The hunt for the al Duri doctrine, Part II
The American forces have a real war on their hands and they are opposed by a strategically thinking and nimble force that stands an even chance against them
by William Kay
click here for part I
Guerrilla War in Iraq
The leader of the Iraqi insurgency is Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri. Al Duri was the undisputed second-in-command to Saddam Hussein on matters of internal security and was Deputy Commander of the Iraqi Armed Forces. He was Vice-Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council (the state executive) and Deputy Secretary-General of the Ba'ath Party Regional Command, as well as the head of the Northern Regional Command. He dropped out of site at the beginning of hostilities. He has billions in cash and controls vast secret arsenals. He is either in the Sunni triangle or in eastern Syria.
Vanishing with al Duri, and still at large, are the Director of the Iraqi Intelligence Services, the Chief of the Republican Guard, and the national Director of General Security. The top Ba'ath Party bosses from Al Anbar, Dyala and Najaf provinces are also active in leading the insurgency. Hussein's personal body-guard and tribal affairs liaison officer, as well as his Director of Special Security Organization, Hani al Tikriti, are also both at large, as is one of Saddam's half brothers. These men form the core of the insurgency in the Sunni triangle area. They are responsible for 75% of the US casualties and economic sabotage. By mid-November 2004, they were organizing 100 attacks per day.
The conventional Iraq War lasted from mid-March to the end of April 2003: from the crossing of soldiers over the Kuwaiti-Iraqi border to the pulling down of the Saddam's statue in Baghdad and Bush's subsequent victory speech.
Time Magazine reported, in the first days of the war, that sections of the Iraqi Armed Forces were being ordered to don civilian clothes. They were ordered to integrate with local Ba'athist militias in the towns and cities around Baghdad and were ordered to focus attacks on US supply convoys.
In many ways, Iraq has been the scene of a stereotypical guerrilla campaign. Insurgents are known for using improvisational weapons. In the current Iraq War “improvised explosive devices,” and their cousin the “car-bomb,” plus booby-trapped houses, together with attacks with Molotov cocktails, antique and home-made guns and grenades, and even knives, account for about half of US casualties.
Guerrillas are known for stealing weapons or buying them from foreign governments. The Iraqi insurgents have stolen substantial numbers of weapons and vehicles from the “Iraqi police” and National Guard and from ill-guarded depots. The insurgents are getting vast amounts of money, if not weaponry, from influential foreign citizens. Moreover, the insurgents have developed a mini-military industrial complex manufacturing IEDs, car-bombs, and suicide vests. They have access to untapped pre-war weapon stashes that would be the envy of any guerrilla force. This is the best financed and armed insurgency in history.
Why haven't the insurgents been more successful than they already are? Reason number one is they have been under direct attack from American forces the whole time. Of the 55 most wanted Iraqis, 43 have been captured or killed. In November 2004 alone, insurgents in Fallujah and Mosul took 2,000 dead, wounded and captured. Other factors slowing the growth of the Ba'athist/Iraqi Special Forces' resurgence include the loss of contact with veterans as a result of the US info war. Many veterans have drifted back to small towns and farms out of reach of any media. Other veterans are now collaborators (or were and now fear reprisals) while others have joined the Sunni extremists. The al Duri network suffers from the same trends toward rank and file demoralization and acrimonious high-level strategic disagreement that afflict every insurgency. But they have persevered. In March 2003 this network was barely a thousand strong. They have endured thousands of casualties yet have grown to a force of several thousand full-time professional soldiers and an equal number of weekend warriors. They are at multi-company (battalion) strength in Ramadi, Mosul and Baghdad.
Most recent US estimates of the overall insurgency depict a force of 10,000 full-time insurgents and another 10,000 part-time supporters. These are divided among over 50 different political groupings some with quite divergent points of view and objectives. The US Defense Department has an institutional bias against acknowledging which is the main resistance organization. Rumsfeld's Defense Department prefers to focus on the “Zarqarwi network” and Sadr's Mahdi Army.
Zarqarwi is a custom-made Orwellian media demon: foreign to Iraq, he is a religious fanatic and an Al Queda-type. Sunni extremists are certainly playing a role in this insurgency. However, of those killed and captured in Fallujah, less than 5% were foreigners. Al Duri's forces are the opposite of “Zarqarwi”: i.e. domestic, secular, moderate and long-opposed to Al Queda. A propaganda victory is handed to the Defense Department when people believe that the Zarqarwi network is the centre of the Iraqi insurgency.
Not to be discounted, the Sunni militants are bringing barrels of Gulf State money into the fray. (Over 2,000 mosques in Saudi Arabia openly support the Iraqi insurgency.) In ballpark terms, of the 20,000 active insurgents, probably 10% would be agents of this movement. A larger amount is following Sadr and other Shiite groups.
What appears to the Americans to be a dozen local militias in the Sunni triangle is in fact a single multi-battalion force. What appear to be 50 political groupings is in fact three (Al Duri, Zarqarwi/Sunni Islamicist and Sadr). These three groupings account for 90% of the active insurgent membership, with the rest divided over 40 splinter groups and fringe radical parties with few members. However, they do generate political clutter, which the Al-Duri network can hide behind.
But the Americans don't want to see the al Duri network. There presence means the insurgency is popular and indigenous. Worse for Rumsfeld and Bush, the al Duri network are the unvanquished original foes. To admit the centrality of the Republican Guard, the Ba'ath Party and the Iraqi Intelligence Services to the insurgency is to admit that this was not two wars—a conventional rout followed by a mysterious and late-blooming insurgency—but an uninterrupted continuation of a single war wherein one military high command early on opted for a guerrilla warfare strategy. The Iraqi Army has not been defeated.
If the al Duri network is left unmolested in several urban areas, they will continue to grow rapidly (up to 1,000 per month). If it was unacceptable to the Americans that a defiant battalion paraded with official anointment in Fallujah, how will they cope with the full brigades now being assembled in Ramadi, Mosul and Baghdad?
Over the last several weeks in Baghdad there have been spectacular attacks. In one instance “several dozen” heavily armed men attacked a major police station. The police fought until they ran out of ammunition. Six police were executed on the edge of the police station roof, with gunshots to the head, in broad day light with a crowd watching. On December 19 th “dozens” of armed, and for the first time unmasked, men rampaged during morning rush hour dragging three election workers from a car, forcing them to kneel in the centre of a massive traffic jam, and again, executing them with pistol shots to the head. On both these days multiple car bombs went off in and around Baghdad. To the urban guerilla these tactics are easily recognized as “the propaganda of the deed.”
What's also noteworthy is that the attack forces have a visible component of the “Seventy.” When you add the invisible transportation, reconnaissance, command and control, defense headquarters etc, to the groups of 70 or so ground troops, it would double the number involved in operations to 150 troops. Mao stated the ideal guerrilla formation was the 150-strong company divided into squads numbering between 9 and 11. Greek insurgents favored companies of 120 troops. The Iraqi insurgency appears to be following classical lines in this regard.
Similar numbers are being deployed in Mosul. On the urban coup attempt launched in the second week of November, one police station, out of twenty stormed, was assaulted with a flying column of 15 large carloads of gunmen. More recently a Stryker company was into an ambush chasing a mortar squad through the streets of Mosul. On their way back to base they ran an ambush gauntlet with machine gun and RPG fire coming from over thirty locations and with 15 roadside bombs being deployed. The good news for the Americans was that the Stryker's armor prevailed. The bad news for the Americans was that for hours before and after the battle large numbers of heavily armed insurgent squads roamed Mosuls' streets.
Mosul was the poster city of US occupation; now they have a battalion and a half clinging to a corner of the town. The battalion spokesperson said it would be “years” before a police force can be rebuilt in Mosul. As in battle-scarred Najaf, there is an “old Mosul” within Mosul. However “old Mosul,” with a population of 500,000, is bigger than all Najaf, and like old Najaf is impenetrable by large vehicle. Old Mosul is becoming a “no go” zone for US troops.
A similar situation prevails in Ramadi. A lonely Marine battalion sits outside the town. The base is a daily target of mortar fire. No community leaders are in discussion with commanders of the base. The Americans patrol infrequently and under great armor. The American-sponsored police force, most of whom show up only on payday, were told to discontinue wearing their US government issue police uniforms after an unbearable number of attacks on US troops by persons wearing said uniforms. On one recent occasion US troops arrived in an old armored personnel carrier to back up an Iraqi police action. One Iraqi police officer casually dragged on a cigarette as the APC back opened up and then, just as causally, he sprayed the inside of the vehicle with AK-47 fire. Luckily for the Americans, no one was killed, but 17 were wounded and the smoking perpetrator got away. Marine sergeants have instructed their troops to be mindful of their Iraqi “allies” at all times and if any are seen with restricted weapons such as large machine guns or rocket launchers it's an automatic “game on.”
Some Speculation
There is evidence of restraint exercised at the top of the al Duri network. A pure mercenary in Iraq, in the employ of Al Duri or Sunni extremists, costs around $2,000 US a month. A suicide car-bomb from beginning to end costs $50,000. Several thousand full-time professional insurgents and 20 car-bombs a month could be sustained on less than a quarter billion per year. Then there is equipment costs, but a lot of this is free. Al Duri and friends have billions in cash. And there are billions more coming in from the world's billion Sunnis.
Al Duri could be spending a lot more than he is. He's holding back. As well, the al Duri network has access to surface-to-air missiles, light howitzers, heavy mortars, wire-guided, anti-armor missiles and anti-aircraft artillery pieces that they are being kept in reserve. And finally, there is the recruitment pool which al Duri has access to—just in Sunni Iraq: up to 100,000 former Iraqi Army special forces officers, over 200,000 unemployed former regular soldiers, and another 500,000 Sunni men aged 15-49 and fit for military service (according to the CIA). Most are unemployed. Many are impoverished to the point of malnourishment. Al Duri could rapidly escalate things but appears to be biding his time.
Within the insurgent high command it is understood as a basic premise that the Americans will leave Iraq in the next several years. But the Shiites and Kurds are not leaving. The oil fields and grain fields are not leaving. The Americans must be driven out in a way that leaves the Ba'athist/Iraqi Special Forces able to overrun the rest of the country. If the al Duri network pulled out all the stops—spent all the money, used the best weaponry, and recruited human waves—they might drive the Americans out next summer. But this would cost them tens of thousands of casualties, Sunni cities would be flattened, and the Ba'athist leadership broke, while the Kurds and Shiites would emerge not just unscathed but receiving vast assistance from the US. This would be disaster for the al Duri crowd.
After observing November's stand at Fallujah and the seizure in Mosul, both of which were battalion strength operations, one can easily envision a transition to conventional fighting with insurgent attack battalions speeding to battle in hundreds of vehicles carrying a variety of sophisticated heavy weapons.
However, in contemplating the transition from the guerrilla to the conventional phase, the al Duri network is aware that never before has an insurgency faced this level of air power. There can be no above-ground garrisons. There can be no standing or slow-moving columns of vehicles, nor tent encampments outside cities, nor parades or public demonstrations or meeting halls. US air power will deny them all this and more. As well, the aerial reconnaissance the US has is incomparable to any previous war.
Such are the pitfalls and potholes that al Duri must navigate. There is no more pressing problem within Anglo-American military academia now than to find out what General al Duri perceives to be the right insurgency doctrine.
****
|
