The Boston Herald April 04, 2003
Iraq may drag U.S. into tough city fight; Battle looms in Baghdad
By Thomas Caywood
The U.S. Army's surprisingly swift advance on Baghdad yesterday raised an ominous question for the commanders whose job it is to take the capital city.
Where are Saddam's Republican Guards?
"We're hearing reports of 8,000 to 9,000 captured. That sure isn't three Republican Guard divisions and remnants of two others," said George Friedman, chief intelligence officer of the Texas-based private intelligence firm Stratfor.
Friedman and other military analysts fear thousands of Saddam's most capable soldiers slipped back into Baghdad for an apocalyptic last stand on the streets of a city that's home to millions.
"It looks as if the Iraqis are going to try to drag us through all the civilian areas," said Patrick Garrett, an associate analyst at Global Security of Alexandria, Va.
"Provided the Iraqis don't decide to throw down their arms and give up, I expect we are going to see some limited probings into the city soon," Garrett added.
But taking a city roughly the size of Detroit without sustaining heavy casualities and without killing thousands of civilians in the process presents a huge challenge to American generals. Two weeks into the war, the southern city of Basra is still holding out against British forces surrounding it.
Fighting in congested urban landscapes strips American forces of some of their technological advantages and plays to the strength of Iraqi troops, Friedman said.
"Inside the city the rules change," he said. "The Iraqis don't have to maneuver. You put them where you want them and tell them to shoot if anyone comes."
To illustrate just how brutal urban warfare can get, Friedman points to the 1945 Soviet attack on Berlin, which by that point in World War II was defended mostly by old men and boys. With no compunction about shelling civilian areas, he said, the Red Army still lost roughly 78,000 soldiers taking the city in three days.
"This is the hardest part," he warned.
American commanders could choose to simply surround the city to cut the regime off from the rest of the country, but then they face the threat of millions of Baghdad residents suffering hunger and thirst for weeks.
"I think the clock started ticking on a humanitarian disaster today when you saw the electricity go out," meaning perishable food stocks and blood supplies have begun to spoil, Garrett said.
Central Command said American missiles and bombs didn't target Baghdad's power grid. If that's true, Garrett said, Saddam may be trying to force American troops into street fighting by provoking a humanitarian crisis.
Although street fighting poses a risk to regular Army and Marine units who rely on armor and air power to make up for being outnumbered by Iraqi soldiers, U.S. Special Operations troops are highly skilled at urban fighting.
Rich Lucibella, publisher of SWAT Magazine and an authority on such tactics, described how special operators train to take down an enemy stronghold inside a building. It all begins with a countdown from three.
"On three, bang, the sentries go down. Two. The breachers blow the doors. One. Your guys are in," Lucibella said. "They'll tend to hug the walls, move immediately around the rooms knowing exactly where they are going and leaving certain guys behind to control prisoners. It's enormously fast. Done almost at a run."
Lucibella said such raids could strike at the regime without dragging the United States into widespread street fighting.
"As they get the intel, they know there are 50 Fedayeen in one building and they come in and do a surgical strike on that building," Lucibella said.
Copyright © 2003, Boston Herald Inc.
