The Boston Globe March 27, 2003
Iraqi Use Of Civilians Counters War Plans
By Robert Schlesinger, Globe Staff, and Bryan Bender, Globe Correspondent
WASHINGTON - Little more than a week into the war against Iraq, the most potent Iraqi weapon has not been VX nerve agent or anthrax, but the regime's willingness to utilize its civilian popu lation for military ends.
Reports from the besieged southern city of Basra indicate that Iraqi irregular militia forces there have used civilians as human shields and unwilling combatants, threatening their lives or the lives of their families if they do not help battle coalition forces.
It is a tactic aimed at the heart of the coalition strategy of attacking the regime of Saddam Hussein while trying to avoid harming Iraqi people, especially in urban areas. Some specialists and military officials predict that the scenes in Basra may be played out again on a larger scale in Baghdad.
Administration officials acknowledged yesterday that they had underestimated Iraqi resistance, even as administration officials sought to downplay statements by the US Army's top ground forces officer in Iraq that the coalition advance toward Baghdad have been stalled by supply problems and enemy resistance.
British forces currently encircling Basra said that Iraqi forces dug into the city had opened fire on thousands of civilians trying to flee, hitting them with bullets and mortar shells. Other reports from US and British officials have indicated that irregular Iraqi forces in Basra and other areas have used civilians as shields while firing on coalition forces, and that they have used threats to prod civilians and keep soldiers from deserting to coalition forces.
"We probably did underestimate the willingness of the regime to commit war crimes," Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz said yesterday. "I don't think we anticipated so many people would pretend to surrender and then shoot. I don't think we anticipated such a level of execution squads inside Basra."
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other US officials insist that military actions are on or ahead of schedule and that Iraqi resistance has not been "militarily significant."
But military specialists and officials believe that the resistance seen in Basra is a taste of what could be expected in Baghdad.
The problem for commanders in Basra is deciding on "the degree to which you prosecute the war against your enemies, which are not the Iraqi people but that structure of the regime," said General Michael Jackson, chief of the British General Staff. ". . . It calls for careful judgments, some clever tactics, and we will see how Basra proceeds. It won't remain as it is forever, that's for sure."
Indeed, statements this week from Iraqi officials challenged coalition forces to enter Baghdad for an urban clash.
"The enemy must come inside Baghdad, and that will be its grave," Iraqi Defense Minister Sultan Hashem Ahmed said Thursday. "We feel that this war must be prolonged, so the enemy pays a high price."
Unlike the coalition's strategy farther south, in which British forces besieged Basra while US forces pushed north toward Baghdad, American forces will have to enter the capital city.
"The fundamental difference between Baghdad and Basra is that we can bypass Basra; we cannot bypass Baghdad," said John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense think tank.
Military officials have been tight-lipped about how a Baghdad siege might unfold. To the extent possible, military commanders avoid fighting in urban settings.
Many of the coalition's technical advantages, especially the ability to strike from long distances, would be diminished. In addition, General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that air defenses around Baghdad are still potent, which would hinder the coalition's use of close air support for ground troops.
Rumsfeld hinted at the US strategy Thursday when he told a congressional panel that the first step in taking Baghdad will be to isolate the city, followed by a period of continued US airstrikes on the city, with hopes for insurrection among civilians, which would be assisted by US troops.
That strategy would seem to be in keeping with the broader approach the United States has taken in regard to Iraq: Attempt decapitating strikes while bypassing much of the rest of the country.
"Baghdad's going to be a microcosm of Iraq," said Andrew Krepinevich of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, an independent think tank on defense issues. US planners hope that if Iraqis see "a juggernaut bearing down on the capital . . . there will be a collapse of resistance."
But if Iraqi forces repeat the Basra tactics and dig in to fight, using civilians as shields on a larger scale, it could be brutal. "If you're dealing with about 20,000 dedicated forces trying to resist you, it could be some very nasty fighting," Krepinevich said.
He and others said the strategy of laying siege to a city while trying to destroy its centers of power without fighting block-by-block is a relatively new idea and is untested.
"You would be very nervous about barging into downtown Baghdad if you thought there were Saddam's Fedayeen lurking around every corner with antitank guns," Pike said. "The problem, though, is that if all you do is increase the number of American troops that are outside Baghdad and just let the city sit there in a slow simmer, and turn the blitzkrieg into a sitzkrieg and turn the thing into a stalemate, that's not going to work.
"A military campaign is like a bicycle," he said. "If it isn't moving forward, it will fall over."
Robert Schlesinger can be reached at schlesinger@globe.com. Bryan Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com.
Copyright © 2003, Globe Newspaper Company
