BAGHDAD, Iraq, 1 July 2003 — Facing a marked increase in the frequency and brazenness of attacks on US-led forces in Iraq in the past two weeks, military officials are for the first time speaking more openly about the potential for a long-term fight to quell the resistance to the American presence.
Although the term is rarely used at the Pentagon, from every description by military officials, what US troops face on the ground in Iraq has all the markings of a guerrilla war — albeit one in which there are multiple opposition groups rather than a single movement.
The rising opposition could further hamper the civilian reconstruction and delay the military’s exit from the country, according to military experts.
“The first clear message is: This war is not over. It’s not ended,’’ a senior US military official in Iraq said Saturday. “All of us in uniform are targets. We’re subject to being engaged,’’ the official said.
He pledged that the Americans would not give up until they had vanquished the resisters, but added that the war would not be over until every Iraqi was working actively with the Americans to defeat what he called “the enemies of Iraq.’’
Certainly, the statistics paint a worrisome picture. Since President Bush declared an end to the major combat phase of the war in Iraq on May 1, 62 US troops have been killed, according to a count based on Defense Department press releases. Of those, 22 died as a result of enemy attacks, 36 in accidents and four in incidents whose cause is under investigation.
More revealing, however, is that the number of deaths from hostile fire more than doubled between May and June. Six Americans were killed in May in enemy attacks, while 16 had died in June as of midnight June 28.
Until the past few days, US military had officials insisted that the attacks were merely a product of the final rooting out of the remnants of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Now they are beginning to float the idea that US forces face several different opposition forces — and military experts outside the government concur with that assessment.
“There are disgruntled Iraqis, upset about house searches or whatever, who might throw rocks or the occasional grenade,’’ said retired Maj. Gen. William Nash, now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “And at the other end of the spectrum, there are members of the old regime, reinforced by foreign fighters, that are looking more organized every day.’’
On Saturday, US forces found the bodies of two US soldiers who disappeared with their Humvee while on guard duty at a captured munitions storage depot outside Baghdad earlier in the week. Those killings appear to have been carried out with “the upper levels of sophistication,’’ Nash said. It is a difficult operation to snatch an enemy combatant and his equipment, he noted.
Non-lethal grenade and small-arms attacks also appear to be continuing unabated — a couple are reported nearly every day.
“We have a soldier wounded or killed every other day’’ in the Baghdad area, said Maj. Scott Slaten, a public affairs officer for the 1st Armored Division, which has responsibility for Iraq’s capital. “Is it slowing us down? Yes, because some soldiers who would otherwise be doing reconstruction, we have to use for security. Every attack means we’re going to have to be here a little longer.’’
For troops on the ground, there is a constant, uneasy sense that nothing and no one are what they seem. Civilians have approached checkpoints and lobbed grenades, and canvas-sided Humvees have become a hazard.
“You’re not sure who your enemy is,’’ said Sgt. Gary Qualls, who is stationed at the US military’s base in Ramadi, a town in the heart of the Sunni area north and west of Baghdad long loyal to Hussein. “You don’t know who to trust.’’
As attacks continue, troops tend to act more defensively, keeping Iraqis at a greater distance, their guns at the ready. That, in turn, estranges them more from the Iraqi people, fueling Iraqi fears that the yare occupiers rather than liberators.
Still, military officials say they believe the security situation overall has improved in the country. And Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld Friday, when asked if the fighting was turning into a guerrilla war, said, “I don’t know that I would use the word.’’
At a Pentagon briefing this week, however, Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged that the security situation was “a little uneven in the country.’’
Military experts both inside and outside the Pentagon said they fear that the US had failed to assert itself strongly enough on the ground in Iraq becuse of political pressure to send a message that American forces would leave the country as soon as possible. That may have emboldened the opposition to try to speed the US military’s departure, and each successful killing or act of sabotage acts as an advertisement to recruit more foot soldiers for the resistance.
“Clearly, they are emboldened by success,’’ said a senior military official in Washington. “You have to go in and tell them: ‘We’re gonna do what we did in Germany and Japan. We’re gonna write your constituton. We’re gonna install your government. We’re gonna write your laws. We’re gonna watch your every move for a decade, and then maybe you’ll get a chance to do it yourself.’ ‘’
The limited resistance put up by Iraqi military forces during major combat operations may also be having an impact.
“It may sound a little strange to say it, but because we didn’t fight in Fallujah and Tikrit, probably the ‘bad guys’ have made it back into the community and we’re going to have to move them out,’’ said a senior Bush administration official recently.
Nash believes that the United States missed the window to establish itself as the unequivocal authority when the war ended. “When Baghdad fell is when you establish yourself; it’s when you set the rules. If you miss the opportunity to do it then, it’s not impossible, but it’s harder,’’ he said. “Resistance feeds resistance — the bad guys have had a chance to get organized.’’
The environment of Iraq — a mixture of heavily urban and rural desert or river village societies — does not compare readily with the situations US soldiers have faced in other recent wars.
In Afghanistan, the United States never purported to be an occupation force, and although its troops have been subject to scattered guerrilla-style attacks, there was little widespread animosity.
In the Balkan conflicts, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo both involved UN mandates, which gave an international flavor to the peacekeeping forces, making US soldiers less of a clear target.
But perhaps most important, in all three places, the local people appeared to be largely confident that the US presence would be temporary and the majority of the population favored the US presence.
In Iraq, years of vilification of the United States have compounded Iraqi uncertainty about American intentions — a problem worsened by the continuing communications difficulties of the US-led occupation authority, which still has trouble reaching Iraqis with basic information because of weak television signals and the limited access of many Iraqis to mass media.
Furthermore, many members of the sizable Sunni minority, who prospered under Saddam Hussein, perceive themselves as losing rather than gaining ground as a result of the US presence and are willing to offer tacit, if not outright, support for those who want to actively fight the US-led troops.
“The Sunni population has every reason to destabilize the situation, since they know that when there are elections, they are going to get the short end of the stick,’’ said Charles Pena, director of defense policy studies at the Washington-based Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.
At the Pentagon and the White House and among military experts, there is a growing consensus that there are at least three forces involved in efforts to destabilize the country: Saddam loyalists, foreign fighters and those angry at living conditions since US-led forces routed the Hussein regime.
Discontented members of Saddam’s ruling Baath Party, especially in the area of central Iraq known as the Sunni triangle, have the money to finance a resistance. Also present are a number of fedayeen, paramiliatary fighters loyal to Saddam who underwent brutalizing military training designed to inure them to the horrors of assassination. The combination of money to pay for the attacks and fighters to carry them out is a dangerous combination.
There have been at least two execution-style attacks in the past two weeks in which US soldiers who were talking with or helping civilian Iraqis were shot at close range near the base of the neck. In one case, in which a soldier was helping Iraqis line up to buy cooking fuel, the shooting was lethal; in the second attack, which occurred Friday as the soldier considered buying some DVD movies in a crowded shopping area, the soldier was critically wounded. “We ended major combat operations because the Iraqi Army had disappeared, but what we don’t have is the Saddam Fedayeen and Baath leadership, who are trying to disrupt the coalition efforts,’’ said a senior military official in Iraq.
Nash believes “that there is enough residual regime in place that they are starting to build a constituency.’’
The second group, foreign fighters, encompass both anti-American Al-Qaeda-type characters from Syria and Jordan. among other nations, as well as possible agents provocateurs from Iran, who may be fomenting trouble in Shiite-dominated southern Iraq. Just last week, Iraqi police in Baghdad picked up a groups of Palestinians and Jordanians, who are now being held for questioning by the Americans.
Military officials acknowledge that they have little control of the Iraqi borders.
