The predicted short, sharp and bloodless war is taking on a grim new reality. Body bags are arriving in the UK and civilians in Iraq are being killed in politically embarrassing numbers and in graphic color on global television. Not quite the “shock and awe” the US had promised.
Judging by the public protestations of Britain and America about “driving on to Baghdad,” neither seem to have learned their lessons related to overextending supply lines and underestimating the opposition.
US generals, Franks in particular, seemed almost indignant that Iraqis in civilian clothes would approach US troops and open fire. A suicide bomber kills four US troops at a checkpoint. Somehow this seems unsporting, a breach of the rules of war. Now, in an unseemly attempt to gain public sympathy, Iraqi soldiers in uniform and openly carrying weapons are being described as “terrorists.” Thirteen days into the invasion, there is a change in the tone of press briefings, from bellicose to considered. The time is coming when the policy of the hi-tech approach to combat, reliant on “manning the equipment,” changes to reliance at street level on “equipping the man.”
The advance to Baghdad is on hold; 120,000 reinforcing troops are on the way. Baghdad is being bombed to rubble in administrative and, occasionally, civilian areas. The campaign has changed from an Anglo-American “blitzkrieg” to a war of attrition.
It’s beginning to have echoes of Stalingrad in 1942. The differences are many, but in several respects there are disturbing similarities that will not have escaped an esoteric band of military personnel, both Iraqi and coalition — the snipers.
In the wrecked city of Stalingrad, the use of heavy armor was impossible. In the outer suburbs of Baghdad it may be possible, but not in the older parts or those damaged by bombing. The rubble of Stalingrad provided extensive sniper cover, as will Baghdad if the bombing continues. Extended supply lines, upwards of 400 kilometers in the Anglo-American case, are difficult to protect, as the Germans discovered. The German Army became bogged down in the sewers and alleys of Stalingrad, clearing the city building by building. Meanwhile, the Russian Gen. Zhukov was preparing an attack on the German flanks. Snipers, concealed in the wreckage and sewers of Stalingrad, occupied the German Army for months. A lone sniper could hold a battalion in place simply through the fear he commanded, the certainty of death if a man revealed himself. This lesson will not have been lost on Saddam Hussein, a devoted follower of Stalin’s methodology. Already he has challenged the coalition to fight in the streets. There the war gets personal, and possibly lengthy. Urban warfare is notoriously difficult. Knowing where troops are and maintaining command and control systems become near impossible challenges. Insertion and extraction by helicopter is sometimes impossible, as the US found out in a raid on Mogadishu on Oct. 3, 1993.
On that occasion,George Bush Senior ordered in US combat troops assuring the American people and the troops involved that this was not an open-ended commitment. The objective was quickly to provide a secure environment so that food could get through to the starving Somalis, and then turn the operation over to UN peacekeeping forces. It all sounds rather familiar.
Urban fighting boils down to individuals clearing and securing buildings one at a time. Small coalition groups will be up against determined units of fighters fiercely loyal to Saddam Hussein and fighting for the very existence of their country. Some of them will be snipers able to kill a man with a single shot from a ruined building at a thousand meters, able to squeeze the trigger between heart beats and lie, with endless patience, for days waiting for a target.
The target will never even know what hit him. At least the killer sees his target, through the graticule of his ’scope, as another man. Somehow it seems more principled than pressing a button on a ship a thousand kilometers away and sending a missile to do the work and generate collateral damage.
Casualties from sniping may well be low, but the numbers engender a disproportionately high level of fear and caution in advance into urban areas. Advance will be slow, the supply lines vulnerable and the Anglo-American troops tired and a long way from home.
The US troops’ job was difficult in Mogadishu, with a few hundred thousand inhabitants, because their leaders severely underestimated the skills and determination of the “skinnies” — as the half-starved Somalis were referred to — and the difficulty of using high-tech equipment and locate their men. The object of their ill-fated raid, Gen. Aidid, died four years later.
Baghdad is a city of four million people. It is the seat of Saddam’s most loyal retainers, and they are well equipped and determined. The trumpeted “pause” the Anglo-American forces say is “to be expected” might productively be used as a pause for thought. If they want to take Baghdad, it is going to be a long process at street level. It will stretch the patience of the public in US and UK and, as the body count rises, fuel the growth of anti-war movements to the point where they might seriously affect the re-election of Bush and Blair. Perhaps high level bombing is the answer, and the coalition might just accept the deaths of thousands of civilians.
It would be too much to hope that they could shock and awe the world by having another go at a negotiated approach instead.
