Reaping the Whirlwind

Barely past the first week the Coalition has had to twice change/adjust its war strategy. Instead of a cataclysmic strike by 3,000 precision guided munitions (PGMs) hitting Baghdad and other Iraqi command centres, in a major surprise the war started with a limited surgical strike to take out (the exact words “decapacitate”) Saddam Hussein and his inner coterie. The Coalition checked for effect, if any, for 24 hours before launching the ground war with an attempted end run (blitzkrieg) around major urban areas to Baghdad, an outflanking manoeuvre through the Southern Iraqi desert. Rumsfeld’s “shock and awe” massive strike came a day after the ground war started. The Iraqis were supposed to roll over and play dead or better still, surrender in droves (Gulf War I - circa 1991) on primetime TV. With the Iraqis fighting back at virtually every major urban area crossing, the plan deviated from the script. For a change, the Iraqis used their military (rather than emotional) head in not giving pitched battle in any open areas (“he who fights and runs away lives to fight another day”) where the Coalition would have loved to pulverize them by superior firepower. Using classic guerilla tactics, the Iraqis resorted to small unit “hit and run” attacks, providing very few fixed targets for the PGMs (precision-guided munitions) to be effective.
The lack of a Northern Front imbalanced Coalition operations. With the overturning of the ban on Erdogan from becoming Turkish PM, the Turks opted for the supreme national interest in talking “Turkey First”. Giving no inkling that they had no intentions of allowing US troops on Turkish soil, on the eve of hostilities the Turks conceded only an air corridor but no airbases or refuelling facilities. Further bad news for the Coalition, Turkish ground troops also signalled their intention to cross into Northern Iraq “to stop the influx (into Turkey) of Kurdish refugees”, completely upsetting present and future US gameplans. Kurdish guerillas want Turkish troops on Iraqi soil even lesser than Saddam’s Army, moreover they are not strong enough to open a second front without a strong detachment of Coalition troops. A paradrop of the US 173rd Airborne Brigade secured elongated airstrips in Kurdish controlled areas, the northern front is being developed as a credible threat by the insertion of US 1st Armoured Division. The Coalition sent a combination of US Special Forces and British SAS troops to seize two airfields H-2 and H-3, west of Baghdad as per their original plan.
During the first two days of the war it seemed that there was no Iraqi resistance and Saddam Hussein had been seriously wounded, if not killed. The controlled euphoria among Coalition planners was force-multiplied by live TV images in real time by “imbedded” journalists travelling at high speed with the attacking columns. When the resistance started to stiffen quite markedly and the repeated Coalition claims of capturing Umm Qasr, Basra and Nasiryah turned out to be rather hasty (if not false), credibility became tougher to manage. Reports of an uprising against the Iraqi regime in Basra were exaggerated, these were probably Iraqi dissidents trained in Hungary by US Special Forces and infiltrated into the port city to foment a rebellion. The display of US POWs and the images of dead US soldiers flashing in TV images across the world was devastating, before Iraqi TV transmitters could be put out of action, the damage to the mass US psyche had been done. US President Bush’s approval ratings came down sharply as did the Dow Jones index. The decision to knock out Iraqi TV was necessitated out of political self-survival but is a justifiable military necessity, the Iraqi population seeing Saddam alive and kicking gave the perception of his being very much in control. This underscored the necessity of the Coalition prosecuting the war to a swift conclusion notwithstanding the weather getting very hot in Iraq. If the war persisted and casualties mounted, it would become politically hot in USA and UK for Bush and Blair.
The next few days will be extremely crucial. Coalition troops consisting of US 3rd Infantry Division (Najaf and Karbala), US 1st Marines Expeditionary Force (MEF) Division (Nasiryah and Kuts), US 101st Airborne Division and at least one Brigade each from US 1st Armoured Division and 82nd Airborne, followed by the high-tech US 4th Infantry Division (diverted to the Gulf from off shore Turkey) will soon be at the gates of Baghdad. However there are not enough “boots” on the ground. Given long Lines of Communications (L of C), the “soft” targets of supply and maintenance will become increasingly vulnerable if the low-tech “hit and run” raids by guerilla-type units persist, the protective detachments are already over-stretched. Logistics problems for a modern army multiplies during hot weather, men and equipment need water and fuel respectively in far greater quantities than is normal. Moreover fear of the unknown and battle fatigue saps morale and makes soldiers edgy. To offset this, the Coalition announced the doubling of ground forces as per the original Pentagon request (another 130,000 personnel raising the total to over 400,000), this had been contemptuously dismissed by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. This signal about firm intention to pursue the war to a successful conclusion came about after a crisis Bush-Blair Summit in Camp David. This reinforces the perception things are going badly for the Coalition. Further delay works in Saddam’s favour, the irony is President Bush could well be forced to authorize the military to use tactical nuclear strikes (neutron bombs), not far different from the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) he has been accusing the Saddam regime of. In this day and age, will the world accept this final injury to the affront of the contemptuous sidelining of the UN?
Saddam Hussein’s sophisticated strategic evil genius is working overtime this time around. Urban and rural insurgency tactics notwithstanding, he is varying his battle strategy, at chosen points he is giving conventional battle. The choice of Karbala as a battle-site is nothing short of brilliant. The Republican Guard’s “Madina Al Munawara” Division is bang in the way of the strong US 7th Cavalry with its powerful Apache helicopter gunship support. The Republican Guard formation took grievous losses but put up a wall of fire to force the helicopter gunships to call off the fight. Extremely important for Muslim sensibilities, whether Shia or Sunni does not matter, Karbala evokes emotions that are difficult to either fathom or describe. The Iraqis will maximize exploitation of this religious site of Islam. What this foments in the streets of Cairo, Amman etc is another matter.
Winning the battle for Iraq, the Coalition will lose the war for the hearts and minds of humanity, particularly Muslim and Arab. The American people are large-hearted, generous, compassionate, considerate with a strong penchant for fairplay, etc the display of the streak of meanness and arrogance (personified the world over by Rumsfeld) is far from being representative of mainstream Americans. The public perception is of a classic bully trying to subdue a defenceless weakling. That is not the done American thing, at least not as I know it, a great majority in the US always favours an underdog. Saddam Hussein is diabolically using his civilian population to take full advantage of this mass upsurge of negative feeling in the world for the US. One can have no sympathy for this monster, in contrast one does feel for innocent Iraqis. Unfortunately the way this war has been conceived and implemented blurs that sympathy-line.
A word of caution, some among us cannot restrain themselves in describing this war as “Islam against Kufr (non-believers)”, this is not only untrue, it is blatantly stupid. The condemning of the war cuts across religions, races and/or civilizations, we Pakistanis should stop championing incongruous perceptions! As things stand today, those who have sowed the wind shall reap the whirlwind.