Daily Times

Choosing to fight a conventional war with the US was a bad strategic choice by Saddam. Even then, he could have used appropriate tactics to slow the advancing armies so that diplomatic initiatives could be used to bring about a cease-fire.

The Arab countries were in the process of gathering support to implement a UN-sponsored cease-fire when Baghdad fell within 21 days of the initiation of hostilities on April 9 without a fight. There was no re-run of the Battle of Stalingrad.

Saddam’s tactics were characterized by carelessness, lack of planning and bad execution. The street smarts that had served him well early in his career when he was dealing with other hoodlums proved to be his undoing in the end. All they did was endow him with an overbearing character that prevented military officers from giving him candid military briefings. Thus, he went to on to make ten errors.

First, he failed to create obstructions along the border with Kuwait. The coalition forces simply cut an opening in the barbed wire fence that allowed US M1A2 Abrams tanks and smaller military vehicles to simply roll into Iraq. It was almost like a cake walk.

Second, he set fire to only a handful of the oil wells in southern Iraq, which produced 60 percent of Iraq’s pre-war output of 2.5 million barrels a day. It’s very possible that he had given orders to burn all the wells and his staff did not follow them. Perhaps they had given up on the war or they simply did not want to follow his orders. It’s also possible that in the chaos of the war, he never gave the proper orders. His troops had torched far more wells in Kuwait during the Gulf War when they morale was higher as was their ability to fight.

Thirdly, he failed to blow up key bridges along the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Some of the bridges were primed with charges, showing that they had been prepared for demolition. When the moment came, however, they were not detonated. Experts speculate that the right messages did not go up and down the Iraqi chain of command, either because lines of communication had broken down or because the local commanders were reluctant to be the bearers of such bad news. It is apparent that the Iraqi command structure was overly hierarchical, inflexible and self-defeating. It precluded autonomous decision making in the field.

The seizure of these bridges absolved the US forces from the necessity of bridging themselves, a task for which they were well equipped, but a task which is time-consuming and potentially risky during wartime. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, the British military historian John Keegan, with uncharacteristic hyperbole, observed: “When the campaign is over, the capture intact of the Nasiriyah bridges may be seen to have had the same strategic significance as the capture of the Remagen bridge over the Rhine on March 7, 1945, which significantly advanced victory over Germany in the Second World War.”

Fourth, he failed to effectively mine the key approaches to Baghdad. Fifth, he did not blow up the Haditha Dam on the Euphrates River north of Baghdad that would have converted much of the land between the rivers into a marshland and impeded the movement of heavy armour. Sixth, he did not destroy major airfield runways. His air force was grounded, so there was no point in making the runways available to the enemy.

Seventh, he did not exploit the opportunities for carrying out urban warfare inside Baghdad. Such an environment would have neutralised much of the technological superiority possessed by US forces, and created more of a “level-playing field” between the two armies. As noted by John Keegan, “the city environment does confer advantages on determined defenders not available outside. In the open countryside ambush places readily reveal themselves and the energy from explosive charges disperses readily. In the city there are ambush points everywhere and walls and buildings confine and funnel detonations.”

The end came faster than expected, in just three weeks. The man who had boasted that he had the largest army in the Middle East, and who claimed to possesses weapons of mass destruction, was deposed from office faster than any of his enemies had expected

Eight, he left more than a hundred thousand troops deployed far to the north of Baghdad. Saddam had always been averse to having a large military presence in Baghdad, since he feared a military coup. But by leaving such a large force north of the capital, he found himself in a predicament. There were insufficient forces to fend off an invading army. He had gone to war with an enemy at a time when he could not trust his own army.

Ninth, he talked about carrying out suicide attacks but failed to deliver on them except in two instances. Often times the attacks failed because the attackers were poorly trained Fedayeen Saddam militiamen. In other cases, they failed because the orders to carry them out were simply ignored.

He failed to inspire his followers to give up their lives for the greater glory of their religion, their country and their leader. He had imagined himself to be something he was not, a leader of al-Qaeda, Hamas and the Palestinians, whose followers would blow themselves up on a moment’s notice in the name of religion or nationalism.

Tenth, in what may be regarded as his greatest military blunder, he proved unable to disrupt the over-extended US supply lines between Kuwait and Baghdad. Recurring ambushes along the 300-mile road from Kuwait to Baghdad would have greatly hampered the ability of the US to project power in Baghdad.

Most analysts agree that US casualties were low not because of what the US had done but because of what the Iraqis had not done. For example, the Iraqi armour set up a well-planned ambush for the 3rd Infantry Division. According to a US officer quoted by Jane’s Defence Weekly, “When US armour moved into the kill zone, the Iraqis opened fire but their first salvo failed to hit a single oncoming vehicle. This, surmised the officer, was probably because of a combination of the Iraqis lacking funds to conduct live fire or simulator training and deteriorating gun barrels that grow increasingly inaccurate with age, due to a lack of spare parts.”

The end came faster than expected, in just three weeks. The man who had boasted that he had the largest army in the Middle East, and who claimed to possesses weapons of mass destruction, and who had emerged as a hero for the Palestinians prior to the war by saying that he was going to gas half of Israel, was deposed from office faster than any of his enemies had expected.

He had shown the world ten ways of how not to fight a war.

The writer can be reached at ahmadfaruqui@gmail.com

Published in Daily Times, October 30^th 2018.