Defiant Iraqis refuse to stick to allies' script, by M J Akbar aljazeerah.info

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Defiant Iraqis refuse to stick to allies' script,

by M J Akbar, Gulf News, New Delhi | | 31-03-2003

The Bush-Blair war to save the world from Saddam Hussain and save Iraq's energy resources for American multinationals has affected different people in different ways. I must confess that the fog of war is beginning to affect my brain. There is so much that I cannot understand anymore.
Question: Has the ground offensive by U.S. and British troops stopped, or stalled?

In the beginning of this week, the Pentagon claimed that its troops were moving towards Baghdad at a pace unprecedented in military history. They were only 80 kilometres from Bagh-dad! At the end of the week they were still only 80 kilometres from Baghdad.

Those 80 kilometres are served by an excellent road. Iraq does not have an air force left. The road is clear, the sky is safe. So why are hundreds of thousands of heavily equipped soldiers saddled in the desert under a fierce sun that will begin to rage by the middle of April?

Have the shifting sands of war strategy left them in a bit of a morass? The allies first assumed that cities like Basra, Umm Qasr and Nassiriya would fall like ripe fruit seeking a new gardener. But the fruit became thorns upon their touch.

Quick shift: From an evolving war in which cities would fall before the downfall of Baghdad, the destination became Baghdad, on the new assumption that the others would fall once Baghdad was lost.

Problem: The smaller cities became citadels from which Iraqis could disrupt supply lines. Without supplies, the allied troops cannot fight. A 20,000-person division needs 2,000 tons of supplies a day. There are some 300,00 American troops in and around Iraq. Bring out your calculators.
Why is the 4th Infantry Division, described as the finest fighting force ever assembled, heading towards Kuwait?

It was meant to open the northern front through Turkey. Granted, Turkey did not give permission for the easy transit of land forces. But they could have assembled from the air through secure airfields like Bashur in the Kurdish regions, as about a thousand U.S. special forces have done?

All the additional 120,000 reinforcement are headed towards the southern front. Has this become a single-front war? Does this rule out any serious threat to Baghdad from the north? Their heavy equipment is coming by ship, reaching around the first or second of April.

Will, therefore, the ground offensive resume only in the first week of April? Have these additional troops come to defend the rear and flanks rather than to strengthen the front? Alternatively, fresh troops could relieve those who have already spent a fortnight in the desert, switching roles, but this would not add significantly to the power of the outstretched fist. What does this mean for the prospects of land battles?

Why has Tony Blair just said that Saddam Hussain will be difficult to dislodge? Is this what he was telling rebellious Labour MPs when they objected to his war only days before it began?

America and Britain were then forecasting a war of either four or seven days. After all the allies were going to be welcomed with fruits and flowers.

In the opening days of the offensive, Britain cheerily ann-ounced that Basra had been "captured" and "secured". A week later, even the much-analysed Shias seem reluctant to be "liberated".

In 1991 Basra and Nassiriya's Shias rose up against Saddam. This year they are Iraq's heroes. Donald Rumsfeld has threatened to widen the conflict to Syria and Iran because of their support for Saddam Hussein. Syria may be more understandable, but Iran? Not even the Americans have vilified Saddam as much as the Iranians did during their long eight-year war.

On March 28 Robert Fisk filed this report for the British newspaper, The Independent: "Two British soldiers lie dead on a Basra roadway, a small Iraqi girl - victim of an Anglo-American air strike - is brought to hospital with her intestines spilling out of her stomach, a terribly wounded woman screams in agony as doctors try to take off her black dress.

"An Iraqi general, surrounded by hundreds of his armed troops, stands in central Basra and announces that Iraq's second city remains firmly in Iraqi hands. The unedited Al-Jazeera videotape - filmed over the past 36 hours and newly arrived in Baghdad - is raw, painful, devastating."

On the first Sunday after the war began Pope John Paul called the invasion of Iraq a "war against humanity". Bush-Blair sniffed that this was a war for the "liberation" of humanity. The Pope knew something that the CIA, MI6, George Bush and Tony Blair did not.

He knew that the Iraqis would fight. He sensed that as they did, the reprisals would escalate. Indiscriminate bombing is the first sign of frustration. The "soon-to-be-liberated" civilians are beginning to pay a price in Basra, Nassiriya and Baghdad.

The Pope, though, has already helped ameliorate a significant portion of the damage that Bush and Blair are doing. He has, along with millions of other Christians, prevented this war from becoming an Islam vs Christianity confrontation.

Why are the American stock exchanges going south instead of north? Last Thursday, exactly seven days after the war began, American markets fell to March 19 levels. Why? Because those with money know how to count.

George Bush has already asked the Congress for another $75 billion. Let me introduce you to a few more figures. James Schlesinger, former CIA director as well as defence and energy secretary and Thomas Pickering, undersecretary of state under Clinton, have produced a report for the Council on Foreign Relations as part of a think tank project called the Iraq Task Force. They assume that the Anglo-American invasion will succeed.

They say $20 billion will be required from the American budget each year for the reconstruction of Iraq. Out of this $16.8 billion will be spent on 75,000 troops. This begs another question. The post-Saddam regime is meant to be independent and democratic. Why does an independent democracy need foreign troops? Am I asking too many questions?

Who holds the boomerang in the second Gulf war? Before the first Gulf war Saddam Hussain promised the mother of all battles. But it proved to be a damp squip.

This time the American secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld threatened to unleash a campaign of "shock and awe". Seven days later Rumsfeld was in a visible state of shock; and if there was any awe, it was at the spirit of the Iraqi people.

In 1991 a million Iraqi refugees clamoured for shelter in Jordan. This time, just across the border, Jordan created tented facilities for 10,000 refugees. Those tents are empty. Instead Iraqis are filling Amman's taxis to take them to Baghdad, for the last battle of this war.

The Americans and the British went into this campaign on the strength of three assumptions, widely articulated: first, that they would be welcomed by a people ready to revolt against Saddam; second, that the Iraqi Army, underprivileged and underarmed, would surrender rather than fight; third, that the world might pay some lip service, but would be essentially indifferent to the fate of someone with a track record like that of Saddam.

At least part of the reason for the American and British miscalculation is that the reputation of Arab armies, even those unburdened by Saddam, has not recovered from their crushing defeat in the seminal event of modern Arab history, the six-day war against Israel.

Nothing has happened since then to change the impression that Arab armies would rather surrender than die. Rumsfeld delayed his opening moves in this war because he was convinced that Iraqi commanders would prefer to walk over to him rather than run back to Saddam; he did not envisage the possibility that they would stay their ground and fight.

The ease with which the ground war ended in 1991 reinforced such assessments. No one asked if 2003 was different from 1991, even though the difference is obvious. In 1991 Saddam Hussain was the invader, in 2003 he is a patriot.

It will still need a miracle to prevent a short-term Anglo-American military victory. American firepower may have to shatter Baghdad to smithereens and waste the blood of innocents in order to reach Saddam, but George Bush and Tony Blair will not be restrained.

After all, if Saddam does not go, they will. But Iraq has already achieved a different kind of miracle. Iraq has restored the self-respect of the Arab street.

Lieutenant General William Wallace, who is commanding troops in the desert rather than from air-conditioned headquarters summed it up simply: "The enemy we're fighting against is different from the one we'd war-gamed against. We didn't know they'd fight like this." Now the world knows.

The writer is the Editor of The Asian Age.

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