battles on horizontal level. The Iraqis are talking about 3-7 destroyed American tanks, but I assume they rather mean BTRs. However, it is not impossible.
Like I assumed, this war has been characterized by quite a one-sided amounting of casualties. The Iraqis have lost maybe as many as 500-600 men, according to the more moderate estimation, whereas the Englishmen and Yankees have together lost about 50 men, according to the known information. Most of these have been resulted by own failures: In the first day of the ground war an American transport helicopter, carrying Royal Marines for Al Faw, fell into the sea, resulting 12 dead. Then two Ark Royal Sea Kings crushed each other, resulting seven dead. In the same day a Patriot missile hit a Tornado, resulting two dead. Today, two English infantry men died in friendly fire. The British have now already lost more men than in the last war... This is frustrating.
The fiercest battle after last night and today's fighting in Najaf, has been fought in An Nasiriya, where the Marines have lost 12 men. The Yankees are now told to control the bridges of the Euphrates. That much the Iraqis have resisted that the road leading through Nasiriya is now called the Ambush Alley. In Nasiriya, the Iraqis have been able to halt the advance of the Coalition forces in times, although the troops have advanced over the bridges to the eastern side of the Euphrates, but also there they have got stuck in resistance. According to the Herald Tribune, the Marines in Nasiriya have just discovered a hide of weapons, suits for handling chemical and biological weapons, and ammo, in a hospital... According to the same news, the "hearts and minds" approach of the Marines has been hit, as persons carrying white flags have started shooting at them from a crowd. I'm sure they are also pissed off because of their own casualties. Therefore there have been rumors that the Yankees would have revenged by bombarding the site, where they were shot at, with cluster bombs... Not good. Sounds like a too Israeli-styled approach to the problem, which makes me doubt the whole piece of news. It surely dims the aura of liberators. The Iraqi information minister has of course taken all out of this.
Considering the art of war, and without war hysteria, all the casualties and POWs were expectable. Of course there would have been fighting in Nasiriya and Basra also in the "best case scenario". Still the troubles have been a bit surprising. The Iraqi paramilitaries managed to ambush a maintenance column, kill some Americans and capture five, among whom one was a woman. (There are already about 3'500 Iraqi POWs. Now there is polemics about whether the Geneva Convention allows showing POWs in the TV, whether the American demands are justified after Guantánamo and so on...) The most surprising thing was the fallen Apache, which was claimed to have been dropped by an elderly man with his Enfield rifle... A more credible explanation for the fall of the Apache near Kerbala was a technical failure.
The road to Baghdad is not very stony, but there are indeed speed bumps on it... The Battle for Baghdad will be hard and bloody, also for the Americans. Technology gives an excellent backing, and it's an excellent tool, but the GPS, night binoculars, and wall radars will only help, as the actual fighting will be close combat. Like one American said: "knife fighting in a telephone box". There, even a small failure move often means death. The same goes to Basra, which is besieged by the British for the third day already. Having learned hard lessons in the schools of Northern Ireland and Kosovo, they are surely the best professionals for urban warfare, but is that enough? The Iraqis will have homefield advantage if the cities remain even passive. There is only limited chance for surprise momentum. Last night, however, the British made a successful raid to a Basra suburb, killed Ba'ath activists, and captured an apparatchik. (Good job!) They are trying to encourage the Basra inhabitants to an uprising, which may also be helped by the surgically exact destruction of the Ba'ath headquarters. But is this enough? Will the Britons endure the political pressure on water and humanitarian space? The worst possible failure in urban war is to join the enemy's game, because then even a large contingent will be easily consumed in the labyrinths. It is best to wait for an opportunity, and strike then, rolling start, and using surprise for the attacker's advantage. I bet the Iraqis have been watching the "Black Hawk Down"...
A European human shield interviewed in the news said he's prepared for fighting for Baghdad even with a rifle in his hand. [What a pacifist!] I wish napalm for him, or rather taking him to Guantánamo. There are also more news: Some troops of the Republican Guard are heading south. There are battles expected for Nasiriya for the night. Americans and Britons trust in the airforce. Me too. Even though a sandstorm may prevent the helicopters to be used, I believe B-52s will take out part of the attackers and turn them into martyrs. Then they will go to their dark-eyed virgins... [Well, to the extent that Ba'ath socialists actually believe in God.]
The most interesting news was that the Battle for Baghdad might be postponed, according to an American officer, because the Iraqis have decided to resist. Postponement of one or two weeks is fully understandable and even tactically good thinking. Exact bombing for softening the enemy, raids against limited targets. With good luck opportunism will win among the Iraqis and the regime will be confronted by those of their own. It would also be a very good thing if the city would be partly evacuated, meaning limited terrorizing which would drive the civilians out of Baghdad's central areas, so that they wouldn't be on the way of the assaulting Marines. Unfortunately, terror is a double-edged sword. Part of the population would be afraid and flee, but for another part, their fanaticism would just be nourished. Besides, the media is too much present in this war. Still, for psychological Ernüchterung, locally limited and controlled toughness might be needed. Problems might follow, besides of anti-war wining, by letting things out of the hands. I am, however, quite sure that the American officers know what they are doing. I remember reading in the Soldier of Fortune that the American officers have taken special urban war education to study the mistakes of the Russians in Groznyi, and they have also got familiar with Israeli tactics by officer exchange. Unfortunately, also Saddam & Co. will do all they can to tease the Americans. Evacuation won't take place by the Iraqi regime, and their troops are unlikely to be so stupid that they would fight outside Baghdad.
Another problem is constituted by the North, where there is more politics than fighting taking place. Turkey is moving its troops too close to the border for the Coalition's interests, and partly on the Iraqi side, where the Kurds are pissed off because of this. The Peshmergas are told to fight against Ansar al-Islam, backed by American special troops, near the Iranian border. Although Mosul and Kirkuk are being bombed, even harshly, according to some information, I have a kind of phony war feeling about the whole North. There is no evidence of a project that would repeat the model used in Afghanistan. The PUK and the KDP seem not have united themselves into a fighting force, and they haven't yet attacked the Iraqi-controlled territories.
Kirkuk's oil wells seem to be secured, but still Turkey's decision to prevent transit for American troops to Iraq, to form a northern front, benefits only Saddam, who can now concentrate his troops to the southern front. It seems even that Saddam has abandoned the whole North, as he knows that the Americans have not the necessary transport capacity or willingness to take the risks of massive airborne assaults to the North. At all events, tanks should be moved on land route up to the northern parts of Iraq, where they would be turned around towards south and towards the regime's core. All this means, situation there seems bad for us. Of course Turkey has a difficult situation, as it has to balance between the NATO, the US, Europe, the Islamists, and the Kurds, but still I am disappointed, and so are surely Rumsfeld, Franks and Co., too. Now the North is a periphery without real strategic initiative and meaning, which could be used to make Saddam's situation more difficult.