[Reader-list] Into the Iraqi quagmire?

[Harsh Kapoor]

The News International
Thursday March 27, 2003

Into the Iraqi quagmire?

Praful Bidwai

First they told us it would be a largely "no-contact" war, much like 
the wars the Americans have fought (and won) mostly from 20,000 feet 
above the ground -- since their humiliating disaster in Somalia in 
1993. Then they said the first 48 hours of "shock and awe" with 3,000 
to 4,000 cruise missiles would assuredly wreck the morale of the 
Iraqi army and trigger either its instant disintegration or a coup 
against Saddam Hussein. If that didn't happen, the 250,000-plus US 
and British ground troops, backed by devastating airpower, would 
hammer Iraq into submission -- within a matter of days.

In the event, the strategic experts who drew up the war plans, and 
their media publicists, have proved thoroughly wrong on the first two 
forecasts and seem set to go wrong on the third too. As I write this, 
at the end of the sixth full day of the attack on Iraq by the 
truncated war coalition comprising the US, Britain and Australia, 
there are several signs that an easy, swift, decisive, victory 
remains elusive -- despite the coalition's overwhelming, indeed 
forbidding, military superiority over its half-disarmed, 
sanctions-battered, adversary.

Just as the ("premature"?) attack of "opportunity" on a government 
building (where Saddam was believed to be present by intelligence 
agencies) failed to kill or cripple him, the war coalition's "shock 
and awe" plans have run into hurdles. They have been jolted by 
numerous setbacks, which have the potential to radically change the 
course of the conflict, especially its political complexion.

The ultimate outcome of the war may be certain. But what immediately 
matters is this: if the US-UK get bogged down in a messy engagement, 
especially in the quagmire of urban warfare, the US will have to trim 
and even abandon its audacious long-term plans, including a naked bid 
to redraw the borders of the Middle East and reshape the rest of the 
world after its own image.

Thus, the "victory celebration" staged in Washington last Friday by 
the extremely influential Right-wing hawkish American Enterprise 
Institute, just hours before the war began, might be premature. Then, 
at a "black coffee briefing", its leaders, including Richard Perle, 
chairman of the Defence Advisory Board, neo-conservative guru William 
Kristol, and other buddies of people deeply "embedded" in the Bush 
cabinet, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, 
set out their epochal vision for the post-war world: radical reform 
of the UN, regime change in Iran and Syria, and "containment" of 
France and Germany, as "The Financial Times" put it.

Frustrating their grandiose plans are the war coalition's many 
military setbacks: 40 soldiers dead in combat, at least five 
prisoners of war (PoWs) taken, two helicopters and a "Tornado" 
warplane lost in avoidable accidents, a fratricidal attack by an 
American soldier, and repeated recrudescence of fighting in cities 
and facilities declared "captured". Militarily, the biggest 
"negative" is the emergence of Iraqi "guerrillas" and "guerrilla 
tactics" -- terms used for the first time by coalition officials last 
Sunday.

The stiff and so-far irrepressible resistance from individual snipers 
and poorly armed militias has proved as damaging for the war 
coalition as artillery engagement by regular forces in parts of 
southern Iraq. In almost every town declared "taken" last week, the 
Americans and the British are still fighting for convincing control. 
This is true, as this is written, of Basra, Nassiriya, Najaf and 
Karbala. It may again apply to Umm Qasr, Iraq's only deep-sea port, 
and key to supplies of heavy weapons and humanitarian aid, although 
it has been declared "quite and safe" after fierce fighting.

If this resistance is a prelude to what is to come in Baghdad, then 
US and British forces could get sucked into close-quarter combat and 
guerrilla warfare -- in which they enjoy little advantage over the 
adversary in relation to their enormous superiority in "fourth 
generation" high-technology warfare based on the so-called 
"Revolution in Military Affairs".

As the unsuccessful fierce missile assault on the Medina division of 
Saddam's Republican Guard shows, aerial attacks so far haven't 
"softened" Baghdad to a point where it cannot be defended against 
ground attack. If this situation persists, the US will have two 
options: get into close combat -- ie urban warfare -- or apply more 
force, less discriminately, by bombing facilities located right next 
door to civilian inhabitations, and by using new, more destructive, 
weaponry and firepower.

This will greatly increase "collateral damage", a term people 
everywhere loathe. Massive, indiscriminate force could speed up 
Baghdad's fall; but it cannot guarantee that there will be no urban 
guerrillas sniping at the invading troops, and that these won't 
retaliate with excessive force -- just as Israeli forces do in 
Palestine, causing worldwide outrage.

The war coalition is in a spot. What went wrong? The US made a big 
blunder in underestimating the strength of Arab nationalism and its 
own unpopularity in Iraq's neighbourhood -- despite Hussein's 
despotic rule. Most Iraqis see American troops as conquerors, not 
"liberators". In Jordan, the ratio of positive to negative 
perceptions of the US has decreased from 34/61 to 10/81 after 
Washington announced it would attack Iraq. In Morocco, 88 percent now 
hold a negative view of the US, compared to 61 percent earlier.

The US public is shocked, and the government rattled, by Iraq's 
capture of five prisoners of war. It has accused Iraq of "parading" 
and mistreating them. It has invoked the Geneva Convention under 
which mistreatment is a war crime.

However, the Iraqi government has not subjected the PoWs to 
mistreatment or paraded them to arouse "public curiosity" -- even 
less than the British did when they displayed Iraqi prisoners 
marching with their arms raised above their heads or handcuffed at 
the back with plastic clips. The Iraqi government says the PoWs are 
civilians, not army personnel at all.

There is no evidence that Iraq has harassed the American PoWs. It 
displayed their pictures and allowed television interviews by the 
local media. The third Geneva Convention prohibits starvation, 
physical harassment, aggressive interrogation of PoWs, and subjecting 
them to "insults and public curiosity". Going by Al-Jazeera videos, 
this description is totally inappropriate.

True, the PoWs were identified in TV interviews, but they were not 
humiliated nor subjected to official interrogation on camera. This is 
different from the Iraqi display in 1991 of American airmen taken 
prisoner and obviously beaten to exhaustion and perhaps tortured: 
they could barely lift their heads.

The US' double standards on PoWs are starkly revealed in Guantanamo 
Bay in Cuba, where over 600 al-Qaeda suspects lie detained, often in 
chains and inside cages. Brutal methods have been used to extract 
information from them. The US does not even accord them PoW status. 
It merely calls them "unlawful combatants". American courts have no 
jurisdiction over them. This is an insult to international law.

Yet, on PoWs, the US hypocritically invokes the Geneva Conventions, 
although it violates a far more important international statute, the 
UN Charter itself. Equally deplorable is its threat to treat Iraqi 
officers as "war criminals" merely because they are employed by 
Iraq's army, while insisting that American soldiers be treated, when 
held, as PoWs! With such hypocrisy, the US can only lose what's left 
of the political war, which will be far important than any military 
battles in Iraq.