BAGHDAD, 18 July 2003 — Iraqi fighters are blurring traditional battle lines, employing classic guerrilla tactics against coalition troops as they look to sap US morale and evict the coalition forces from their country.
Booby traps, execution-style killings, roadside ambushes are the stock and trade of well-coordinated small cells conducting assaults on a superior US military force since Saddam Hussein’s regime crumbled more than three months ago. The tactics are the bread and butter of guerrilla war — the strategy of the weak against the strong — employed effectively in Algeria against the French and against America in Vietnam.
And while the new head of US Central Command, Gen. John Abizaid, acknowledged Wednesday that his soldiers are facing a guerrilla-style insurgency in Iraq, he squashed the notion the fight here is near identical to those other nationalist struggles. “I think describing it as guerrilla tactics being employed against us is ... proper ... in strictly military terms,” Abizaid, who took over from Gen. Tommy Franks, told Congress.
US Army Maj. William Thurmond warns those diehards will continue to hang on as long as they can nurture hope that Saddam, who disappeared on April 9 with the fall of Baghdad, is still on the loose.
“This is why we must confirm whether Saddam is alive and dead. For the mental health of the Iraqi people, we must put closure on this,” Thurmond said.
Whether mass insurgency or not, the fighters have adapted to inflict the maximum damage on the Americans. “They want to hit the softer target,” Thurmond told AFP, discussing the assailants’ preference for attacking truck convoys, soldiers on foot patrol and Humvee all-terrain jeeps.
A case in point was an American soldier killed Wednesday in a well-planned booby trap assault, in which a burned-out military vehicle on a roadside west of Baghdad exploded as a 30-vehicle US convoy drove past.
Earlier this month, a British journalist and a US civil affairs officer were gunned down in separate incidents on two campuses of Baghdad University. “They are attempting to both demoralize us and discourage cooperation with the coalition on the part of Iraqis and encourage Iraqis to rise up and fight against the coalition. But I don’t see any evidence of them succeeding on any of these points,” Thurmond said.
