BAGHDAD, Iraq, 25 March 2003 — As US and British forces suffered their first setbacks on the battlefield Sunday, officials and fighters in Iraq took heart and asserted with fresh conviction that the United States would be bogged down and defeated by their steadfast resistance.
“I knew it before, but today I know it for sure: They will never reach Baghdad,’’ city policeman Muayad Shumari said.
After enduring three days of devastating bombings and reports of rapid US and British advances in the south, with no notable Iraqi successes, Iraqi officials at last felt they had a few things to brag about.
At Umm Qasr, a city thought to have been subdued three days ago, Iraqi resistance suddenly sprang back to life. And after a sharp battle at Nassiriyah, a key crossing on the Euphrates River, Iraq was able to broadcast images of five American captives and grisly photographs of slain US troops. Iraq claimed that about 25 allied soldiers were killed.
In central Baghdad, when word spread that a British plane may have been shot down, authorities and members of the public searched in a frenzy, believing that two pilots had ejected and were hiding in reeds next to the Tigris River.
In addition, the accidental downing of a British jet by a US Patriot missile, the grenade attack on US troops by an American serviceman in Kuwait and the continuing anti-war demonstrations abroad all were taken as good omens here.
In addition to state-controlled television reports on the developments, three senior officials — the information minister, the defense minister and the vice president — all gave news conferences in which they praised the country’s armed forces and militias and accused the United States and Britain of lying about military successes.
On the streets, loyalists of President Saddam Hussein echoed the upbeat mood. They spoke as if a humiliating defeat of the US military superpower was just around the corner, even while US bombs and missiles continued to fall on this capital city and US troops moved to within 100 miles.
“They made a mistake coming here to fight a people who have faith and who are not afraid to die,’’ said Ahmed Aziz Ahmed, a 38-year-old grocer-turned-Baath Party militiaman who added he can’t wait for his chance to confront US and British invaders.
“They think that they can kill Saddam Hussein and rule us,’’ he said with a laugh. “But we are all Saddam Husseins.’’
Speaking to a large assembly of journalists Sunday night, Defense Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmad Jabburi Tai gave a view of the war quite opposite to military briefings from the US and British sides.
Iraq continued to hold all the main cities in the south of the country and had kept the US and British forces bottled up at the port of Umm Qasr and on the southern Al Faw Peninsula, the minister said.
Attempts to take Basra and Nassiriyah had failed and numerous enemy tanks and armored vehicles had been destroyed, he continued.
And he could not even specify the number of POWs Iraq had collected, he said, because they were still being held and counted after the various engagements.
Sultan acknowledged that US and British forces had moved as far north as Najaf, within striking distance of Baghdad, but said that was only because they kept avoiding battles with the Iraqi troops and instead are racing through the empty desert.
“In the end, wherever will they go? They will have to come to the cities if they want to achieve their objectives,’’ he said. And when they do, he said, they will be surprised by the Iraqis’ “endurance and will to fight and resolve to protect the country.’’
A European diplomat sympathetic to the Iraqis, speaking on the basis of anonymity, said the Iraqis seem to be digging in for the long haul, and US military planners may at last be sobering up to the reality of the country’s tenacity and commitment to fight.
“The Americans expected no serious resistance from the Iraqi Army. They expected a Shiite rebellion in the south. They expected to be met with flowers in Basra as liberators. None of these expectations have materialized,’’ said the diplomat. “It looks as if the Americans are beginning to realize that this war will last longer than planned.’’
The Iraqi government, meanwhile, has been driving home a message that the war is a matter of patriotism and Islam, rather than being about weapons of mass destruction or removing Saddam from power.
For many Iraqis, the allied military victory is not the foregone conclusion here that it is in the West.
While acknowledging US and British superiority in weaponry and air power, they continue to believe that they will win because they have justice and their Islamic faith on their side. They argue that they are defending their own soil and that the foreign soldiers coming here are not as committed to a struggle and will not understand the country or its people and their will to avoid US domination.
“It is easy for us to fight, because we know what we are fighting for. What are they fighting for — Bush?’’ said Shumari, 28. Dressed in a blue police robe and a camouflage helmet, he was guarding an intersection in downtown Baghdad.
