Hartford Courant (Connecticut) March 28, 2003
A Battle Scenario Best Avoided
Street Warfare Could Put U.S. Forces At Huge Risk
By Michael Remez
The United States may have the most powerful military in the world, but its commanders will do all they can in the days ahead to avoid all-out urban warfare in Baghdad.
Why?
They know the deadly history of street-to-street fighting. They remember the horrific skirmish in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993, that left 18 American soldiers and many more Somalis dead. And they watched, later in the 1990s, as the Russians twice mishandled urban combat in the Chechen city of Grozny, first losing the city to a small, irregular force, and then using excessive force to take it back.
For the United States, this could be the first large-scale assault to take an enemy city since the battle of Hue in Vietnam in 1968.
Military planners know that urban combat has a harsh way of leveling the playing field between powerful armies and local adversaries. They hope they can oust Saddam Hussein and his regime without a full-scale attack on Baghdad.
"Historically, attempts to take over a defended city have been enormously expensive in terms of casualties," said Ray Callahan, a military historian at the University of Delaware. "If you have defenders who will fight house to house and floor to floor within houses -- even in the most hopeless situations -- an attacking army can pay a very, very high price."
In terms of efficient use of power, the United States could learn from the Israelis, whose military has used heavy force when attacking densely populated neighborhoods in Palestinian territories without sustaining great casualties among its own.
But the Israelis seem more concerned with their nation's security and less with world opinion. U.S. leaders must strike a more difficult balance as they try to win support from fearful Iraqis and longtime allies who oppose this war. They want to limit civilian casualties and damage to the Iraqi infrastructure.
"Do we reduce our own casualties by using greater firepower and accept that more civilians are going to die, or do we try to hold down the collateral damage knowing that we are going to lose more people?" Callahan asked.
Any extensive street-to-street fighting for Baghdad, a city of about 5 million people, would be deadly.
"It could be the most difficult mission the U.S. military has done in decades," said Daryl Press, a government professor at Dartmouth College who has written extensively about urban warfare.
With limited sight lines and little room for coalition forces to maneuver, danger could lie anywhere: rooftops, second-story balconies, basement windows, or the next corner. The Iraqi forces would know the terrain; the Americans would not. Innocent civilians could be everywhere.
Still, analysts say, the U.S. military has been working to increase the odds of success and limit the damage, with more extensive training, more advanced equipment and weaponry, and analysis of past campaigns by the United States and other powers.
"One lesson of Mogadishu is that helicopters are vulnerable," Press said. The battle was re-created in the book and the movie, "Black Hawk Down."
In that case, Somalis took down hovering American helicopters with shoulder-fired, rocket-propelled grenades. The Iraqis are thought to have heat-seeking surface-to-air missiles, which would pose a greater danger to helicopters flying overhead.
The American troops had undertaken the raid that started the Mogadishu mission without tank support at the start. Analysts say the outcome demonstrated the importance of combining the two.
That, Press said, is also the main lesson from the Russian experience in Grozny. Tanks must be supported by well-trained infantry. In the mid-1990s, the Russians ran tanks through Grozny -- without backup -- that were taken out by Chechen guerrilla forces.
"There is this big myth out there, propagated by the Russian bungling of Grozny, that says tanks are a liability in cities," Press said, adding that he thinks the combination, aided by new technologies, creates an effective fighting force.
The Russians badly underestimated the fighting resolve of the Chechen rebels. Commanders did not have enough troops for the fight. Three years ago, when the Russians took back Grozny, they did so with great force and devastation.
Some analysts say the U.S. should wait until it has more military personnel in place before any move into Baghdad.
Press foresees first an effort to avoid an all-out urban battle, then a well-planned push to strategically take parts of the city piece by piece. The effort would be heavily centered on teams of tanks working with infantry soldiers.
Those teams would include as many as 100 soldiers for each tank, with those on foot carefully scanning doorways, alleys and rooftops for enemy forces. Abrams tanks would provide cover and stand ready to attack enemy locations when needed.
Superior American equipment, such as sophisticated night vision goggles, would help in this kind of engagement.
"The U.S. military owns the night. That is a technology the Iraqis are not going to be able to match," said Patrick Garrett, a senior fellow with GlobalSecurity.Org, a Washington military think tank.
Analysts say U.S. forces also will be helped by improved body armor, sophisticated maps of Iraqi streets and global positioning systems that can help direct them to specific targets.
But Garrett said it would be tough to call in a fighter jet for a bombing run in a densely populated urban setting.
"GPS is very effective. They will know exactly where they are. Unfortunately, the application of air power is going to be extremely limited," he said. Communications in a chaotic setting also could prove difficult, despite improvements in technology.
In a related lesson from earlier battles, including skirmishes in Afghanistan, U.S. leaders know they must gather as much intelligence as possible and analyze it discerningly to avoid attacking civilian targets.
Ralph Peters, a retired Army intelligence officer who writes about defense issues, said some street-to-street combat cannot be avoided.
"Somehow people seem to assume our enemies will be better than us," Peters said. "Street thugs don't make better fighters."
Peters said the allies will have to show patience, especially if they want to fight on their own terms instead of Hussein's. Hussein is likely to try to draw the Americans into urban combat. Heavy civilian casualties could increase international and domestic pressure on the Bush administration to seek some sort of truce.
Garrett said that won't happen.
"It's not a question of whether the United States will win a battle in the streets of Baghdad. The question is at what cost. How many civilians are going to be lost and is that the image of liberator to the Iraqi people that we want to convey?"
GRAPHIC: GRAPHIC: (b&w); GRAPHIC: Urban Combat; LIBRARY NOTE: This graphic was not available electronically for this database.
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