The Hindu : The battle for Baghdad

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 02, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

The battle for Baghdad

A FEW STARK truths have emerged as the war on Iraq nears the end of its second week and as the U.S.-led forces inch closer to Baghdad. First, the likelihood of getting rid of Saddam Hussein and concluding the battle on a quick and relatively tidy note has considerably diminished. Second, the push for the Iraqi Capital is going to entail even higher casualties of soldiers and innocent civilians. Finally, the battle for Baghdad is unlikely to be won without messy street fighting and the so-called coalition forces may have to contend with a difficult mix of guerrilla warfare and suicide bomb attacks. Wars rarely go exactly according to plan, but the script that the U.S. and Britain had written for `Operation Iraqi Freedom' did not read this way at all. There was never any doubt about who would win this war. But the questions are the very same that were raised at the beginning of this unjust and unnecessary war — by what means and at what cost? After Iraq has been blitzed by thousands of precision-guided munitions and hundreds of Tomahawk cruise missiles, the questions have assumed an even greater urgency.

Ever since it entered Iraq through Kuwait, the U.S.' third infantry division has advanced extremely rapidly and is now on the outskirts of Baghdad. If a major ground attack against the Capital has not commenced yet, it is probably because the final assault on it will be carried out after the fourth infantry division reaches the city's northern borders. Originally intended to be deployed from Turkey, which eventually refused to admit U.S. ground forces, this division's movement southwards has been delayed, thus allowing Saddam Hussein the luxury of not splitting his defences and letting him focus on the threat from the southern flank. The U.S. strongly denies there has been an "operational pause" in the campaign but the repeated assertion that everything is on schedule is now beginning to wear a little thin. Continuing Iraqi resistance and the fear of suffering casualties have resulted in a situation where the final push for Baghdad will commence probably only some days from now, after the city has been softened up even more by further rounds of merciless bombing and when the coalition forces are at both its southern and northern gates.

Having realised he is in no position to challenge his powerful enemy head on, Saddam Hussein's strategy has been to take up defensive positions around Baghdad and induce the enemy into close-quarter battles that inflict the maximum amount of damage on U.S. and British forces and delay the victory for as long as possible. Unconventional tactics may not stop with fighting in plainclothes or merging with the civilian population. The single suicide attack, which was carried out by an Iraqi non-commissioned officer and which killed four members of the third infantry division at an army checkpoint north of Najaf, has raised fears of Baghdad pressing soldiers into suicide missions. The Iraqi claim that as many as 4,000 Arab volunteers have arrived in the country to carry out suicide bombings against U.S. and British forces is probably an exaggeration, but with the Najaf attack the threat of using suicide attacks to thwart the invaders cannot be discounted.

That the coalition forces are already unsettled by the threat of unconventional warfare is evident from the recent incident when tense and edgy U.S. soldiers fired into the passenger compartment of a van, killing seven women and children, when the vehicle reportedly failed to heed warning shots to stop. The U.S. and Britain have repeatedly accused the Iraqi regime of using civilians as a shield but what such accusations really reflect is an enormous dilemma for the coalition forces. In the existing circumstances, bringing the war to a quick end may require an even more brutal and unfeeling approach; minimising collateral damage could mean delaying victory. As the troops mass around Baghdad and as the Iraqis offer unexpected resistance, the fate of thousands of innocent civilians depend on how Messrs Bush and Blair resolve this dilemma of their own making.

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