 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
The impending war on Iraq is turning out to be low on surprises. U.S. war plans are periodically leaked to major newspapers, and recently Saddam Hussein has personally revealed his strategy. According to British M.P. George Galloway, whose interview with the Iraqi dictator was recounted for London's The Mail August 11, the coming war will be a war of the cities. Saddam will move his defensive units into urban areas to deny the Allied forces the chance to surround and destroy Iraqi units in the desert the way they did in the Mother of All Battles. Preparations are well underway. Key defensive positions are being fortified, subterranean passages being made ready, food and supplies being stockpiled. The Iraqi government is moving underground, and communications are now by word of mouth to avoid electronic eavesdropping. Bath Party members are being trained in the techniques of urban warfighting, and in the spirit of Hitler's Volksturm, the Iraqi regime has issued rocket launchers to 500,000 volunteers "backed by Republican Guard units." No doubt — "backed" in the same way the Red Army was backed by the NKVD in World War II. As an added security measure, this is being done only on the frontiers, far from the seat of power. It would be hard to believe that Saddam would hand out half a million RPGs to his suffering population without some form of insurance.
MOUT (Military Operations in Urban Terrain) is a highly complex and dangerous undertaking. The Chinese military theorist Sun Tzu called it "the lowest form of warfare," meaning that if your enemy managed to suck you in to fight in the cities, you were doing something wrong. (Note that the highest form of war is winning without fighting.) It is usually accompanied by heavy casualties on both sides, but is particularly costly for attackers. MOUT was something of a vogue in the 1990s, when the global trend towards urbanization led some analysts to predict that the wars of the future needs must be fought in cities. Several city fights, such as in Mogadishu in 1993, and in Grozny in 1994, 1996, and 2000, dramatized the fact that it was a particularly nasty form of warfare in which heavy casualties were practically unavoidable. City fighting minimizes or negates many of the advantages of airpower and mechanized warfare that are the hallmark of U.S. military operations. By staying in the cities it will be easier for defending units to hide from air strikes, and more difficult for attackers to exploit mobility. In addition, Iraqi command, control, and communication will be facilitated by the close proximity of units, and mutiny or mass surrender will be less of a threat. So from a purely military standpoint, Saddam seems to be making a good move, avoiding Allied strengths and minimizing his own weaknesses. Politically it makes sense too — unlike the antiseptic war of the desert, Saddam will benefit from having millions of handy human shields, and the unfortunate but inevitable civilian deaths will make good propaganda fodder for Baghdad. Furthermore, with his troops clustered in cities, they can be on hand to deter or counter the civil uprisings that the Allies would hope to incite to bring about regime change. Once the U.S. ground forces show up, the Iraqis can use all the tricks perfected by the Chechens to inflict punishing casualties, weaken American resolve, foment world outcry, and bring about a truce. However, this assumes that the Allies will just walk right into the cities and commence house-to-house fighting. Lessons learned from the urban scraps of the 1990s would argue against such a direct and unimaginative game plan. Army Major General (Ret.) Robert Scales, former Commandant of the Army War College, has described an alternative approach in which forces attacking cities would "use the inherent instability of the urban structure as a means for it to defeat itself." Cities are fairly complex systems. They require fresh water, food, and electricity to function effectively. Furthermore they cannot be defended equally well everywhere at all times. Attackers can avoid most of the pitfalls of urban fighting by cutting off cities, knocking out electricity and other elements of the infrastructure, and then making small-scale attacks in key areas when opportunities present themselves to do so with minimal risk. This fits well into the emerging Pentagon concept of Rapid Decisive Operations, which seeks to target an entire enemy political-military system, not simply its front-line defensive positions. The idea is to place the top-to-bottom structure under a variety of constant, non-linear, unpredictable pressures until something gives and the system collapses. It is one of the concepts currently being tested in the Millennium Challenge 02 exercise. Generally speaking, relying on urban warfare is not a winning defensive strategy. Few cities have been successfully defended against conventional assault since Stalingrad. Yes, the Chechen Mujahedin dealt painful blows to the Russian army, but the rebels ultimately lost the 1994 and 2000 Grozny battles, both times suffering numerous casualties they could ill afford. (They did win the 1996 battle against the Russian MVD — as the attackers.) Taliban leader Mullah Omar had apparently learned different lessons than Saddam from the Chechen Wars. When it came time to make their long-predicted stands in Kabul or Kandahar, the Taliban wisely took to the hills rather than embrace martyrdom. Even the al Qaeda fixed defensive positions in Tora Bora and Shah-i-kot proved to be death traps for those who did not flee. One is reminded of Patton's dictum, "Fixed fortifications are monuments to man's stupidity." Should Saddam choose to remain in a bunker, immobile, and surrounded, he has poor long-term prospects. And at that point he will already have given up most of the country to be administered by a new Iraqi government, not to mention sacrificed the oil fields that are the source of his wealth (which he would likely set afire as he did to the Kuwaiti oil wells before retreating in 1991). Nevertheless, Saddam may have a few surprises up his sleeve. Israel has reportedly promised to retaliate if Saddam attacks, which of course is the only reason Saddam would attack. His SCUD-missile launches against Israeli targets in 1991 were an attempt to court a response that would divide the anti-Iraq coalition. Of course this time there may be no Muslim component of a coalition to divide, so the attacks would probably be a means of attempting to solidify an Arab anti-Israel group, though why any other country would want to risk almost certain nuclear retaliation is anyone's guess. Saddam has also recently made several speeches praising the pioneering work of scientists working in his army aviation sections, without exactly saying what they were doing that was so praiseworthy. It may well be that they are perfecting means of airborne deployment of chemical or biological agents. UNSCOM had previously reported that Iraq had developed something known as the "Zubaidy Device" to accomplish this very task. Iraq admitted — then denied — testing such a weapon using harmless bacillus spores in 1988. Allied forces may be at greater risk of chem-bio attack than in 1991, since the stakes are much higher for the Iraqi regime, in fact to the point where Saddam has nothing to lose. Meanwhile he is engaging in his usual brinkmanship, trying to delay the oncoming conflict through a confusing series of diplomatic moves, from his invitation to members of Congress to tour Iraq, to his latest denial that U.N. inspectors would be welcome after weeks of suggesting they might. He has even floated the rumor that he will voluntarily give up power this November. Saddam can be counted on to shift his positions boldly and shamelessly in the weeks and months ahead, seeking temporary advantage whenever the timing seems propitious, and shifting away as circumstances change. It is a confusing approach, and in fact is meant to be. Lest anyone be too critical of the Butcher of Baghdad's opaque tactics, it is worth noting that he is one of the longest ruling dictators in the world today. Only Fidel Castro springs to mind as an autocrat of more mature vintage. A final note: In 695 B.C. the Assyrian king, Sennacherib, diverted the Euphrates to flood the vanquished city of Babylon. Food for thought. — James S. Robbins is a national-security analyst & NRO contributor. |
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
<% dim printurl
printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%>
addam
is no Churchill; among other things, he has given up cigars.
