Poll wreckers up against Scots Guards
The Scotsman
Gethin Chamberlain
BRITISH troops are vowing to use overwhelming force to smash any attempts to disrupt Sunday’s elections in Iraq.
Commanders have drawn up plans for a "gloves-off" assault to deal with what they privately call the "Doomsday" scenario of a large-scale outbreak of violence in Basra.
Senior commanders say they will send in tanks, backed by armoured infantry, to retake any part of the city that falls into the hands of insurgents.
And they have warned that they are prepared to call in air strikes on insurgent strongholds that refuse to surrender, rather than risk British lives in a ground assault.
A battle group composed of Scots Guards, equipped with Warrior armoured fighting vehicles and supplemented with a squadron of Challenger tanks, is on standby at the Shaibah base outside the city ready to move against the first signs of serious disorder.
Yesterday, Lieutenant Colonel Harry Nickerson, the commanding officer of the Scots Guards, said he was in no doubt that his 500 soldiers could quickly re-establish control.
"If I found myself up against a large group I would go in big style," he said. "It would be going in with the gloves off. I’m not using delicate force, because we would have gone past that stage by then.
"We have the ability to retake the town. Everyone would be in fighting mode and the coup de grâce would be appearing with our tanks and Warriors.
"There are units training to retake the town. If I need to, I can call in air [strikes]. People are hesitant about that, but a last resort, if you have a building with 200 people in it not letting up, is to drop a bomb on it.
"You have to think very, very carefully about it. I have tanks which are massively destructive and they can cause a lot of collateral damage. Even a Warrior shell can go through a building and out the other side.
"On the other hand, I have guardsmen with bayonets who could be used, but I don’t want to risk their lives, so you have to strike a balance."
There are a number of groups with the potential to pose a serious threat to public order. Foremost is the Mahdi army, supporters of the radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who has already shown in Najaf that he can call on thousands of young gunmen to rally to his side. The British have been keen to stress that they have signed a ceasefire agreement with Sadr - who is not standing for election - and that they will leave him and his supporters alone while he observes the deal.
Sadr has gone quiet since the stand-off with US forces in Najaf, warned off by Grand Ayatollah Sistani, but the Mahdi army will be regarded by the coalition forces as the most likely source of trouble if violence does flare up in Basra over the coming days. As in Najaf, Sadr could call on support from militants in other southern cities, should he need to do so.
His militia brought Najaf to a standstill for weeks and they have fought what one British officer described as "open warfare" in the streets of Basra involving groups of between 50 and 200 men.
Lt Col Nickerson acknowledged that the Mahdi army were capable of causing serious trouble if they wanted to.
"They are the people who held Najaf hostage, and they have demonstrated that they can bring the thing to a grinding halt," he said.
"If they start escalating they could make the centre of Basra a no-go area."
There are also concerns about Sunni suicide bombers, and it is known that foreign fighters have crossed into Iraq from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. With national polls suggesting that public support for the elections is running at 80 per cent, the official line from the British military is that the ballot is expected to pass off relatively peacefully in southern Iraq.
But military commanders fear that even something as apparently innocuous as a power cut could act as a trigger for violence. "What we know about the Iraqis is that they can go from nothing to nuclear in two seconds flat," said Lt Col Nickerson. "The reaction to someone disrupting the power supply is violence. Any resentment might kick it off, and we have to be prepared for it."
The most obvious threats on election day are attempts to bomb polling stations, which could trigger violent protests from voters upset that the security measures have failed, or a dispute between supporters of rival candidates at a polling station which could quickly degenerate, given the availability of weapons, into lethal exchanges.
"We are waiting for the worst-case scenario," said Lt Col Nickerson. "We might have to go in after a major target if one party arms itself and goes to war against everyone else. Then we will have to go in to sort it out."
But it is not just election day itself which is creating a headache for the military planners.
"The period to be concerned about is after the elections when the results have sunk in," said Lt Col Nickerson. "If people don’t feel that the right person has been elected, they might see that as an irritation."
The 1st Battalion of the Scots Guards has been in Iraq since November and took over the role of divisional reserve from the Black Watch when that regiment returned from its deployment at Camp Dogwood just south of Baghdad.
Its primary role is to be available to deploy as a battle group, as the Black Watch did, to respond to "heavy-duty" tasks anywhere within the British area of operations, and there is the possibility that it could be deployed further north in support of US forces if a request was received.
So far, it has intervened to settle a tribal dispute in Basra and conducted a number of smaller operations around the force area. It also has one company of guardsmen assisting with operations in the town of al-Amarah, north of Basra and close to the Iranian border, but its commanding officers said their real hope was that the elections would pass off peacefully and they would not be required to intervene.
"We have to keep training, so that if we are called for the big one we are ready," he said.
"Your average soldier is quite keen to see some active service, but I think we would feel we’ve made a success of it if we can get out without firing a shot."
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