Destination Baghdad: Into the Mind Fields of Iraq

The war in Iraq in March 2003 does not follow the pattern of the Gulf War of 1991. At that time, a 40-day intense bombardment was followed by ground operations to eject Iraqi forces from Kuwait. After that task was completed, the coalition forces were about to race towards Baghdad and Basra when hostilities were called off. This time Iraq itself is being invaded and persuading the Iraqi forces to surrender appears to be one of the central war aims.Baghdad’s military capability today is only a fraction of what it was in 1991 and the coalition airforces are in a position to pick and choose their targets far more discriminately.There has been significant upgrading of technology in respect of Anglo-American forces in terms of technical intelligence, continuous surveillance, accuracy of munitions, increased mobility for forces and special forces. Therefore, the present operations are likely qualitatively to be different from the 1991 campaign. Given the absolute supremacy in the coalition’s air power, the Iraqi forces are not in a position to offer significant resistance. If at all there is any resistance it can only be in and close to built-up areas. Even then, there will be difficulty in using high-calibre weapons against advancing forces. There is a general impression that in cities, particularly in Baghdad, there is bound to be house-to-house fighting of the type once seen in Stalingrad or Berlin. That may not be so in the light of new technological developments. Night vision devices in which the US army has an advantage, helicopter gunships, unmanned drones etc will make a lot of difference even to street fighting. Washington has obviously been working for a long time to undermine the Iraqi armed forces. The Americans acknowledge that they have been carrying out psychological operations (psy-ops) vis-a-vis the Iraqi army. Senior officers are reported to have been contacted individually through cellphones, e-mail and other means of communication to subvert their loyalty to Saddam Hussein. The CIA has cultivated the Iraqi army for 30 years from 1960 to 1990 and many of the top generals could have been contacted in the psy-ops campaign. The US president in his speech had focused on the morale of the Iraqi armed forces and asked them not to carry out Saddam Hussein’s orders. The opening strike of the war on Thursday on the leadership complex was intended to send a message that Washington has the means of knowing where such leadership meetings take place and thereby sow seeds of mutual suspicion and doubt among Iraq’s top generals. Modern information technology is a useful tool in psy-ops. Video images of Iraqi forces surrendering, cities being occupied and the rapid advance of US forces are being projected to undermine the morale of the Iraqi forces and make them give up without a fight. Promises are held out that those who switch over will be treated generously in the post-Saddam dispensation but that those who carry out his orders will be brought before a war crimes tribunal. During World War II, the German psy-ops on the blitzkrieg led to a number of armies in Europe surrendering after two or three days of fighting. So far there have been pockets of stiff resistance by Iraqi forces and no significant surrenders. The use of chemical and biological weapons has been anticipated and the coalition forces are fully equipped to deal with that contingency. There are two views on this scenario. They are likely to be used when the coalition forces approach Basra and Baghdad. The posting of General ‘Chemical Ali’ to Basra region is considered significant from this point of view as he used chemical weapons against the Iranians during the Iraq-Iran war. No doubt he did it at a time when western powers backed Baghdad in the use of chemical weapons and even supplied the munitions. The ideal situation to use chemical weapons will be to catch an allied troop concentration in a sparsely populated area. Using chemicals close to a city would affect the Iraqi population and Iraqi troops who may not be equipped enough to withstand the effects of those weapons as the US-UK troops are. On the other hand, there is a view that they will be used only as a last resort and, therefore, it may happen only when the US troops are in the process of occupying Baghdad. Chemical weapons are not going to win the war for Saddam Hussein and its use will make many of his generals face war crime charges later. It is also doubtful whether the Iraqi forces will be in a position to use chemical weapons in more than very limited quantities, if at all, before their locations of stockpiles are revealed and targeted. The use of biological weapons is even dicier. The US-UK forces have been inoculated against such agents. So far they have never been used in war to generate a meaningful result. If these desperate measures are to be resorted to by Saddam Hussein, he should have forces which would carry out his orders. The US psy-ops campaign is attempting to forestall this by disrupting his command and communication as well as subjecting his forces to psychological pressure. The world may not have to wait long before it learns how successful the US campaign has been in this respect.