Saddams Republican Guard were training for urban street fighting and guerrilla warfare in 2002

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.smallwarsjournal.com/documents/thomas.htm

Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain in Iraq: Population Dependent?

Timothy L. Thomas

Foreign Military Studies Office, U.S. Army

15 December 2002

<snip>New York Times reporter Nicholas D. Kristof believes it would be foolish to attack Baghdad. From his discussions with “scores of ordinary people from Mosul in the north to Basra in the south” he reached two conclusions: that Iraqis dislike and distrust Saddam Hussein, and that Iraqis hate the US government even more, and are more distrustful of America’s intentions than Saddam’s. While finding few people willing to fight for Saddam, he found plenty of nationalists willing to defend Iraq against “Yankee invaders” enraged at the US after 11 years of economic sanctions.

One Iraqi official told Kristof that “some day, they will have to come to ground. And then we’ll be waiting. Every Iraqi has a gun in his house, often a Kalashnikov. And every Iraqi has experience in fighting. So let’s see how the Americans do when they’re fighting in our streets.” Baghdad, inhabited by thousands of civilians and regular troops, artillery, tanks, and potentially chemical and biological weapons, is not Mogadishu. Kristof also reported that some young militia members had just finished a training session in street fighting. One is reminded of the thoughts of Ilias Akhmadov, a Chechen fighter, who observed that under conditions of national survival, a civilian could be turned into a professional in only a few days of city fighting.

Scott Peterson, a staff writer for the Christian Science Monitor, painted an equally bleak picture. He quoted Iraqi officials as wanting to create a “new Vietnam” for American forces by drawing them into cities. “Let our streets be our jungles; let our buildings be our swamps,” he reported them as saying. Peterson also cited “experts familiar with high-level Iraqi thinking” (apparently Westerners) as saying that Iraqi urban bases have been garrisoned, command and control decentralized, trusted officers put in charge of each urban area, weapons stockpiled, ten new radio transmitters put in operation to “keep communications fluid” and plans made to call for a declaration of martial law to put troops on the streets as soon as possible when the bombing starts. Peterson adds that Iraqi civil servants have handed out weapons to ‘loyalists’ and asked them to put their hands on a Koran or Bible (?) and pledge to kill the enemy if they see one. Retired US General John Hoar, while testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee in late September, noted that his nightmare scenario is a dozen Iraqi divisions lined up to defend Baghdad, reinforced with several thousand antiaircraft artillery pieces. This is precisely the scenario one expects from the force composition of the Iraqi army.

Washington Post Foreign Service reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran reported that there were no visible military buildups on Baghdad’s streets in September 2002, when talk of action against Iraq was increasing in Washington. Western military analysts believe there are at least three divisions of the Republican Guard (which has been specially trained for urban warfare according to diplomats and military analysts, Chandrasekaran reports) in and around the capital. Each division has between 8-10,000 soldiers. If this is true, then to gain an advantage for an attack, according to the old Soviet standards of correlation of forces, an attacking force would have to be in the neighborhood of 150,000 soldiers just to confront the Republican Guard with a 5:1 advantage. The main Iraqi opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress, reported that Hussein has centralized command of the Guard and ordered new fortifications built around Baghdad. Iraqi officials only state that troops are ready. Most important, US authorities must consider that this time, Iraqi troops will be fighting for their own territory and not over Kuwait’s territory. This should strengthen the Iraqi will to resist. snip

A former communist guerilla predicted that one of Hussein’s options is to conduct his city battle much as the Chechens did against the Russians. This would mean the use of snipers in many buildings, and perhaps even breaking the Republican Guard into small four and five man mobile squads with the mission of harassing attacking coalition forces—appearing to be everywhere without being seen. The Guard would wear civilian clothing. It is possible that, based on the reaction of the Pentagon to events in Somalia, Hussein could be under the impression that the creation of a real show for CNN would benefit his cause—dragging dead bodies through the streets, staging attacks on mosques, and so on. Baghdad, however, is not the only city in Iraq that could be of operational concern. Any force moving from Kuwait to Baghdad will encounter some 20 major population centers enroute.

[Mika]

1. NO NO NO. Its Iranians.

:eyes: