The Hindu : A tale of two cities

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 09, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

A tale of two cities

By C. Raja Mohan

The American and British attempts to take over Baghdad and Basra respectively in the last few days provide a significant contrast in military strategy. The British waited patiently for two weeks in preparing the ground to enter Basra. The American forces started punching through Baghdad the moment they arrived at its gates.

Much was said before the war of the trap Saddam Hussein was laying for the coalition forces in urban areas. While making no serious effort to halt the advance of the U.S. troops through the empty desert, it was argued, Mr. Hussein would make his last stand in the cities.

It was also suggested that the coalition would be averse to countenance the risk of large casualties in the bloody street battles in Basra and Baghdad. In the last few days, the Anglo-American forces have demonstrated that there might be options other than brutal hand-to-hand combat in gaining control over large cities.

Military analysts will study for a long time to come the coalition tactics in Basra and Baghdad. They will have to factor in the power of new military technology and psychological operations which might have begun to tilt the balance between offence and defence in the cities in favour of the former. This might be particularly true of despotic regimes, which have no broad-based popular support.

America and Britain have departed from the traditional manner of laying siege to large cities, by choking them of supplies and waiting for the morale of the defenders to collapse under fire directed from ground and air. But the political objective of running these cities after the war and avoiding the alienation of the civil population demanded a very different military approach in this war.

Within that common framework, the coalition forces have adopted very different lines of attack. The British were cautious in their advance, taking control of small towns around Basra before gingerly probing its outskirts.

Psychological operations and intelligence were the key to British operations. Acquiring specific information on the movement of Iraqi forces and delivering force in a targeted manner to avoid civilian casualties was at the top of the British strategy.

Equally important was winning the hearts and minds of the people of Basra. The British forces launched a range of relief activities around Basra even before entering it. The aim was to ensure that the political message about liberation went into the city before the troops.

American forces, in contrast, made a bold bid for the Saddam international airport hours after arriving at Baghdad. The next day, they unveiled a major incursion into the city. And then, they made a sweep through Baghdad gaining access to presidential palaces and other regime targets.

Unlike in Basra, however, Iraqi casualties are reported to be running in hundreds in the first few days of the U.S. attack on Baghdad. This has generated an inevitable comparison of the two strategies — the sophisticated British with their experience in urban warfare and the trigger-happy Americans relying on overwhelming force.

But the battles for Basra and Baghdad cannot be explained without a reference to the national military cultures of the two invading forces. The divergent military context underlying the siege of the two cities holds the clues to the separate strategies adopted by British and American forces.

The British began the siege of Basra amidst the first setbacks to the campaign — unexpected resistance in southern Iraq. Wearing this resistance down was important in the siege of Basra.

Although the expected popular uprising in Basra did not materialise immediately after the invasion of Iraq, the British knew the Shia population of the city was hostile to Mr. Hussein. But it could not be moved as long as the repressive apparatus was in place. The challenge was to slowly isolate and undermine the state structure in Basra.

Baghdad, in contrast, was the heart of the Iraqi leader's support base as well as the headquarters of a highly centralised state structure. The tactics in Basra could not have been adopted for Baghdad.

Delaying the attack on Baghdad would have reinforced the popular image within the regime of the U.S. being reluctant to engage in costly urban warfare. Waiting outside the gates of Baghdad without entering it would have boosted the impression that Mr. Hussein cannot be confronted in his capital.

Instead of waiting for the rest of the forces to assemble, the U.S. troops already in place adopted an aggressive approach that is sending a powerful message - that the end of Saddam Hussein is near and the U.S. is ready to risk urban warfare to hasten the collapse of the regime. America had to demonstrate that it had the political will to smash the head of the snake, with whatever it took. That precisely is what the United States has signalled this week.

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