PRESIDENT Saddam Hussein wants to suck coalition troops into street warfare in Baghdad, Britain’s top military commander in the Gulf said yesterday.
“They’re going for a Stalingrad siege,” said Air Marshal Brian Burridge, referring to one of the bloodiest battles of the Second World War, when more than a million Russians and Germans died during six months of fighting in the streets of the Soviet City of Stalingrad.
Acording to intelligence reports, the Iraqi President has constructed two concentric defensive lines around Baghdad. They are manned by about five Republican Guard divisions of some 40,000 soldiers. Another defensive ring inside the city consists of about 20,000 Special Republican Guard troops dedicated to protecting Saddam and his regime.
Air Marshal Burridge was confident that the Iraqi leader’s strategy would fail. “They want to entice us into urban warfare. But that makes two assumptions: that there will be hand-to-hand fighting and that those ordered to do this will do so willingly. There have to be doubts.”
He said that such “static” defences did not pose a major obstacle to a coalition force equipped with the most advanced technology. “We know where every moving part is and technology allows us to go round it,” he said.
US commanders have talked of mounting focused attacks on the regime’s strongholds in the city, using heavy armour as well as airpower — strike aircraft using missiles guided by forces on the ground with laser target markers. The coalition’s battle plan did not envisage playing Saddam at his own game, said Air Marshal Burridge, a former Nimrod pilot who hunted Soviet submarines during the Cold War.
In his first interview since his appointment as head of the 45,000 British troops waiting to go to war, he also disclosed that his biggest fear was that Saddam would use chemical weapons against his own people to slow the invasion.
He predicted that liberated Iraqis would lead British and US troops to Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. He said that British troops would play a significant role in the fighting and that several thousand US Marines would serve under a British commander.
Looking relaxed despite the prospect of imminent war, the 53-year-old UK National Contingent Commander was speaking in his sparse office inside his headquarters in Qatar at Camp as Sayliyah, a security zone protected by layers of armed guards and chicanes of concrete blocks where every approaching vehicle, save the Air Marshal’s Jeep, is rigorously searched.
“If there is a war and they fight, we’ll hit them hard,” he said. “I don’t want to create expectations (of a short war). We are innately cautious and conservative for a number of reasons, but I would like to think that we’re deft and professional and clever enough to do it quickly.” He promised that the campaign would not “lay waste” to Iraq. The aim was to disarm Saddam, not to destroy the country.
He dismissed reports that the British ground forces — 3 Commando Brigade, 16 Air Assault Brigade and 7th Armoured Brigade — would be sidelined into a peace-support role while the Americans “sweep through” to Baghdad.
The political investment that the British Government had made would be matched by an “appropriate” military role. He confirmed that several thousand US Marines would serve under the tactical command of Brigadier Jim Dutton, commander of 3 Commando Brigade — “the first time I can remember this happening”. If Saddam or any of his regime leaders were captured, they would become prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention in accordance with their rank and status. They would be detained by the military, but later handed over to the appropriate authorities. Their eventual fate would not be a matter for the military.
Air Marshal Burridge acknowledged that the Iraqi leader was “a dangerous bastard” and there was a possibility that he had a surprise up his sleeve. His greatest fear was that Saddam might launch a chemical attack against his own people in order to divert advancing US and British divisions. Coalition troops could cope with a chemical or biological attack because they had the right clothing and equipment, but the Iraqi people had no way of protecting themselves.
However, after months of detailed planning alongside General Tommy Franks, the commander of US Central Command who will lead the coalition force, Air Marshal Burridge said that there would be a swift response at the first sign of Saddam resorting to chemical weapons against the Iraqi population. It would be ironic if he used the very weapons he was now denying he possessed, he added.
He played down the threat of Iraq burning its oil wells. “Setting fire to oil wells is not a military weapon, it’s an economic and environmental one. If Saddam’s boys want to torch their oilfields, I think the Iraqi people will have something to say about that.”
Air Marshal Burridge once wrote a thesis on the 1956 Suez debacle, when Britain went to war without political and public backing, and lost. He said he was aware that war in Iraq lacked public support, but argued that this was a “war of choice” and it would take time to achieve a wider consensus.
He had absolutely no doubts that Saddam was hiding weapons of mass des-truction and that they would be found once a war had begun. “Even someone who does not benefit from having an intelligence service just has to look at the Iraqi declarations of the 1990s and now to see there is an enormous gap. Be under no illusions: Saddam has also used chemical weapons against the Kurds at Halabja and against Iran.”
He added: “Human intelligence (Iraqis) will be the key. The weapons of mass destruction are there and we will find them.” As soon as the coalition troops crossed the border and progressed towards Baghdad, the areas behind them would be in a “post-war” situation, he said, so that Iraqi people with knowledge of where some weapons might be hidden would be free to speak out.
He described the period immediately after an invasion as a “rolling miasma of change”, with people coming forward with information while coalition forces provided humanitarian aid. Iraqi troops who surrendered would be treated as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention and would be well looked after, although he admitted that mass surrenders would be one of three obstacles to a rapid advance.
The other two were having to deal with displaced civilians and confronting the aftermath of a chemical attack on the Iraqi people.
Air Marshal Burridge said there was still hope that war could be avoided. However, there was no one in the Baghdad regime who had the courage to tell Saddam that he was a “pariah” and he appeared to be preparing for war even though the coalition forces were now not just “over the horizon but over the fence”.
