The Straits Times (Singapore) March 26, 2003
What lies ahead
US troops are steeling themselves for grim street fighting in the event of Iraqi elite squads using chemical weapons
By Michael Hoare
PRESIDENT Saddam Hussein is readying his armies for a last-ditch defence of Baghdad which will include the use of chemical weapons.
Analysts say loyalists and elite soldiers armed with chemical weapons lie in wait, ready to fight to the death.
The American CBS TV network cited unnamed US officials yesterday as saying Iraqi leaders had drawn a red line on the map around Baghdad.
Once American troops cross that line, Republican Guard units are authorised to use chemical weapons.
Unless Mr Saddam capitulates, Baghdad's rooftops, side streets and suburbs will test the coalition armies.
The technical superiority which allows allied troops to see the Iraqis from further away and shoot faster and more accurately will count for nothing in urban warfare.
Military theory holds that an army unit will lose almost one-third of its troops when taking a city.
It is a price the US has not paid for generations, one which it hopes to avoid with the use of new tactics, weapons and training.
But Mr Saddam, whether he lives or dies, is determined to leave a bitter legacy when his regime finally crumbles.
As the coalition troops move into Fortress Baghdad, he is trying to buy time.
Already, allied forces have engaged "rag tags in flip-flops", said British Sgt Nigel Barton.
Poorly trained but dangerously unpredictable, these urban irregulars are the absolutely loyal Feyadeen Saddam.
Their name means "those ready to die for Saddam".
These loyalists in civilian clothes will extend a hand of friendship to coalition troops one minute and shoot them the next.
Still, Dr Ron Huisken, a defence expert with the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University, said that Mr Saddam had "not got a prayer" once the allies reached Baghdad.
The Iraqi leader will try to force a political price on the US with an atrocity that will make Iraq as ungovernable as possible afterwards, he told The Straits Times.
Iraq's small cache of chemical weapons would be used to strike at the allies.
"One suspects that he is capable of thinking in that fashion and that makes an urban battle so ugly," he added.
Battlefield Baghdad is unlikely to mirror the street fighting in Somalia that resulted in a deadly haze of confusion, said Dr David Betz, a lecturer at London's King College war studies department.
"The Americans have been training, they are well prepared and I am certain they will carry the day but it won't be technology - it will be the quality of their training and leadership," he told The Straits Times.
Lying in wait are six Republican Guard divisions.
There are reports of mortar brigades in the south while a paramilitary force of secret police and border guards - whose numbers could be as high as 125,000 - is said to patrol Baghdad's alleyways.
Globalsecurity.org defence analyst John Pike predicts a three-pronged urban strategy - bombing leadership targets, sending in tanks and seizing airwaves to urge an Iraqi surrender.
"And if that doesn't work, then there's going to be a problem," he said.
Copyright © 2003, Singapore Press Holdings Limited
