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ANALYSIS
Could Saddam still
win?
By Marc Erikson
As
technically vastly superior and soon to be further
reinforced US-led coalition forces reach the vicinity of
Baghdad, poised for the final push on the Iraqi capital,
the question posed in the headline may seem little more
than rhetorical. It is not. Consider why Saddam Hussein
made the decision to stay in Iraq and fight in the first
place; consider what - in his mind - might constitute
victory even as most of his country is occupied by enemy
forces.
For answers, first turn to Saddam's war
plan as evidenced by developments so far and the mode of
conduct of Iraqi military and irregular forces. In the
Gulf War, large Iraqi units, dug in and positioned
around and north of Kuwait, confronted allied troops in
the open desert and, softened and demoralized by weeks
of heavy bombardment, quickly buckled and surrendered to
massed firepower. No comparable encounters have occurred
in this war to date. No coherent Iraqi military moves
have been witnessed. Instead, much of the fighting has
been done by politically motivated paramilitary forces
(Fedayeen Saddam, al-Quds), interspersed with disguised
regulars, who blend in with civilians and hit targets of
opportunity. Units of the Republican Guard Forces
Command (six divisions totaling around 50,000 men) have
not offered battle.
This is a clear portent of
things to come. The guard divisions around Baghdad and
Tikrit (Saddam and his clan's home base) may or may not
put up a tough fight. That's a conventional military
concern and of less relevance than now accorded in the
media. These troops constitute an outer barrier and may
be sacrificed - though they, too, are undoubtedly
interspersed with irregulars, spread out, and less
vulnerable to air strikes and artillery than if they
were encountered in open terrain. Saddam's strategy, as
is now evident, is to sacrifice open spaces, but to hold
urban areas and conduct guerrilla-style harassment
operations in coalition rearguard areas. All this is to
gain time, even prior to an eventual siege of Baghdad.
Such a siege itself will prove time-consuming or,
alternatively, be costly in the extreme in civilian
lives as well as coalition casualties. Saddam's
calculation is simple: Baghdad under lengthy siege could
not only lead to ever-growing mobilizations of the "Arab
street" in neighboring countries, but also prompt
condemnation in the UN by the France-Germany-Russia axis
with demands for a ceasefire and a negotiated
settlement.
Saddam and his political leadership
probably count on a lack of political will on the part
of the US and the UK to terminate any siege quickly at
the cost of massive civilian and military bloodshed and
large-scale destruction of infrastructure. That
calculation might prove erroneous. It might also prove
erroneous to assume that well-trained and equipped
coalition soldiers would necessarily be at a
disadvantage when it comes to Stalingrad-type
house-to-house combat. In the Stalingrad battle 60 years
ago, the Soviet worker militias collapsed early on. The
decisive combat was carried out by equally matched
regular army units. But, of course, no matter how you
look at it, the destruction and casualties were
appalling.
And Saddam's options for final
victory, at least in his mind, are not necessarily
exhausted by forcing a long or bloody siege. He could,
and ultimately may well be prepared to enact the "Samson
option" of pulling the temple down on himself and the
Baghdad population. He would then stand as a martyr for
the cause of Arab independence and freedom from foreign
occupation of holy lands, making any expected positive
post-war settlements, whether in Iraq or Palestine,
potentially illusory. The war in Iraq, then, would stand
in history not as the beginning of a new period of
freedom, democracy, and prosperity, but as the beacon,
the signal fire for a Thirty-Years-War style period of
unending conflict and clash of civilizations.
This is Spengler-esque; it is not a prediction.
But a week into the war and close observation of both
sides' strategies and tactics, it has a sufficiently
high probability of playing out that it cannot simply be
dismissed.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
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