Palestinian recruits bolster Iraqi soldiers
By Keith Dovkants on the outskirts of Basra for the Evening Standard
24 March 2003
They call them the Martyr Battalions, diehard troops who are fighting Saddam Hussein's battles to the death. Here in Basra, in Umm Qasr to the south and on the road to Baghdad, allied forces are encountering Saddam's trump card in the battle for Iraq - fanatics who have vowed never to surrender.
These fighters, expertly trained in urban warfare, have thrown coalition plans into confusion with their dogged defence of strategic towns.
According to allied intelligence reports, these troops have been recruited not just from the ranks of Saddam's loyalists, but from among the Palestinian diaspora and Islamic extremists in countries including Jordan and Lebanon.
Hundreds - possibly thousands - of young men have entered Iraq in recent months, lured by Saddam's promise that he will strike Israel during his struggle against the Americans and British.
And they are fighting with a ferocity that defies belief. At 2am here, a group of these Fedayeen holding out in Basra tried to ward off an air strike attack with machinegun fire. The sky was lit by tracer rounds as a helicopter moved in; missiles flashed down, there was a halo of fire, then silence. Elsewhere, the so-called martyrs are fighting on.
As dawn broke a huge explosion, possibly from the impact of a cruise missile, rocked the city. More earpopping thumps tore apart the still early morning air.
Basra is a densely-populated city and resorting to firepower on this scale has caused consternation among coalition commanders. They want desperately to avoid the massive civilian casualties major air attacks inflict, but they are anxious not to allow their troops to be drawn into potentially disastrous house-to-house battles.
The advance into Basra began well, and at first it seemed the city would fall quickly. American troops from the 7th Marine Division moved swiftly across the Kuwait border with tanks and helicopter gunships in support.
By the time Evening Standard photographer Cavan Pawson and I drove into Iraq through a remote desert crossing on Saturday morning the first lines of defence had been swept aside. At Safwan and on the vital highway to Baghdad, defending troops dug into trenches and holding positions in ageing Russian-built tanks were pounded with heavy artillery and helicopter-launched missiles.
The blackened husks of four tanks littered the arid fields each side of the highway which itself bore the deep scars of cluster munitions.
Cluster bombs - and their artilleryfired equivalent - have already acquired a fiendish reputation in this war. The initial blast of the round scatters smaller bomblets which cover a wide area and then explode, either immediately or at random intervals.
At Safwan, we saw the horrific injuries they can cause. A young woman, a baby at her breast, sat semicomatose in the back of a pick-up truck, bleeding from a shrapnel wound in the leg. As British soldiers guarding the highway directed the truck through to a medic unit, the air was filled with the shrieks of a woman approaching in another truck in which a man in civilian clothes lay unconscious in the back. He had a shrapnel wound in the abdomen and was apparently close to death. It was an infernal scene.
The woman screamed and waved her arms hysterically as a young British squaddie, his face deathly pale, tried to help.
Across the intersection 29 Iraqi prisoners of war sat on the ground inside rings of barbed wire, their shoulders covered in blankets given to them by their captors. "They are getting food, water and exercise," a British military policemen told me.
"They are a lot better off now than they were a few hours ago." In the trenches in the surrounding fields, the bodies of dead Iraqis bore testament to that.
On the road to Basra, punctured oil pipelines belched flame and smoke as American marines and men of the British 7th Armoured Brigade moved forward at breakneck speed.
A British tank commander waved at us with a glove puppet as his Challenger tank thundered past; the crews of Warrior armoured vehicles grinned as they headed for Basra.
Suddenly, the advance came to a halt. A mine had been spotted on the road ahead. We took our vehicle to the front of the convoy and watched with a mixture of concern and sheer admiration as a sapper from 33 Engineer Regiment strode out alone on to the highway, armed only with a mine detector. He reported that he had found something and the convoy switched to the opposite carriageway. It roared onward.
In the villages, ragged children clapped their hands at the sight of these formidable war machines, come at last to deal with Saddam. The mainly Shi'ite population of southern Iraq has suffered desperately since rising up against Baghdad in the final days of the last Gulf war.
After slaughtering thousands, Saddam turned this oil-rich area into a dustbowl. His soldiers drained the fertile marshes and cut off towns and villages from aid. "We have nothing," Eid Gumar, head man of a village near Safwan, said. Baghdad allowed no state money to be spent in areas Saddam considered disloyal. "There is hunger and disease," Gumar said. "No medicine, no help. We hope this time you won't abandon us."
As he spoke women filled cans and jugs at a watering hole nearby. A child, timid but hungry, nibbled at the biscuits we gave her. Coalition forces are carrying 4,500 ration packs to be distributed in Basra once the fighting is over, but for now they remain stacked in trucks.
The Fedayeen who have taken up positions in the south west of the city and in locations along the strategic Shatt al Arab waterway have defied all efforts to dislodge them. Apart from fighting with suicidal fervour, these Martyr Battalion troops have prevented regular army conscripts from surrendering. Some soldiers who abandoned their weapons and uniforms have been forced back into the fight upon pain of death.
In another twist, allied soldiers have been confronted by soldiers who have switched their uniforms for civilian clothes, hiding out in the streets and buildings of the city.
So far the diehards have accounted for at least two American tanks. It was not the kind of war envisaged by the coalition and it is not the kind of war allied commanders want to fight.
The strategy called for a lightning strike on Baghdad, by-passing towns and cities on the way. It was believed all but Saddam's loyalist Republican Guard would agree to stand down, pending a change of regime.
Indeed, in Basra, the Iraqi army commander of the 51st Infantry agreed a ceasefire with coalition troops, but could not deliver the Martyrs who fight on stubbornly.
Most of the US marines who began the assault on Basra have joined the push towards Baghdad, leaving British forces to take the town. It is a reluctant fight. The population here welcomed the Allies, but if there are significant casualties during efforts to subdue the fanatics, that could change. Saddam knows that. The dilemma for the Allies is that while they would prefer to by-pass Basra, they cannot ignore pockets of resistance at their back.
On the outskirts of the city, soldiers of the First Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers and the Black Watch talk of their frustration over the Allies' stalled plans. And there is dismay over reports of deaths caused by friendly fire. The Fusiliers' regimental quartermaster John Mulheran, a 35-year-old veteran, has seen it before. He was a section commander when 11 British soldiers from his regiment were killed in a US air strike in 1991. His driver is one of several women here on the brink of the battle. Amanda Morgan, 18, from Bournemouth, heard guns fired in anger for the first time. "It is disturbing," she said, "but I worry about our men in the thick of it. They are all our friends and you pray they'll come back safe."
There has been no word here so far about casualties. Four wounded Iraqis were airlifted from here to a field hospital in Kuwait, but no allied casualties have come through.
Saddam's Martyrs seem bent on creating a Stalingrad in Basra, but the Allies cannot countenance a siege here, or anywhere else on the road to Baghdad. Iraq's information ministry stooge Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf said resistance had forced allied troops to "run like rats".
Perhaps someone should tell him the last person who described British desert troops in that vein did not live to see them win their heroic victory - and wear the insult as a badge of honour.
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