War games
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Iraq can play the victim card in a bid to stave off a US attack, but America's momentum could prove unstoppable.
Brian Whitaker
Guardian Unlimited
Monday August 5, 2002
Amid the beating of war drums there has been much talk about what the United States may do to Iraq but very little about what Iraq itself may have in mind. From what can be learned of Iraq's strategy, it consists of two parts: first to try to prevent an attack and, second, if the invasion comes, to make it as difficult and costly as possible for the Americans.
Iraq's first line of defence, therefore, is a political one: to portray itself as a victim of western bullying. Persuading anyone to accept that notion might be rather a tall order, given the history of the Baghdad regime, but in fact Saddam Hussein has not had to work at it very hard because the Americans have done most of the job for him.
For a start, sanctions against Iraq have been badly managed, as even their supporters now recognise. They have harmed ordinary Iraqis and have often appeared vindictive.
More widely, there is the perception of double standards. The US claims that the quarrel with Iraq involves certain unwavering principles, though as far as much of the world is concerned they are principles that the US only invokes when it wants to.
In the eyes of the Arab and Muslim world particularly, Iraq's offences - military occupation, flouting UN resolutions and developing weapons of mass destruction - are similar in nature, if not necessarily degree, to those of Israel. Yet one offender gets embargoed; the other is supported with money and weaponry.
The louder the US beats its drum, the easier it is for Iraq to play the role of innocent victim. Since George Bush came to power, statements from Washington have made clear that the real issue is not UN resolutions or weapons inspections but Saddam Hussein himself.
The latest example came at the weekend when John Bolton, the under-secretary for arms control, said that the US "insists on regime change in Baghdad, and that policy will not be altered whether inspectors go in or not".
It is meant to sound tough, but it is also stupid. The idea that the United States can overthrow any regime it does not like is liable to make people more fearful of the US than of Iraq. In the meantime, all Saddam has to do to win friends is keep his nose clean and sound amenable.
Last week, for instance, Iraq invited Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, to Baghdad for talks about resuming inspections - only to be met with a brusque rebuff from the US and Britain.
The underlying issues regarding weapons inspections are very tricky, and only a fool would treat the Iraqi offer without a degree of wariness, but such details are not the stuff of headlines. And so Saddam won another propaganda point: Iraq offers conciliation, the west intransigence.
Having gained so much undeserved sympathy around the world, and having seen the US voluntarily isolate itself from most other countries on the issue of regime change in Baghdad, the question for Saddam now is what value this will have in preventing an American attack.
The answer depends partly on whether the US will be obliged to seek approval from the UN security council for an invasion of Iraq. This is something the US wants to avoid if possible, since a less-than-unanimous vote in favour would damage the war's legitimacy. Conceivably, there might even be a Russian veto.
Apart from the five permanent members of the security council - the US, Britain, France, Russia and China - the current (rotating) members are: Bulgaria, Cameroon, Colombia, Guinea, Ireland, Mauritius, Mexico, Norway, Singapore and Syria.
The US would have to work hard on several of these countries to win their support. If it came to the crunch, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Guinea, Mauritius, etc, could look forward to promises of generous American aid.
In the Middle East, where the opposition to war is strongest, the US needs support from some of Iraq's neighbours for logistical reasons. At present, officially, they are all saying no. But Saddam knows as well as anyone how fickle they are. In the end, Jordan and Turkey will probably be bought off - but this, of course, further increases the cost to the Americans of regime change in Iraq.
Interestingly, Baghdad has concluded that there is only one country capable of preventing an American invasion - and the country is Britain. The Iraqi rationale is that the US is largely untroubled by its political isolation so long as it has British support, but to go to war without British backing would be a step too far.
Baghdad may also be mindful of the role played in 1990 by Margaret Thatcher (British prime minister at the time), when she stiffened the resolve of President Bush's father by portraying the invasion of Kuwait as a simple matter of good versus evil: Iraq had invaded a sovereign state and must not be allowed to get away with it.
This time round, a British prime minister is being asked to support exactly what Mrs Thatcher opposed so strongly: the invasion (by America) of another sovereign state. Whether Tony Blair will go along with that is not yet clear, and so Iraq scents an opportunity to drive a wedge between Britain and the US.
There is certainly a serious difference of opinion between the two countries at present. Britain does not want regime change in Baghdad just for the sake of it. Britain also wants a plausible justification and a veil of legality for any attack, while the US has no such qualms and simply wants to get on with it. Iraq is seeking to exploit that gap by denying Britain an excuse to join in, but it will be difficult to do so in the present climate unless Iraq readmits the weapons inspectors more or less unconditionally.
Iraq's fear, however, is that if it does let the inspectors in without conditions, the US will use the inspections to engineer a crisis further down the line. So, one way or another, Iraq is in a trap and the inspections dispute is likely to provide a trigger for war. In skilled diplomatic hands, a solution might be found - but Iraq has never been particularly good at negotiating.
On the American side, despite growing doubts about the wisdom of invading Iraq, and in particular about the economic cost, the Bush administration has not left itself an obvious escape route - so it may be politically easier to press ahead than to draw back and risk a serious loss of credibility. "Sorry, we can't afford a war just at the moment" is not going to play well with American voters.
Militarily, Iraq's strategy is to maximise the cost of an invasion. It has no air power worth mentioning and its missile capabilities are uncertain, but it still has the largest army in the Middle East - more than 400,000 active troops and perhaps a similar number in reserve.
Its 2,000-plus battle tanks would be vulnerable to air attacks, so they may have to be buried up to their turrets and used as fixed gun emplacements - not what they were designed for. Iraq has also learned some lessons from the 1991 Gulf war, and so is unlikely to place its troops in trenches out in the desert.
Instead, there is evidence that it will concentrate them in the cities, forcing the Americans to attack major centres of population. That cynically increases the risk of civilian casualties in bombing raids, but Iraq's calculation is that the world will blame the Americans rather than Saddam Hussein. Placing large numbers of troops in the cities also means they will be on hand to deal with any civilian insurrection should it occur.
Ultimately, this strategy should draw the Americans into street-level combat instead of high altitude bombing. The result, the Iraqis calculate, would be far greater American casualties than occurred in other recent wars, such as the Kuwait war, Kosovo or Afghanistan.
Another tactic would be to foment trouble in northern Iraq, which is not currently under Baghdad's control and is therefore likely to be used by American forces. With two rival Kurdish parties in the region, plus the Turkomans and Assyrians - who do not much like the Kurds - and the mysterious Ansar al-Islam (Supporters of Islam) group, which is claimed to have links to al-Qaida, unrest in the north would not be particularly difficult to achieve.
There are also several tactics from the 1991 war that Iraq might employ. In 1991 it tried to widen the conflict by firing Scud missiles into Israel. These made a political point but achieved nothing militarily, and Israel is much better prepared for such attacks now than it was in 1991.
This time, it is difficult to see how Iraq could widen the conflict of its own accord without undermining its image as the victim of American bullying. On the other hand, popular anger in other countries at the American action could bring turmoil to the region without Iraq doing anything itself.
Although there has been much speculation about Iraqi use of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, nobody really knows what it has or is able to use. However, Iraq does have one chemical weapon in abundance which it used in 1991 - oil.
Before they were driven out of Kuwait, the Iraqis set 720 wells alight and created some 320 oil lakes. This began as an attempt to prevent an allied landing in Kuwait by sea, but it ended up as wanton destruction. The smoke from the fires gave off toxic fumes and made Kuwait so dark that vehicles had to use headlights even in the middle of the day.
In the right place and in the right weather conditions that could hamper an American advance - though whether the Iraqi regime would set fire to its own oil wells would probably depend on how desperate it was.
None of this suggests that Iraq can actually prevent an American attack or prevent the removal of Saddam Hussein if the US is really determined to do it. But what Iraq can do is create obstacles and up the cost at every step along the way. And Saddam Hussein is betting that sooner or later the Americans will decide that - politically, militarily and economically - they simply cannot afford it.
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