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Guerrilla tactics foil battle plan
24/03/2003 16:02 - (SA)
Baghdad - Iraqi forces, making clever use of guerrilla warfare and flanking tactics, have shattered confident predictions of an easy victory and the rapid demise of Saddam Hussein and his regime.
In a pronounced shift in strategy from the 1991 Gulf war, Saddam has abandoned static, Soviet-style warfare to allow his ground forces maximum autonomy to lure their adversaries into messy street battles.
As commander-in-chief, Saddam earlier this month divided Iraq into four military zones - each having substantial powers - in order to avoid the communications breakdown that proved disastrous to Iraqi forces in their 1991 war with a US-led coalition that drove them from Kuwait.
Heavy weapons are no longer concentrated in large centres easily detectable by allied warplanes. Fast-moving units
In each of the cities they have attempted to secure in the war to date, Umm Qasr, Nasiriyah and Basra, US and British forces have come up against spirited resistance from small groups of fast-moving Iraqi units capable of setting ambushes despite the intervention of US aircraft and artillery batteries.
At Umm Qasr, a strategic Iraqi Gulf port, US and British troops have been struggling over the past four days to neutralise lingering pockets of Iraqi resistance.
Saddam on Monday hailed several of his commanders for their courage, notably the head of the army's 11th division, who is guiding the defence of Unn Qasr.
Allied troops operating near the southern city of Nasiriyah on Sunday found their rear positions under attack by Iraqis wielding rocket propelled grenades. A US logistical support unit on the outskirts of the city sustained heavy fire from the Iraqis and ended up with 12 of its members unaccounted for.
Some of them were later believed to have been captured and shown on Iraqi television.
"We allowed them to walk through the desert," said Iraqi Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan. "But all our cities are fighting back." Opportunity to avenge 1991 rout
Saddam has, in addition, appealed to three key components in his defensive strategy - soldiers, militias and tribes.
His soldiers have an opportunity to avenge their 1991 rout, his militias to defend the regime and tribal forces to preserve Arab honour and pride.
Moreover, the failure of the United States and Britain to win broad international backing for their campaign allows Baghdad to portray the conflict as a colonial war.
For many Iraqis, recollection of the British capitulation at Kut al-Imra in 1916 is a sustaining source of patriotic inspiration. British losses in the campaign came to 98 000.
Iraq is also bracing for a long conflict, unlike the United States, which hopes to wind up the affair with dispatch.
"The more they advance into Iraqi territory, the more they head into a dead end," the Iraqi leader declared in a address on Monday.
"Hit your enemy with force and precision. Cut their throats. The enemy is stuck in Iraqi territory. Hit it."
- AFX
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