The war to destroy the Saddam Hussein regime is about to start. Both its aims and operation will be quite different from the 1991 conflict because this time, the regime itself is the target.
The intensity of the first two or three days will create a very high expectation that the war will be over in a week. Will that be so?
The lessons of 1991
In 1991, a coalition of more than thirty countries was assembled to force the Iraqis out of Kuwait. Substantial troop deployments from Egypt and Syria joined the US, Britain, France and twenty-nine other countries to make up forces of around 600,000, almost half of them ground troops.
The coalitions war aim was to liberate Kuwait and massively damage the Iraqi armed forces. The Iraqi war aim was essentially regime survival. By the time the war started five months after Iraq had invaded Kuwait hardly any of Iraqs elite forces even remained there. The job of defending that territory was left mainly to relatively weakly-armed conscripts who subsequently died in their thousands.
Kuwait was liberated within six weeks, although the war was complicated by Iraqs Scud attacks and the resilience of the states command and control system. While this had probably been designed to resist some future attack from Israel, it was robust enough for the leadership to be able to survive an assault by far larger forces. Indeed, what remained after the war proved sufficiently intact to allow the Iraqis to use their elite forces to suppress the Shia and Kurdish revolts that followed the end of Desert Storm.
Even so, the small Iraqi navy was virtually eliminated, much of the air force was flown to Iran, leaving barely half of its capability, and many hundreds of tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery pieces were destroyed.
In the past twelve years, Iraq has managed to rebuild some of its forces, using supplies from many sources and expertise from China, Serbia and elsewhere. Much of the emphasis has gone on building deeply protected underground facilities for command and control, together with a fibre optic communications network and augmented air defences.
The latter have been attacked almost continually by US and UK planes in the no-fly zones, including the use of B-1B strategic bombers in the past few days, but the very intensity of the attacks has proved a learning curve for the Iraqis, giving them a direct knowledge of how the US can target their forces.
To that extent, the coming war will be different from 1991 in that the Iraqi forces, though much weaker, will have combined that earlier experience with the continual military activity since they will not be facing the huge power of the American military entirely anew. Moreover, they have had substantial assistance from Chinese, Serbian and other sources, with the technical aid from Serbs being particularly relevant given the latters experience of US air assault as recently as 1999.
The first nights, and after
From the US perspective, the destruction of the regime will commence with an extraordinarily intense air bombardment stretching over two to three nights, with extensive bomb damage assessments being carried out each day to determine what targets have been destroyed.
Up to 1,000 cruise missiles will be used, together with several thousand precision-guided bombs. Most will be aimed at command, control and communications facilities, the political and military leadership, government offices and numerous military targets, with the main concentration on Baghdad.
Area impact munitions will be used against barracks and other more dispersed targets, and some parts of the civil infrastructure, such as power supplies, will be destroyed. It is probable that huge MOAB bombs will be used to destroy one or two prestige targets such as one of Saddam Husseins palaces, possibly in his home city of Tikrit.
Whatever the claims, there are bound to be substantial civilian casualties in these initial massive bombardments. Furthermore, the sheer intensity of the attacks may greatly strengthen those opposed to the war.
One aim of the initial onslaught is to try and shock the regime into submission or at least lead to the surrender of most of the Iraqi armed forces. If the regime does not surrender, US ground troops will move rapidly towards Baghdad, probably arriving on the outskirts within two to three days of the start of the war.
It is widely assumed that a second phase of the war will see the takeover of Baghdad and the termination of the regime, with an expectation that the USs overwhelming advantage in sheer firepower will ensure that this happens in only a few days.
This may well be what happens; the Iraqi forces are no match for their US adversaries, and there is a determination by US military commanders to make this a very short war. There is a political imperative as well, given the worldwide political opposition that has already developed. This is especially important for Tony Blair, whose political survival may depend on a rapid military victory.
A US military occupation of Iraq may well be deeply counterproductive in the longer term of a year or more, but it is the short-term dynamic that concerns the British prime minister and, to a lesser extent, the US president.
War is rarely pure and never simple
There are at least three reasons for thinking that the US war plan might not be quite so straightforward as many expect, even if the early impression, over the first three or four days, will be of spectacular advances on Baghdad.
First, the US military would probably prefer to wait at least another week before going into action, partly in order to allow full integration of the newly- arrived 101 Airborne Division, and the redeployment of troops originally planned to pass through Turkey.
Secondly, the number of ground troops is actually very much smaller than in 1991, perhaps not many more than 70,000 of actual combat troops (although there have been significant recent signs of movement of many more troops to the region). The military planners are thus counting on a rapid victory. While the presumption is that these later arrivals will form a post-war occupying force, they would also be available for reinforcements if the war turned out to be prolonged.
Thirdly, Iraqi tactics may present problems to the invading forces. The regime will do everything to emphasise the extent and destructiveness of the bombing assault, yet little attempt may be made to defend the country close to the borders. It is more likely that the regime will concentrate its defences in and around Baghdad, with wholesale dispersal of elite forces across the city.
The possible firing of the northern and southern oilfields would be an exception to this pattern; indeed any such action in the first three days of the war may be the best single indication that the regime is determined to fight.
It is also possible that some chemical and biological weapons will be used, especially when US forces draw close to Baghdad, and it is just possible that there may be attacks on troop concentrations and depots in Kuwait itself.
There is a general sense that the strategy of Saddam Husseins regime has often been weaker than its tactics. In this light, it is worth recalling that after the first night of the 1991 war, there was a confident expectation that the war would end in a few days. The second night brought the shock of Scud missiles starting to land on Israel; much of the next four weeks was spent in Scud hunts. This time also, there are likely to be events that cause surprise and shock to military planners.
The truth on hold
Whatever happens in the coming days, there will be a tremendous amount of propaganda from both sides, with little concern for the truth. Few people will believe the Iraqi reports; many, especially in the west, will tend to take US and UK military statements at face value.
Those tempted to suspend critical judgement might recall another lesson of 1991. Then, spectators of war who were far from the battlefront were told about a war against real estate, the mass surrender of Iraqi troops, and comforting references to a clean war. Only later did news emerge of turkey shoots, the highway of death, the burying alive of Iraqi conscripts in their trenches and the use of depleted uranium, not to mention the subsequent development of Gulf War syndrome.
The war carries severe risks for the Middle East, and the world beyond. In Israel, Ariel Sharon has rejected a move towards a viable Palestinian state and is already using the crisis as cover for heavy use of force in Gaza. He is likely to go much further under cover of war, leading to the real risk of retaliatory attacks by Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon who are newly equipped with missiles that can reach Haifa.
This in turn would give Sharon the pretext for a formidable Israeli military incursion into southern Lebanon, one that could even lead to Syrian involvement. More widely, there is a risk of a further escalation in the crisis with North Korea.
The core fact of the coming war is that it will involve an utterly determined US administration that believes it is essential to destroy the Iraqi regime, to do it as quickly as possible, in the face of strong international opposition, with as much force as is needed, and with minimal risk to its own troops.
It is just possible that the Iraqis will capitulate in the first two or three days of the war. If, as is more likely, they do not, the prospect is one of a very dirty war with serious long-term consequences for the region and the world. That is the extent of the current crisis.
