-Caveat Lector- The final frontier
US military strategy in Iraq relies heavily on overwhelming power to realise short-term goals. Galal Nassar digs at the roots of the US's most strategic war Last year the US declared that the purpose of its political and military operation in Afghanistan was to take revenge against Al-Qa'eda leader Osama Bin Laden and his accomplices, who are held responsible for the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001. The rest of the world bought this story. By the end of the campaign, the US had apprehended neither Bin Laden, his right-hand man Ayman El- Zawahri nor any other top Al-Qa'eda leader. By the standard of its declared objective, the US's campaign in Afghanistan was a political and military failure. However, the US did succeed in masterfully realising an undeclared agenda. It established a military presence in Central Asia, having signed with those countries agreements permitting permanent US military bases on the borders of China, Russia, Iran, India and Pakistan -- all countries that could become regional or global powers and thus pose a threat to US influence and hegemony, not to mention control over the enormous oil reserves in the Caspian Sea area. Today, we are watching the closing episode in the US drive to encircle rising powers and sources of wealth. The alleged aims are to topple the "dictatorial" regime of Saddam Hussein, to eliminate the weapons of mass destruction it possesses and to give the Iraqi people "freedom, democracy and medical and food aid". This is ostensibly why Washington has deployed thousands of forces in the region, expanded many of its bases and signed more defence agreements to build more military bases. Its real agenda -- to protect and further its interests by altering the geo-political map of the region, from physical boundaries to systems of government -- is nonetheless thinly disguised. Numerous scenarios for the impending military operation against Iraq have been announced or leaked or are still under consideration by experts. While they conflict in many aspects, they converge on the following points. US forces will advance from Kuwait towards Basra and from western Iraq towards the so-called no-fly zones. Dozens of US aircraft will take off from bases in Turkey and Qatar and from aircraft carriers in the Gulf, Indian Ocean, Mediterranean and Red Sea. Commandos and intelligence teams will infiltrate Iraq while radar and satellite detective devices hone in on strategic sites, such as bridges, factories, airplanes, power stations, radar and communications facilities, presidential palaces and government buildings. The objective of the initial strike is clearly to ground Iraqi defences and bring life to a standstill, but the scenarios are so far silent on actions to overturn the regime in Baghdad. Nor have any suggestions been mooted as to a candidate to replace Saddam Hussein, although observers tend to believe that the US would favour a military officer in a temporary capacity instead of a civilian for the post. It is also presumed that the US strategy for post- Saddam Iraq is to inject huge amounts of material aid to assist in reconstruction and the restructuring of the government, while preserving order through a new army formed of militias consisting of former exiles. In short, it intends to revive the model of post-World War II Japan to transform Iraq into a democratic nation. This strategy is not without its inconsistencies in aims and means. The plan to make Iraq the peaceful, democratic Japan of the Middle East exists in tandem with a plan to generate a three-fold increase in the exports of oil- producing countries, from 2.3 million to 10 million barrels per day. The two plans seem incompatible. On the one hand, increased revenues from oil would tend to feed the roots of despotism. On the other, such a huge increase in production would cause prices to plummet and harm the economies of all oil-exporting nations. Certainly, too, countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia would not take kindly to changes across their borders that could jeopardise their own regimes. Such a scenario, therefore, would either propel Iraq once again towards militarisation or compel it to rely on a strong and prolonged US military presence. In both cases, the profits generated by increased oil production would be dissipated on military expenditures and imports. War in its customary sense entails the engagement of two hostile standing armed forces. In this sense the military operations in Afghanistan could not be termed "war". Again, looking at the US-Iraq scenario, with the current level of training, armament and technology of Iraq's armed forces, parity in any engagement is out of the question. Iraq possesses no air force with which to strike at US targets, no navy to target US warships in the Gulf and no satellite or other communications networks for directing and coordinating military action. Nevertheless, in the opinion of all objective military experts, US forces, no matter how large, cannot embark on a land or guerrilla offensive against Saddam's tattered forces. Even if US forces were trained in guerrilla or desert warfare, the thousands of American lives it would cost would cause a domestic nightmare for the administration of President George W Bush. Simultaneously, the Iraqi army is not without resources. Once dependent on the Eastern Bloc for arms, it possesses advanced military weaponry, such as tanks, field artillery and short- to mid-range missiles, with ranges from 100 to 150 kilometres and from 150 to 900 kilometres, respectively. In addition, the Republican Guards and commandos form the major units of the Iraqi army. It was not all that long ago that US and British forces experienced the strength of these crack units in the battle of Al- Nasseriya, in south-western Iraq. With 800 tanks pitted against the Hammurabi battalion, US and British forces were on the point of collapse when George Bush Sr took the decision to override the field command and declare the end of hostilities, much to the dismay of Commander Norman Schwarzkopf. The prevalent thinking in Washington on its forthcoming war with Baghdad is that the conscripted army will abandon the field quickly, but that US forces will continue to encounter tough resistance from Hussein's elite Republican Guard. These units are better equipped, better paid and have a greater incentive to remain loyal and continue fighting. This oversimplified contrast between ordinary and elite forces, however, could lead to tactical miscalculations as it exaggerates the army's cohesion and treats it as though it is unchanging, while at the same time ignores the complex relationship between war and politics, especially in Iraq. To understand this dynamic properly we must cast ourselves back to the formation of the Ba'ath Party and its assumption of power in 1968. The party had to contend with deep rifts among army officers that had given rise to repeated coups during the decade preceding the party's assumption of power. Consequently, consolidating control over the military was a top priority for Ba'athist leaders. In its eighth conference in 1974, the Ba'ath Party moved to place the army under its authority to expel "suspicious, conspiratorial and adventurist" elements and to indoctrinate the rest into Ba'athist ideology. If such measures were instrumental to expanding, restructuring and modernising the army, they were insufficient to guarantee loyalty. A kinship element had to be introduced, with the result that a dual system of allegiances emerged. The party controlled the army, and clan bonds controlled the party. This anomaly extended from the general command through the three bases of influence that evolved: the Ba'athist military bureau, the National Security Branch in charge of intelligence and the unofficial family networks. It was through his adroit manipulation of the intricacies of Iraq's sociopolitical configurations that Saddam Hussein succeeded in augmenting his power, bypassing the vertical command hierarchy and exerting his direct personal control over the various sectors of the army. During the war against Iran (1980-1988) some military officials complained that while such a concentration of power in the hands of an individual may serve domestic security, it formed an obstacle in modern warfare. The Iraqi historian Faleh Jaber relates that under the presidencies of the Aref brothers (1963- 1967) the Iraqi armed forces consisted of a regular army and the Republican Guard. When coming to power, the Ba'ath Party preserved this duality, but upgraded the Republican Guard, creating, in effect, a bifurcated military with the army assigned to defend the country and the Republican Guard responsible for keeping the regime at the helm. The restructuring of the armed forces radically altered the configuration of the social origins of senior military staff and brought the decline of the political clout of the army officer. When seizing power in 1968, the Ba'athists first Revolutionary Command Council consisted entirely of military figures. Three years later, the second Revolutionary Command Council contained only five officers among its 15 members. By the time Saddam Hussein took power in 1979, no officers were left on the council. As the historian Majid Khuduri put it, "The Ba'ath Party was the first regime to subordinate the army to civil authority." The depoliticisation of the army proceeded in tandem with a major quantitative transformation. In the space of just over 10 years, the size of Iraqi armed forces increased from 50,000 men in 1968 to 430,000 in 1980, and the number of soldiers in the general population increased from six to 31 per cent. Through this enormous swelling of army ranks, the regime secured stability and acquired a viable tool for realising its ambitious regional aspirations. War with Iran marked the beginning of a second phase of development for the Iraqi army. At a time when the war effort was funded with huge oil profits and vast domestic, regional and international support, army ranks swelled again to over a million. This figure, moreover, does not take into account the paramilitary organisations such as the People's Army and the National Defence Cells formed of some 150,000 Kurdish mercenaries. However, military expenditures so sapped national resources that while Iraq evolved into a military giant, it simultaneously shrunk to an economic midget. With the strains of protracted fighting, economic hardship and social disintegration, the war generation reached the brink of rebellion. Thus, after a period of growth, party and tribal networks fell into disarray and the army virtually became a ship with no one at the helm. At the close of the Iraq-Iran war, the regime in Baghdad was at a crossroads: it could either continue to feed and clothe a million soldiers or it could finance their return to civilian life. Military command was divided over the issue. Some feared that discharging legions of hungry and angry soldiers would lead to rising crime and social chaos, while others feared that retaining large numbers of malcontents in the army was a recipe for insurrection. Regardless of the path the regime chose, new sources of funding had to be found and political reforms had to be introduced to alleviate tensions. The invasion of Kuwait was an evasion of, rather than an attempt to remedy, these problems, and the humiliating defeat and the considerable human losses in that war became another catalyst for disintegration and rebellion. The first major upheaval in the army occurred in 1991 with the insurrection of some army units in response to the suppression of the rebellions by the Kurds in the north and the Shi'ites in the south. The Gulf War accentuated three major, if contradictory, trends in the army: rebellion, surrender and cohesion. During the land war in February 1991, only a few of the units that had entered the Kuwait war theatre stayed to fight while some 70,000 troops surrendered on the first day of battle. Following the cease-fire, mass desertion on the southern front decimated the remnants of the army in the south; in the north, 150,000 troops threw down their arms rather than go on battling for the regime, while, around Baghdad, the level of commitment and loyalty remained high. What accounts for these discrepancies? First, there was a pervasive indifference towards the "War of Kuwait", as Iraqi soldiers called it, within an army already weary from the war against Iran. Augmenting the disgruntlement of units in the south were the huge losses they suffered, the collapse of logistical support, lack of supplies, poor field command, followed by defeat and disintegration into general chaos. In addition, Ba'ath Party representatives were few in number and their supporting kinship networks too thinly spread within the units based in the south and those that remained in Kuwait. Ironically, however, the powerful allied aerial campaign, which initially fuelled the disillusionment and anger of Iraqi forces in the south, ultimately destroyed those very units that could have mounted an effective rebellion against the regime. Shortly after their retreat, scattered, disorganised units in the south rose up to the signal given by a tank that shelled an enormous portrait of Saddam in the centre of Basra. The US unwittingly helped Saddam eliminate the danger of a defeated army in another way. Out of its concern for possible Iranian intervention in Iraqi affairs, Washington decided to retain some form of Iraqi deterrent and therefore refrained from debilitating the Republican Guard. In the north, the same factors combined to trigger a revolt led by "advisers" made up of leaders of Kurdish tribal factions and some discharged soldiers in the cities. Military units there, isolated and stinging from defeat, took the decision to surrender to the Kurds. It was a poignant moment as 150,000 soldiers with nothing but the uniforms on their backs could be seen wandering the streets of Erbil, Sulaimaniya and Dohuk, living off handouts from Kurdish families that took pity on them. Rebel leaders in the north declared that Saddam's policies had led the nation to defeat and the humiliation of the army. However, they lacked direction and political drive. In spite of the courage it took to depart from military discipline, without the impetus to march on Baghdad their rebellion lost its force. Even in the south, revolt was more an act of despair than a movement with clear political objectives. By contrast, the third division, based in the centre of the country, remained loyal to the regime. Consisting primarily of Republican Guard units like the Madina and Hamurabi divisions, the third division had become President Hussein's major strike force and high command had kept it on reserve in the event Baghdad launched a counter offensive. Instead, spared from direct engagement with allied forces, these troops were unleashed on the poorly armed rebels and rescued the regime. That they sustained a high degree of cohesion was due to a number of factors, notably the relatively high intensity of party and tribal networks within the Republican Guard, their generally higher morale having been subjected to less bombardment during the war and a collective sense that their future was contingent upon the survival of the regime. Beginning in 1991, the regime initiated a programme of reconstruction and reorganisation of government administration. The programme set into motion a process of quiet reshuffling within the ruling elite while kinship allegiances regained prevalence in society and the army was subjected to a thorough overhaul. In the 22 years between 1967 and 1990, the minister of defence portfolio was held by four different people, between 1991 and 1996, the minister was changed four times. Although Hussein wanted to keep this portfolio in the hands of the powerful Al-Majid clan, in 1996 he passed it to a war hero from the new generation as a gesture to the military establishment and to raise morale in the ranks. It was in this way that current Minister of Defence Thabet Sultan came to replace General Ali Hassan Al-Majid. However, the most significant change was the massive reduction in armed forces to 350,000 troops and a simultaneous reduction in arms reserves to half of their level in 1991. Nor were improvements made to equipment, with the exception of air defence systems. The regime was thereby able to reduce military expenditures and intensify networks of kinship allegiances, which had disintegrated alarmingly before the war. At the same time, however, the gap between regular and elite forces broadened as the Republican Guard came to parallel the army in artillery and mechanised units, lagging behind only in infantry. Iraqi armed forces, today, consist of four divisions: three (although some say eight) regular regiments from the Republican Guards; another division also drawn from the Republican Guards, but from its armoured and infantry regiments; the regular army, made up of four armoured, three mechanised and five infantry regiments; and finally, a group of tribal squads charged with suppressing civil rebellion and which are expected to constitute a significant force in urban warfare. It is further worth noting that from 35 to 85 per cent of the senior officers in the forces are related to Saddam Hussein's clan, contributing to the military's cohesion. The impending war will differ markedly from the Gulf War at all levels. The political dimension in this war will be crucial in determining the theatre of operations. Since Washington's primary objective is to overthrow the regime, fighting is expected to be concentrated around Baghdad. If army units do not desert in sufficient numbers or if there is no military coup, US forces will have to wage a full scale invasion and occupation. Predictions on the duration of such a campaign cannot be based on the rapid victory in Afghanistan in view of the clan/class cohesion that the US will find difficult to break. Meanwhile, Baghdad faces two major problems that, at least on the surface, it will be unable to surmount. The first is the vulnerability of a regime the unseating of which is the core political objective of the war. The second is the gap between official nationalist rhetoric and popular sentiment, which will be aggravated in a war in which the Iraqi army will be unable to withstand a sustained onslaught and occupation by the US and its allies. With these concerns in mind, Baghdad has resorted to a number of tactics as it prepares for war. First, it has played on the American threat to the regime to insinuate that all members of the ruling elite are at risk and that they should therefore stick together until the bitter end. That the US has made no attempt to sow dissent among the ruling elite has tended to reinforce their sense of common cause. Second, the regime has drawn on religious sentiments to consolidate the domestic front. Fearful of Shi'ite dissidence in the south in particular, it has fuelled anti-Shi'ite hostilities while simultaneously prevailing upon Shi'ite spiritual leaders to issue fatwas against Shi'ite opposition. Third, it has focused its defence strategy on the cities, as the most favourable arenas of battle. The prospects of high civilian casualties would severely hamper US operations while compensating for the weakness of the Iraqi army in the field. It would also afford the Iraqi regime the opportunity to realise its dream of inflicting large losses in the ranks of the invaders. Fourth, it has drawn up a detailed programme for mobilising the international media with the aim of rallying global sentiment in the event of a US siege on Baghdad. A desert arena would not be conducive to such a strategy, as we are reminded by the Gulf War, during which allied forces maintained a tight grip over media coverage. In this war, the Iraqi regime hopes to turn the tables by setting up 10 media centres in diverse locations on the ground. Fifth, in order to ensure its perpetuity, the regime has established the co- rule of Saddam Hussein and his son and successor, Qusay. A triumvirate has also been considered, if not finalised, with the third position in power to be handed to the commander of the Republican Guard, General Kemal Mustafa. Finally, to forestall popular rebellion, military leaders replaced all civilian officials and tribal forces loyal to Saddam have been deployed heavily in the cities. Such measures indicate that the regime is fully conscious of its weak points as well as the opposing camp's margin of manoeuvrability. Certainly, too, it recalls the experience of 1991 and is aware that its armed forces could variously desert, rebel or keep on fighting, depending upon factors similar to those mentioned above. As for the prospects of a military coup, conditions of the armed forces seem to work against it. The army is not politicised as it was in 1958 when it was possible for one tenth of the forces to neutralise the rest. Today, an entire division of the army, consisting of perhaps three or four regiments would be required for that purpose. This, moreover, would entail the active participation of a significant portion of the president's clan. Could the US succeed in winning over a sizeable portion of the elite from the ruling clan? If not, any attempt at a coup could lead to scattered acts of rebellion and, possibly, a civil war. In such an event, casualties would soar dramatically as fighting dragged on and unpredictable forces plunge the country into an even darker nightmare. One assumes Washington would wish to avert such an outcome, but what does it have in store for Iraq in the post-Saddam era? Faced with the likelihood of Iraqi resistance to a reconstruction project modelled on post-war Japan, the Bush administration, for various American domestic reasons, may well prefer to avoid meddling in Iraq's internal affairs, leaving that business to one of its allies, such as the UK. Such an avenue, of course, would contradict statements emanating from Washington to the effect that it envisioned transforming Iraq into a "beacon of democracy" in the Middle East. It would simultaneously dishearten those Iraqis who have been looking to Washington to help them effect radical changes in their country's political system. However, decisions in the US, like Britain 80 years ago, are governed by short-term cost-benefit analyses at the expense of the long-term benefits to be gained from a thorough transformation of Iraqi society. C a p t i o n : WHAT'S TO COME: should the US decide to go to war, it will meet a debilitated, but not powerless army. (Clockwise from top) conscripts in the Iraqi army; children praying to stop the war; women awaiting aid © Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 6 - 12 February 2003 (Issue No. 624) Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/624/sc2.htm Forwarded for your information. 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