Hi-tech American weaponry is pounding Fallujah and Kufa, but the strategy behind it is tinged with desperation.
The widespread violence of the first two weeks of April in Iraq seemed for a short time to have abated. But in the past few days it has returned, with further major confrontations across the country, including in the southern city of Basra. In Kufa, and especially in Fallujah, United States forces have made repeated use of their AC-130 gunships in addition to air strikes with laser-guided bombs.
At this time of great uncertainty, United States military sources persist in telling the media that the insurgency is readily controllable. A recent claim is that many of the insurgents are now concentrated in Fallujah and therefore vulnerable to US military action. Even when the tendentiousness of such views is discounted, it is still difficult to get a clear idea of the security prospects in Iraq. Four identifiable trends offer some help here.
A strategy of desperation
The first trend largely confirms what some analysts have being saying for many months that any handover to an Iraqi political authority at the end of June 2004 will be partial at best, and will conform to Washington's need to have a client government in place in Baghdad. The new Iraqi political authority, however it is formed, will not have the power to change laws imposed by Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority. All coalition military forces will be under the control of an American general, answerable to Washington, who will also oversee much of the Iraqi security apparatus.
In the longer term, the caretaker Iraqi administration established in the initial transfer may be replaced by some kind of elected government. In principle, it would be possible for such a government to adopt policies and make laws opposed by the United States. In practice, though, the context of its deliberations - the US largest diplomatic presence anywhere in the world, supported by many tens of thousands of US troops and several permanent military bases - would severely restrict this option.
It is worth restating why the Bush administration regards ongoing control of Iraq as so important because this will maintain US control of oil reserves four times as large as American domestic oil reserves at a time of steadily increasing import dependency. Put bluntly, the United States is in Iraq for the long term primarily because of the specific geopolitical value of Iraq and the wider importance of the Persian Gulf region. It follows that any large-scale withdrawal would be a disastrous failure of policy for any administration in Washington. but especially for the current cohort of neoconservatives with their dreams of a New American Century.
The second trend is the developing problem of an economy that is now coming to a grinding halt in many parts of Iraq. This is partly due to the need for the US military to close off major roads to ensure the security of supply convoys. Of greater concern is the withdrawal of a number of key foreign construction and engineering companies, and the isolation of many foreign workers into the safe security areas in Baghdad and elsewhere. There is no little irony in the fact that one of the largest of Saddam Hussein's palace complexes in the centre of Baghdad's "green zone" has perimeter defences and security facilities that are much more extensive even than in the days of his regime.
In relation to reconstruction, perhaps the greatest concern is the probability that power supplies will not be restored to the levels required for the approaching hot summer season. Moreover, it is readily admitted by CPA staff in private that insurgents will be capable of targeting and sabotaging parts of the power supply system almost at will. Indeed, there is a suspicion that insurgent groups have been deliberately waiting until the end of June in order to have maximum effect when the hot weather and the proposed political changeover coincide.
The third trend has become apparent only in the last two weeks: the willingness of US forces in Iraq to use their huge advantages in concentrated firepower to respond to the insurgency. This was clear in Fallujah two weeks ago with the deployment of AC-130 gunships (see last weeks column in this series, Between Fallujah and Palestine). They have been used frequently since - not just in Fallujah alongside a much greater willingness to use tanks and artillery in urban environments.
This was particularly evident in attacks on 26 April on insurgent positions in Kufa, near Najaf, where US sources claimed to have killed 64 insurgents in a series of air and artillery attacks. Three nights of intense fighting in Fallujah have followed a similar pattern.
This developing strategy, one that stems from the substantial problems now besetting the US forces, carries clear echoes of Vietnam. In essence, as US forces face up to the sheer extent of the insurgency, there is a hint of desperation hence the willingness to use much greater force than at any time since the first intense three weeks of the war.
The human cost is also heavy for the United States. Its casualty levels have risen greatly in recent weeks, with 900 troops wounded so far in April alone, twice as high as the previous worst month, October 2003. This is in addition to the highest monthly death rate of the fourteen-month war.
This leads to the fourth and final trend: the need to transfer emergency materials and equipment to Iraq to attempt to ensure that the American troops there can cope better with the increasingly violent insurgency.
Two examples are highly relevant, and give a strong indication of the problems being faced. One is that the US army has instigated a worldwide search for armoured Humvees. There are 15,000 Humvees in Iraq, but only about 2,000 of them are armoured, and attacks on these ubiquitous vehicles are responsible for many of the US casualties; hence the need to scour the world for more of the armoured variants.
Perhaps even more revealing is the recent decision by the Pentagon to divert a delivery of heavily-armoured brand new Humvees intended for the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) to US troops in Iraq. The US arms company O'Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt has already delivered half of an order for 120 of the M114 "uparmoured" Humvees to the IDF. These are routinely deployed in Gaza and the West Bank, but a second batch of thirty-seven vehicles has been "intercepted" by the Pentagon and sent to Iraq.
The next Alamo
From all of these indications, it is reasonable to conclude that the level of insurgency is even higher than is reported in the European press and far worse than appears in the US media outside of a few papers such as the Washington Post. Within Iraq, a hard-pressed and overstretched US military is responding with increasing force because it sees no other short-term response to the deteriorating situation.
For the moment, the coalition is Iraq is facing a series of insurgencies in Sunni and Shi'a regions of Iraq. These have not yet coalesced into a single, coherent uprising. This could happen during the heat of the summer. If it does, then analysts may come to conclude that American action in Fallujah, Kufa and elsewhere in April 2004 was the spark that finally lit the Iraq intifada.
