A rchive Date
[ 04-04-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Iraq ]
|
[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_apr4.html
End game begins in Iraq
By ERIC MARGOLIS -- Contributing Foreign Editor
April 4, 2003
American forces have made dramatic and rapid advances over the past two days in their invasion of Iraq. A series of co-ordinated offensives by the 3rd and 1st Marine Divisions, backed by elements of the U.S. 101st and 82nd Divisions, have by now pushed to the outskirts of Baghdad and its main airport.
U.S. losses have been moderate; Iraqi military losses heavy. My sources say more than 800 Iraqi civilians have been killed, 6,500 wounded.
American claims to have destroyed two key Republican Guard divisions - the Baghdad and Medina - may be exaggerated, in spite of massive round-the-clock bombing and artillery fire. These units, and regular Iraqi Army units numbering some 30,000 men, were unable to withstand lethal air attacks in open terrain and likely dispersed and withdrew into suburban Baghdad. Other Iraqi units are isolated at Karbala, Kut, Nasiriya, Hillah and may still pose a serious threat to U.S. communications.
In the south, the port of Basra remains under siege by 25,000 British troops and artillery. The Brits are making slow progress in the siege and are even battling aggressive Iraqi counter-attacks toward the strategic Faw Peninsula and the port of Umm Qasr.
In the North, 2,000 U.S. airborne and special forces troops were dropped or inserted to join some 40,000 Kurdish pesh merga guerrillas. In spite of skirmishes and a raid on a tiny pro-Taliban group, there has been little significant military activity in the north. The primary mission of the U.S. forces there is to prevent Kurds from seizing the key oil centres of Mosul and Kirkuk, which remain in Iraqi hands, and to act as a trip-wire to block any Turkish advance.
TURKS MAY INTERVENE
If Kurds do seize these cities, and likely proclaim an independent Kurdistan, the powerful Turkish Army, which has deployed 70,000 men in two corps on the Iraqi border and 20,000 men inside Kurdistan, may intervene in force to squelch any independent Kurdish state, then grab Iraq's northern oil fields.
The U.S. 101st Air Assault Division is expected to move northeast of Baghdad, severing the main highway north to Tikrit, and threatening the city's western flank. Once U.S. forces are hard on Baghdad's main defences, they will mount another huge bombing attack, probably using the 21,000-lb. MOAB monster bomb and devastating fuel-air explosives that will rupture the lungs of anyone in underground shelters or bunkers.
Fake reports will be broadcast that Saddam Hussein and his family have died or fled.
These will be the final effort to provoke a coup against the Iraqi president. If that fails, there will likely be a pause while the 4th Division - finally in theatre after being rerouted from the north - and an airborne unit, some 30,000 troops, are brought up from Kuwait. Possibly, more heavy units will be brought in from the U.S. and Europe.
The U.S. and British invaders of Iraq wish at all costs to avoid urban fighting, though they clearly are getting drawn into such bloody operations in Basra and the towns south of Baghdad.
If Saddam is not assassinated by U.S. bunker-buster bombs or Special Forces hunter-killer teams prowling Baghdad - if the Iraqis did this in Washington, they would, of course, be branded "terrorists" - then a nasty siege appears almost inevitable.
Pentagon claims that U.S. forces destroyed half of Iraq's main units this week are exaggerations. U.S. troops are now about to face dug-in Iraqi forces at close range in urban settings where air power is least effective, and where hidden Iraqi artillery, which has been so far quiescent, may prove effective.
As of now, U.S. forces lack sufficient ground troops to throw impervious siege lines - "lines of circumvallation" in proper military terminology - around Baghdad, a sprawling city of five million. The British, with 35,000 men, have not been able to seal off Basra.
Though the war's end appears tantalizingly close, the conflict could flare on for a good while longer.
Eric can be reached by e-mail at margolis@foreigncorrespondent.com. Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com or visit his home page
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
|