Iraq: Yesterday marked six months to the day since the US army rode into Baghdad. Tom Clonan assesses the military situation now
As Turkey prepares to enter the war in Iraq, the security situation around Baghdad has reached crisis point. In addition to yesterday's suicide bombing in Sadr City, yet another US soldier was killed in an RPG attack to the north-east of the capital. These attacks were accompanied by the assassination of a Spanish diplomat in Baghdad.
The attacks prove that US forces are unable to guarantee the security of their own troops within the country.
They also prove that they are unable to guarantee the safety of diplomatic or UN personnel within Iraq, not to mention newly appointed Iraqi government ministers or the newly formed police force.
As attacks on US troops intensify, the military operation is deteriorating into a Vietnam-style occupation of the country. As was the case in Vietnam, US troops are confined to fortified bases such as those at Balad and Baghdad International Airport. These bases are routinely mortared night and day.
US troops venturing forth on patrol are subject to constant sniper, RPG and bomb attack. Under these conditions, searching for hidden weapons caches and seeking the detention and interrogation of suspected guerrilla fighters dispersed among the population, the parallels with Vietnam for US commanders are ominous.
In Vietnam US commanders fighting a war on communism cited the North Vietnamese Army and the Vietcong as the enemy. In Iraq, in the war on terrorism, official sources will not state precisely who they believe to be the enemy.
To do so might risk the admission that elements of Saddam's military continue to be actively involved in a war against US troops on Iraqi soil. In the current phase of the war, between 40 and 70 US troops are being killed and injured weekly.
Clues as to the identity of those now attacking US troops in Iraq lie in the geographical spread and modus operandi of the attacks. Most are being mounted on US troops in Baghdad and in areas such as Tikrit, Falluja and Samara within what is termed the "Sunni Triangle", areas populated by members of Saddam's intelligence services and Republican Guard.
US commanders in Iraq now believe that during the invasion lower-echelon Iraqi troops mounted a token defence against US armour and air power while thousands of Republican Guard members went to ground in order to wage a prolonged guerrilla war during the subsequent occupation.
As the current attacks evolve in sophistication and momentum, US troops believe that the current phase of the war is not an ad-hoc development, but part of a pre-planned strategy designed to frustrate US plans to rebuild Iraq.
Further indicators as to the source of the insurgency lie in the weaponry and tactics employed. US convoys and patrols are repeatedly attacked with IEDs configured as roadside bombs along with RPG strikes.
These combined assaults result in multiple injuries among US troops. US sources indicate that the plastic explosives found in defused IEDs are of a type manufactured under licence by the Iraqi military. The same sources also indicate that there are sufficient reserves of these high explosives dispersed among the population to make hundreds of thousands of such devices.
The RPGs are also of a pattern manufactured under licence by the Iraqi military. It is believed that the plastic explosives and RPGs were released from military stores in the run-up to the invasion and pre-deployed among the population for a war of attrition.
Wounding rather than killing the enemy is a classic feature of this type of war of attrition. By wounding as many enemy troops as possible, the guerrilla army ties up the resources of the occupying force as it seeks to evacuate and treat its personnel.
The architects of the current attacks recognise that it is far more expensive for the US to medically evacuate and treat injured soldiers than to simply process them for burial. For the insurgents, the psychological effect of their attacks is greatly enhanced with families and politicians in the US confronted with mutilated and disfigured soldiers returning from Iraq.
It would appear that the war in Iraq did not end on May 1st. It simply entered a new phase designed to render Iraq ungovernable.
The received wisdom among military circles is that, without the support of the population, US forces in Iraq cannot win the current war. In such circumstances, the only options open to conventional military forces are withdrawal or negotiation.
It may be the case that we are witnessing the unravelling of the US intervention in Iraq. In its haste to win the battle for Baghdad, the Bush administration may have failed to commit sufficient resources to win the war for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.