War in Iraq & strategy of Saddam Hussein

Kingsley Heendeniya
"Come into my parlour", said the spider to the fly. It appears to me that this is precisely what Saddam Hussein has done to the American and British invaders. He has deliberately, little by little, invited and lured them deeper and deeper inside Iraq, right up to Baghdad. His Defence Minister said that the supply line from Kuwait, the snake, is more than 500 km. long and that ‘it will be cut piece by piece’. Later, he elliptically referred to a ‘quagmire’ in which the invaders will perish.

After ‘Desert Storm, and the spectacular display of laser-guided bombing in Afghanistan, Saddam knew, as any fool would, that no one can match the million-dollar-a-bomb might of the Americans and the British. So he figured out and prepared a weapon bombs cannot overcome: the desert. He dragged the comedy of the UN inspections till summer time and the sand storms. In his first broadcast after the war began, Saddam asked his forces to wage it ‘for as long as possible and weary the invaders’. He pledged to bury them in the desert.

The logistics for the American and British Forces are horrendous. The expense, planning and effort to carry, unload, store, guard, assemble, inventorise, maintain, pack and distribute equipment has never been experienced by them before, made more difficult by Saudi Arabia and Turkey refusing to cooperate. With no Northern Front, an unplanned 60,000 troops were diverted to Kuwait. Sand storms have ruined equipment and machinery. Besides food, water, spares and medical aid, petrol alone for the huge vehicles should be terrifying. As the snake gets longer, more vulnerable, the tension should mount in geometric progression. It is disastrous to be stranded in the desert, to the alternating scorching sun and freezing cold of the night. The whole of the west and most of the east of the supply line from Kuwait to Baghdad runs through desert. There are no trees for shade in Iraq except for the date palm beside the Euphrates and the Tigris.

Historians regard Iraq as the ‘cradle of civilization. It is in this region that the Sumerian, Assyrian, Mesopotamian and Babylonian empires flourished. Islam came there only 700 years ago, after the Mongols. So, Iraq has a tortuous history of invasion and internecine warfare up to the present time. Baghdad has been sacked and re-built many times. Thus, the Coalition Forces will have to destroy Baghdad and kill everyone to ‘liberate’ them. The consequences will be catastrophic immediately, and incendiary worldwide. Two cardinal tenets of Islam are brotherhood and martyrdom.

Unlike as in other wars, the Americans and British have not been able to fool local stooges do their dangerous work. Perforce, they have to show themselves up as the Rambo-type good guys. On the other hand, the Iraq military has virtually disappeared. Instead, there are thousands of small ‘civilian’ groups everywhere - at street corners, in shops, in homes, on rooftops - with guns and grenades - which the BBC is dignified to call ‘perfidious’ conduct! I prefer the comment of the American soldier who put it better: ‘This is not what we were told to expect. It is a different ball game!".