- 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?
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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:
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- Increased support to Iraqi opposition groups and forces
inside and outside Iraq including money, weapons, equipment, training and
intelligence information;
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- ©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved.
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- http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/DH17Ak03.html#
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