TOUGHEST DAY": Iraqis interrogate captured Americans before television cameras -- U.S.-led forces treading warily after faked surrender and ambushes inflict losses
STRATEGY: Sparing civilians leads to heavier casualties
Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau Monday, March 24, 2003
sfgate.com
Images from Iraq's battlefields Sunday -- intense firefights, allied casualties and false surrenders -- more resemble what the rest of the conflict could look like than the relatively bloodless early days of the invasion, analysts said.
Allied commanders readily conceded that U.S. and British forces ran into the stiffest Iraqi resistance of the war so far, as ground forces continued to press toward Baghdad.
But experts said that resistance in part is the consequence of a calculated military strategy that trades the risk of higher military casualties for fewer civilian deaths and damage to Iraq's infrastructure.
"If you try to finesse your way in, instead of standing back and pulverizing the place, you're going to have to take higher casualties," said Tom Mockaitis, a military historian at DePaul University.
The strategy is crafted with the difficult postwar rebuilding of Iraq in mind. The key thrust is a fast-paced ground assault toward Baghdad, in tandem with air strikes that are limited to precision bombing of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's command structure.
This is quite different from the intense, weeks-long aerial bombardments seen in Afghanistan, Kosovo and the first Gulf War in 1991, which obliterated resistance but left extensive human and physical damage. The delicacy of the U. S. effort to appear as a liberator rather than conqueror is a key reason for this strategy.
Yet despite the apparent chaos of a ground assault, allied casualties remain well below 100 for an invasion of roughly 150,000 troops. "We're just not used to having any resistance," Mockaitis said.
APPEARANCE OF CHAOS
Analysts noted that what may appear as battlefield chaos is due in part to the unprecedented live coverage of the invasion, where reporters embedded with various troop units present isolated perspectives.
"You're going to see very fragmented, very confusing reporting for the next four or five days, or maybe even a week," said Mockaitis. "It's going to seem like there's a whole bunch of contradictory things going on. That isn't really true."
Pockets of fighting obscure the fact that the main highway toward Baghdad is relatively clear for a huge ground assault.
"There is no doubt in anybody's mind about the outcome of this war," he said. "The picture is more confusing than the reality."
After five days of war, coalition forces appear to have reached major objectives, despite Iraqi resistance around Basra and Nasiriya. The drive toward Baghdad became clear as an armored force from the 3rd U.S. Infantry Division drew within 100 miles southwest of Baghdad.
To the north, allied forces arriving by air over Turkey were linking with Kurdish troops for an advance toward Mosul and Kirkuk. The two cities anchor the country's northern oil fields, and a front there pins down Iraqi forces.
In the desert west of Baghdad, special forces are locating and directing air strikes against Iraq anti-aircraft and missile positions, minimizing the threat of scud attacks on Israel and creating a ground and air corridor for deployment aimed at Baghdad.
The oil fields in southern Iraq have been secured, with less than a dozen of the 500 wells set on fire.
The ports on the gulf are under coalition control, and the pathway up the Euphrates and Tigris river valley has been opened for military supplies and civilian assistance.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld promised that a huge wave of humanitarian relief would begin using those ports by Tuesday.
Pockets of stiff Iraqi resistance stem in part from the nature of Hussein's regime, said Edward Turzanski, a national security and intelligence analyst at La Salle University. Those who kept Hussein in power may feel they have little to lose in fighting to the end.
"What's going on is that Saddam did not execute a rule of terror over Iraq by himself," Turzanski said. "Think about it. To subdue a country of 22.5 million people in a reign of terror, you need a lot of willing accomplices, and I think those willing accomplices do not see bright prospects for the future if Saddam's regime is deposed."
As a result, he said, the more committed elements of the Iraqi military "have adapted to unconventional means of warfare," including the ambushes, false surrenders and use of civilian garb, all of which are prohibited by the Geneva Convention.
'IMMORAL TACTICS'
Their use means that committed troops "are going to fight dirty and hard," Turzanski said. "These forces will be the most loyal and they will also be the most ruthless. They won't shy away from using immoral and distasteful tactics."
This is one reason that top U.S. officials continue to urge Iraqi commanders to capitulate, hoping to avoid further allied casualties. Rumsfeld said U.S. commanders still fear the use of weapons of mass destruction on allied troops and are in close negotiation with Iraqi commanders on a surrender.
"We are giving them full opportunity to do it the easy way," Rumsfeld said. "And when it doesn't work, we'll do it the hard way."
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind., echoed that warning. "Saddam will be vanquished," Lugar said. "The basic question is how many Iraqis will be killed."
Chronicle staff writer Richard Paoli contributed |
