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Iraq: In all but name, the war's
on
By Marc Erikson
How do you
tell a war has begun? This is not the 17th or 18th
century. There are no highfalutin' declarations. Troops
don't line up in eyesight of each other. There are no
drum rolls and bugle calls, no calls of "Chaaa...rge!".
When did the Vietnam War begin? When, for that matter,
World War I? When mobilizations were ordered setting in
motion irreversible chains of events or at the time of
the formal declarations of war?
The lines of
battle and the timelines to overt battle and full-scale
combat have become fluid. Consider this: At the
beginning of this year, when US President George W Bush
started talking ever more in earnest about taking out
Saddam Hussein and signed an intelligence order
directing the CIA to undertake a comprehensive, covert
program to topple the Iraqi president, including
authority to use lethal force to capture him, the US and
putative ally Britain had approximately 50,000 troops
deployed in the region around Iraq.
 By now, this
number has grown to over 100,000, not counting soldiers
of and on naval units in the vicinity. It's been a
build-up without much fanfare, accelerating since March
and accelerating further since June. And these troops
are not just sitting on their hands or twiddling their
thumbs while waiting for orders to act out some type of
D-Day drama. Several thousand are already in Iraq. They
are gradually closing in and rattling Saddam's cage. In
effect, the war has begun.
For sticklers for
details, here are some numbers and locations of the
allied troop build-up gathered from local sources in the
various countries where US and British forces deploy or
from open allied sources: Prior to the past seven
months' troop movements, there were 25,000 US troops
(army, air force) in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states of
Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab
Emirates and some 20,000 British troops, mainly in Oman.
Since March, 12,000 US troops have been added to
Kuwait (8,000) and Qatar (4,000) and 5,000 Brits to
Oman, bringing the April/May total to 62,000. In late
June, the Turkish foreign ministry reported heavy air
traffic of US military transport planes aimed at
increasing the number of US troops in southern Turkey
from 7,000 to 25,000 by the end of July. Also in June, a
contingent of 1,700 British Royal Marines were
re-deployed from Afghanistan to Kuwait and a 250-man,
highly-specialized German NBC
(nuclear-biological-chemical) warfare battalion equipped
with "Fuchs" (fox) armored vehicles has been in Kuwait
since early this year.
An additional 2,400 US
troops are deployed in Jordan and, according to
Jordanian news agency Petra, are being reinforced by
another 4,000 arriving since August 12 at Aqaba for
joint exercises with the Jordanian army. Already, 1,800
US troops (mostly Special Forces) are inside Iraq, at
least since the end of March and, in fact, units there
were visited two months ago by CIA director George Tenet
during a side trip from Israel and Palestine. Another
2,000-3,000 US troops are in semi-permanent deployment
in the Negev and Sinai deserts in accordance with old
international agreements. On August 9, the Turkish daily
Hurriyet reported that 5,000 Turkish troops had entered
northern Iraq and taken over the Bamerni air base north
of Mosul. These numbers add up to about 105,000 US and
allied troops on bases surrounding and inside Iraq.
The number of US and British aircraft in the
region (land-based and on three US and one British
carrier) cannot be determined with any real precision.
But they greatly outnumber Iraqi air forces (not to
speak of their vast qualitative superiority) and are in
the process of being reinforced. Munitions and equipment
for German Tornado fighters have been pre-positioned in
Turkey.
The Saudi announcement of August 7 that
US forces will not be permitted to use Saudi bases for
an attack on Iraq causes the US military no major
headache. The US has quietly moved munitions, equipment
and communications gear to the al-Udeid Air Base in
Qatar from Saudi Arabia in recent months. Further,
construction of a large new military camp in Kuwait has
just been completed. Allied ground troops, air forces
and naval units now on hand are sufficient to carry the
fight to Iraq from a virtual stand-still, certainly
sufficient for the "small-war scenario" (75-100,000
troops) on which US Central Command chief General Tommy
Franks briefed George Bush on August 6.
What are
these allied forces up against? As the head of the US
Defense Policy Board Richard Perle put it succinctly the
other day, Iraq today has one third of its 1990-91
capabilities, "but it's the same third, just 11 years
older". That's something of a characteristic
exaggeration by the "Prince of Darkness", but not by
very much. Iraqi ground forces now number 375,000, less
than 40 percent of their 1990 pre-Gulf-War strength. Of
that number, 70,000 are in the Republican Guard (half of
the 1990 strength) and another 25,000 in the
Baghdad-based Special Republican Guard assigned
exclusively to protecting Saddam Hussein and maintaining
political control in the city (no other troops are
allowed in). The remaining 280,000-man regular army has
major morale problems and is made up largely of
unwilling conscripts, many from the oppressed Shi'ite
population, who consider themselves ethnic Iranians
rather than Arabs.
Principal equipment is 2,200
tanks of Soviet-era vintage (including a few hundred
T-72s) and 1,900 artillery pieces. The Iraqi air force
is reduced to 130 attack aircraft and 180 jet fighters,
but only about 90 of the latter are combat ready at any
given time. The navy no longer exists.
Iraq's
anti-aircraft defenses consist of some 120 batteries
dispersed around the country, and are as technologically
degraded as the rest of Iraq's rusting arsenal. The
number of Scud missiles is between a minimum of 12 and a
maximum of 36. Of these, between six and 16 are Scud-B
(Al-Husayn) with a range of 600 kilometers. The
remainder are plain Scuds with a 300-kilometer range.
The Scud-B missiles are the only ones that pose problems
because they can reach targets outside Iraq. They are
very inaccurate, however, and have numerous serious
technical problems. The biggest of these is that they
tend to break up during their descent phase. Their
theoretical accuracy is 3,000 meters CEP (Circular Error
Probability). This makes them militarily useless, and
useful only for terrorizing urban populations if
warheads contain chemical or biological agents.
Ongoing
actions by US and allied forces around and in Iraq in
part are in line with guidelines provided in Bush's
presidential order to oust Saddam:
Increased support to Iraqi opposition
groups and forces inside and outside Iraq including
money, weapons, equipment, training and intelligence
information;
Expanded efforts to collect
intelligence within the Iraqi government, military,
security service and overall population;
Use of CIA and US Special Forces teams,
similar to those deployed in Afghanistan since September
11. Such forces would be authorized to kill Saddam if
they were acting in self-defense.
But in part
the actions go well beyond that. In Kurdish Iraq -
according to Israeli sources - US army engineers are
working around the clock to build a series of six to
eight airstrips to serve fighter planes and helicopters
that will provide air cover for invading ground forces.
The airfields are strung along a western axis from the
city of Zako southwest to the city of Sinjar; a central
axis from Zako south to Arbil; and an eastern axis from
Arbil to Sulimaniyeh.
Special Forces teams are
involved in on-the-ground military target
identification, mapping out Scud and anti-aircraft
battery locations. They are also helping set up, equip
and train Kurdish militias and are cooperating closely
with Turkish counterparts engaged in the same activities
in Turkoman regions.
US and British aircraft are
probing Iraqi defenses beyond the no-fly zones close to
Baghdad. On August 6, they destroyed the Iraqi air
command and control center at al-Nukhaib in the desert
between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The center is wired to
fiber optic networks installed last year by Chinese
companies. New types of precision-guided bombs disabled
the fiber optic system. The broad aim of recent bombing
runs is to thoroughly disrupt Iraqi command, control and
communications functions.
In light of these
developments, the various "war plans" bandied about in
the US press - with the New York Times and the
Washington Post trying to outdo each other with the
latest scoops - are largely irrelevant as such, whether
it's the "Northern Alliance Option" (US troops and
intelligence personnel aiding an attack by opposition
forces); the original "Franks Plan" (massed attack
involving some 250,000 troops); the "inside-out"
approach (commando attacks on Baghdad and key Iraqi
command centers first, followed by mopping-up action);
or the "status-quo" or "do-nothing" option of continued
containment of Saddam. Elements of all of these
scenarios will eventually be seen as having been
incorporated in the removal of the Iraqi leader.
Equally irrelevant is speculation on the timing
(September/October for the sake of surprise?
January/February a la Gulf War to avoid the
desert heat?) of "the" allied attack. Attacks of various
kinds are ongoing. Their intensity and intrusiveness can
increase at any time ... or decrease again. It's a game
of options and contingencies, backed by ever increasing
material capabilities; perhaps a game of prodding Saddam
into a tactical mistake or a flight-forward reaction.
Earlier this year, a British journalist asked Bush how
exactly he was going to get rid of Saddam Hussein. He
replied, "Wait and see." The journalist, like many of
his colleagues, may well still be waiting - for lack of
ability to see that the war is on. Some high-speed,
high-intensity strikes may later be called "The Iraq
War", but it began no later than March.
(©2002
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