The Hindu : Battles for Baghdad

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Mar 12, 2003

Opinion

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Battles for Baghdad

By V.R. Raghavan

The battles that will need to be fought for the soul of Baghdad after the military one would be the most difficult.

THE ENDGAME for the possession of Baghdad is about to begin. The military and political pieces are being positioned on the Middle Eastern chessboard. The adversaries are busy planning the final moves for taking and defending Baghdad. Saddam Hussein is not going to give in to threats of war until they are actually implemented. The U.S.-led coalition is still forming and there are disparate voices from within, showing lack of conviction about the war option. A global spread of citizens is clearly against the war. Once the war starts, a period of uncertainty will begin, the end of which is becoming more difficult to foresee by the week. It is clear that there are many battles to be fought for Baghdad in the months to come. The battles are not all going to be with military forces. The ones that will need to be fought for the soul of Baghdad after the military one would be the most difficult. These would also be the ones to decide the future of the Middle East.

Any professional military analyst with an understanding of the Iraqi military, Mr. Hussein's military thinking and Western military capabilities would have foretold the unfolding military scenario. The force levels required to take over Baghdad can only be mustered by the U.S. The long haul movement of such forces from the U.S. and the U.K. and the logistic build-up needed for the Baghdad offensive could not have been ready before the middle of March. Military commanders always demand — U.S. Generals are no exception — to be fully ready before the battles start. They do not like being politically hustled into a campaign before they are ready. Colin Powell's pronouncements as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are proof enough of this sound military principle. It was, therefore, apparent that all the Bush-Rumsfeld bluster could not have been translated into a military campaign from a cold start. Between the threat of war and its commencement, an interregnum was inevitable which the U.S. could not have compressed. Mr. Hussein has effectively used this time cushion to build an alternative discourse on the legitimacy of military action. He has combined it skilfully with grudging but visible signs of disarming his WMD (weapons of mass destruction) capabilities.

The military campaign for the possession of Baghdad will necessarily be a multi-pronged one. The territorial space for the launch points is in Islamic states. Their Governments and rulers cannot disregard the lasting and unpredictable political costs of allowing the U.S. forces to operate from their soil against Mr. Hussein. The dilemma of Turkey's leadership in choosing to acquiesce on the U.S. military presence in its country, against the popular will demonstrated by its Parliament, is evidence of the hard choices facing Islamic leaders. Arab dissension on Mr. Hussein making way for another leader shows up another dimension of managing Baghdad after the campaign is over.

Mr. Hussein cannot be removed from Baghdad without taking the city from him. That requires defeating armed resistance and occupying the ancient city by force. The easiest part of the campaign would be the destruction of Iraqi military hardware. The absolute dominance in electronic and air operations, combined with munitions of astounding accuracy, will take out every Iraqi military equipment that is in the open and under cover. That does not however guarantee entry into and control of Baghdad, so essential for managing a post-Hussein Baghdad. He may disappear and continue to issue commands and directives to his army. Iraqi commanders would not know if and how to terminate the conflict.

There is unlikely to be a formal surrender of the Iraqi Army or its leadership. In its absence, there would be doubts and confusion on when and if the battle for Baghdad has been won or lost. There would be enough resistance in the city from small arms-carrying units and soldiers and civilians. The installation of a new government and its functioning in the chaotic conditions with rumours, conflicting commands, and rival Iraqi factions battling for supremacy would make for many a smaller battles in Baghdad. Attempts to subdue this fighting by air operations or heavy weapons would bring about collateral damage to innocent civilians and other nationals who intend to be in Baghdad. All this would be reported on international television and radio channels and on internet sites hosted from inside Iraq.

Coalition plans would undoubtedly take into account these contingencies. In the face of minimal military opposition and possessing overwhelming military advantage, coalition forces would lead the ground advance from north and south through Turkey and Kuwait. If Turkey is not bought off with massive aid, military help and promises of control of oil fields in Kurd-held Iraqi territory, the land-based advance would be mounted from Kuwait to sweep to the west and north of Baghdad. Airborne operations would be mounted to close in on Baghdad. Having reached the outskirts of Baghdad, tank and track-mounted infantry, supported by helicopter gun ships and ground attack aircraft, would attempt to isolate the palaces and governing centres of Mr. Hussein from the rest of the city. Baghdad itself would be divided into military zones to prevent regrouping and reinforcing by Iraqi forces.

These operations would involve occupation of chosen ground in and around Baghdad. Troops occupying ground or built-up space would however continue to face sporadic fire and resistance and suffer casualties. In the American way of war, such resistance and attacks would be met with massive retaliation and punitive action, resulting in innocents getting killed. All this would take place, unlike Afghanistan where misdirected fire could be explained away, in the face of irrefutable evidence being produced by independent observers.

Coalition military plans would therefore be largely predicated upon a widespread, popular uprising against Mr. Hussein and his regime, in Baghdad and the other major cities. These assumptions may prove to be misplaced when the time comes for the revolt to occur. This is because such assumptions are based on an insufficient understanding of socio-economic linkages created in the Iraqi polity. Facile beliefs about the Sunni-Shia divide, the north and south Iraqi antagonisms, and the role of the Tikriti clans from which Saddam Hussein draws his critical mass of control and support, are likely to prove ephemeral when it comes to obtaining a public response against his regime. In all segments of Iraqi society, the regime has built over thirty years a deeply entrenched system of economic and political benefits to the adherents of the Baathist regime. The bulk of this regime-adherent element transcends the traditional Shia-Sunni, cleric-lay citizen, north-south, business-trader-consumer, military-non-military layers of Iraqi polity. Through a carefully crafted and diligently implemented policy of political and socio-economic linkages resting on favours and privileges, a unique societal structure has been engineered. This structure permeates all walks of Iraqi society, from intellectuals to clan groups and down to civil and military groups that have benefited from being part of the adherent group. Even the Tikriti critical mass is an amalgamation of smaller groups watching over each other for the larger good of their leader.

A belief that there would be a socio-political revolution in Iraq immediately after the military attack commences would, therefore, be misplaced. There is a greater chance that elements of the current regime would seize control and emerge as a powerful group to run the affairs of Iraq, even as Mr. Hussein is removed from the scene. In fact, they would be best suited to quickly re-establish order and effective governance in the post-Hussein regime. Giving up WMD capabilities would be a smaller price for such a combination of new leaders, who can claim to guarantee both continuity and change. This arrangement would ensure the rule by and a major role for the existing ruling groups and societal elements. The coalition, and particularly the U.S., will find it the easy way out for rebuilding Iraq, without the turbulence of new power centres having to be propped up in Iraq. Mr. Hussein would then have had the last laugh.

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