Deutsche Presse-Agentur March 27, 2003
U.S. 4th Infantry heads to Iraq as offensive slows
The dash toward Baghdad that characterized the first days of the Iraq war has slowed, but that could be altered with the arrival of the heavily mechanized U.S. 4th Infantry Division, which brings at least 12,000 soldiers to the theatre.
With thousands of troops poised for an assault on Baghdad, the Pentagon ordered in the Army's 4th Infantry, which could move into Iraq within weeks.
The Army's 3rd Infantry Division, 101st Airborne and 1st Marine Expeditionary Force are among the U.S. forces already within reach of Baghdad. They have dug in in recent days as sandstorms halted their advance and while troops got some rest and waited for supplies.
According to media reports that cited Pentagon officials, another 100,000 soldiers are planned for deployment in April.
U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Thursday brushed off suggestions that the call-ups were linked to a slowing campaign, saying the mobilization was part of the invasion plans.
"The flow of forces was decided many, many weeks and weeks ago," he said. "It was designed in a way that forces would continue to flow over a sustained period."
More than a week into the invasion, the regime of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has not crumbled - as the most optimistic analysts had predicted and the Pentagon hoped for - and it appeared Saddam remains in control of his troops, who have fought more vigorously than expected.
Heavy airstrikes rained on Baghdad Thursday while the Air Force conducted raids to degrade the Republican Guard forces outside Baghdad in preparation for an assault on the capital. But U.S. Central Command has also send some troops from combat roles to guard supply lines that have come under attack from smaller teams of Iraqi forces using guerillas tactics.
General Tommy Franks, chief of U.S. Central Command and commander of U.S. forces in the Iraq war, has not said what will come next, and it remained unclear if he would order an attack on Baghdad before the 4th Infantry arrived. The Pentagon had originally envisioned using Turkish soil for the division to invade Iraq, but a a deal could not be reached with Ankara and dozens of ships waiting to unload the division's tanks, armoured vehicles and other weapons were sent to Kuwait.
The 4th Infantry Division "may be playing a role sometime in April but they are not going be playing a role this week", said John Pike, the director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defence think tank just outside Washington. "The thing that is unclear at this point is whether to take back Baghdad now with what is currently deployed or whether they are going to wait for another week to 10 days to get the 4th Mech into place."
Possibly the most technologically advanced division in the Army, the 4th Infantry Division is equipped with 200 Abrams tanks, dozens of armoured Bradley fighting vehicles, Apache attack helicopters and other aircraft. All of its tanks and armoured vehicles are digitally linked with sophisticated communications and real-time target data sharing.
Pike predicted Central Command will make a move on Baghdad in the coming days to give "the regime a good hard whack and see if the thing flies apart". If not, U.S. forces will hunker down and wait for the 4th Infantry while continuing strikes on the already battered Iraqi capital, he said.
"That is going to determine whether the regime will collapse or whether it is going to have to be taken apart one piece at a time," he said. Other experts have predicted Franks will have to postpone an assault on Baghdad until fresh troops arrive.
In the meantime, U.S. troops will wait outside Baghdad as airstrikes continue chipping away at the Republican Guard and as the British Marines and U.S. soldiers go after the small groups of Iraqi elite forces - namely the Fedayeen paramilitaries - who have been using guerilla tactics to hit troop columns and supply lines and have been putting up fierce resistance in the southern city of Basra, which is surrounded by British troops.
U.S. General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday that the tactics by the "death squads" have failed to disrupt supply lines and are not altering war plans.
"It can be, I think, characterized more as harassment at this point," he told a congressional panel. "It's something that has to be dealt with, and so we're dealing with that as we speak."
Guerilla tactics are nothing new for the U.S. military but are unlikely to dog the invasion in the same manner mujahidin fighters did the Soviets in Afghanistan or the Vietnamese did the Americans, Pike said.
The Soviets and Americans "were confronting guerilla groups that were proxies for an external superpower," he said. "Saddam's Feyadeen does not have an external political base."
"These guys have no superpower bankrolling them," he added. "It is pretty much a come-as-you-are party for these guys." dpa mm ls
Copyright © 2003, Deutsche Presse-Agentur
