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Harbinger of war in Basra
By
Charles Recknagel
PRAGUE - Planes flying in
routine US and British patrols over southern Iraq have
attacked a surface-to-surface missile system in what
could be stepped-up activity ahead of a US-led war
against Baghdad.
A spokesman for the
US military's central command, based in Florida,
has reported that planes patrolling the no-fly zone over
southern Iraq struck the mobile missile system near
Basra Wednesday.
Spokesman Major Brad Lowell
said the attack was the first on an Iraqi
surface-to-surface missile system since a similar attack
near Basra in September.
Analysts say the strike
on the surface-to-surface missile is an escalation in
the normal pattern of activity over the no-fly zone, in
which patrols usually strike Iraqi air-defense systems
that target them with radar.
Allied planes and
Iraqi air defense forces regularly clash in the no-fly
zones, which the US, Britain and France unilaterally
established after the 1991 Gulf War to protect Iraqi
Kurds and Shiites from government reprisals. Baghdad
claims the zones violate its sovereignty.
Clifford Beale, an editor at the
defense-industry magazine Jane's Defense Weekly, says
hitting a surface-to-surface missile system is not part
of usual allied procedure: "I can't think of a direct
reason why, as a response to planes coming under attack
by surface-to-air missiles or at least being painted
[targeted] by radar, enemy radar, that they would take
out a surface-to-surface missile."
But Beale
says the strike on the Iraqi ground missile system may
be part of efforts to weaken Iraq's overall defensive
systems in the run-up to a war.
The analyst says
that over the past four or five months, the tempo of air
operations over the no-fly zones has increased. The US
and British air forces have authorized pilots to
preemptively strike radar systems and
command-and-control systems they deem threatening, even
when those systems do not directly target their planes.
Beale says the increased tempo of activity comes
in response to intensified Iraqi activities to shoot
down allied planes. But the intent may also be to
preemptively degrade Iraqi weapons systems so they pose
less of a threat to attacking allied forces.
"When we saw an increase in the tempo of
reprisals by the US Air Force and the Royal Air Force in
the no-fly zones, this in essence was a bit of a
softening-up operation," he said. "What they are doing
is degrading the entire Iraqi defense network over time.
They are just taking it out piece by piece, so that when
and if there is a major attack on Iraq, the defenses
will be that much less."
Analysts say the
increased activity over the no-fly zones is likely a
sign that war with Iraq is now just weeks away, unless
there is a last-minute diplomatic solution to the
crisis.
Ellie Goldsworthy, a defense analyst at
the Royal United Services Institute in London, says
stepped-up strikes in the no-fly zones also preceded the
allies' last major military operation against Iraq -
Operation Desert Fox in 1998.
"Just before the
beginning of Desert Fox, they started to target things
other than surface-to-air missile systems," Goldsworthy
said. "It wasn't necessarily obvious to the public, it
just kind of happened day by day. There was a slight
increase."
Targets other than surface-to-air
systems that were hit ahead of Desert Fox included
command-and-control facilities that coordinated Iraqi
air defenses. The US and Britain conducted four nights
of air strikes against Iraq during Operation Desert Fox
to punish Baghdad for not cooperating with UN arms
inspectors.
Analysts say it is not certain what
kind of surface-to-surface missile the planes struck
yesterday. But it is not likely to have been one of the
Russian-designed Scuds believed to compose the core of
Iraq's offensive missile capabilities.
Beale
says US officials would almost certainly have announced
a strike on a Scud because Iraq is forbidden to have the
medium-range missiles under UN disarmament rules. He
says the missile probably was a shorter-range weapon
permitted for battlefield use instead.
"I think
if it was [a Scud], they probably would have said so.
But Iraq does have a range of shorter-range missiles,"
Beale said. "They are allowed to have surface-to-surface
missiles, essentially rocket artillery, that go to a
range of 150 kilometers. They are considered,
essentially, short-range battlefield rockets."
Baghdad fired scores of medium-range Scuds
against Saudi Arabia and Israel during the 1991 Gulf War
and is believed to have a small but undetermined number
left. It is uncertain whether Baghdad has produced any
significant numbers of other medium-range missiles
during the four-year absence of UN arms inspectors, who
returned to work in Iraq last November.
The UN's
chief arms inspector for Iraq, Hans Blix, told the
Security Council late last month that Iraq has tested
two new missile designs to distances longer than the
permitted 150-kilometer range. They are the
liquid-fueled Al Samoud 2, tested to a distance of 183
kilometers, and the solid-propellant Al Fatah, tested to
161 kilometers.
Depending on the launch site,
the new missiles could be capable of striking parts of
Iraq's immediate neighbors - including Turkey, Kuwait,
Saudi Arabia, and Jordan - but could not reach Israel.
Copyright (c) 2003, RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted
with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington DC
20036
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