Bridges give allies fast track to Baghdad
By John Keegan, Defence Editor
(Filed: 24/03/2003)
The war in Iraq is developing a pattern. Before the outbreak, it was suggested that it might be fought on two fronts, northwards from Kuwait but also southwards from Turkey. Immediately after the war began, there was a brief expectation that a third front might be opened around H3, the former pumping station in the west, now an airfield, seized by special forces operating out of Jordan.
It now seems certain that, because of a Turkish refusal to grant staging facilities, there will be no northern front involving US armoured units. Ships carrying the equipment of the US 4th Mechanised Division, which were waiting in the eastern Mediterranean to unload, have now been re-routed to Kuwait and perhaps southern Iraq through the Suez Canal. The personnel of the division, still in Texas, will be flown to rejoin their equipment when it has been landed.
The operation will not be complete for seven to 10 days. Meanwhile, there is no sign of a front being opened from H3, though it is possible that airmobile units may be based there to fly to the coming battle around Baghdad when or before it starts.
The focus of action lies, therefore in the south. It must be recognised that the allies have had one tremendous piece of good fortune, which is to have captured the bridges across the Euphrates at Nasiriyah before they were blown.
Their seizure has absolved the allies from the necessity of bridging themselves, a task for which they are well equipped, but a time-consuming and potentially risky business, had the Iraqis opposed the crossings.
When the campaign is over, the capture intact of the Nasiriyah bridges may be seen to have had the same strategic significance as the capture of the Remagen bridge over the Rhine on March 7, 1945, which significantly advanced victory over Germany in the Second World War.
The main allied thrust, apparently a completely American operation, is now located in Mesopotamia proper, the "land between the rivers" of the Tigris and Euphrates. The Americans are heading north at speed, and are expected to be outside Baghdad by Tuesday. That presupposes that they do not encounter further obstacles and stiffer resistance.
There are numerous small waterways in Mesopotamia, most flowing westward into the Euphrates. A properly organised army, which the Iraqi is not, would find plentiful opportunities to stand and fight on defensible water lines before Baghdad is reached. The failure to blow the Nasiriyah bridges suggests that Saddam's defence of his territory has been badly organised. Key positions have been thrown away, either for lack of forethought or organisation, or because of serious defects in command.
It is inconceivable that Saddam cannot have realised how important it was to keep the invaders west of the Euphrates, the great moat protecting Baghdad. He must have issued condign orders about protecting the bridges for as long as possible, and blowing them when the defence failed. Why his orders were not obeyed is the chief mystery of the campaign so far. Among his many other anxieties at the moment must be the suspicion of treachery.
The loss of the Nasiriyah bridges does not, however, automatically entail the fall of Baghdad.
The city has physical defences of its own, including the Tigris which encircles it, and is also the principal concentration area of the main body of Saddam's army, including his Republican Guard divisions. There are at least 100,000 Iraqi troops in and around Baghdad, and some will fight.
Moreover, the approach of the American armoured columns presents Saddam with an opportunity to use his weapons of mass destruction. His biological weapons are too undirectional and slow-acting to alter the course of the campaign in the short term.
Chemical weapons, by their contaminating effect, may, however, both cause casualties and slow the progress of the allied advance.
The defeat of Saddam's regime is by no means concluded. There is still serious fighting ahead, and the best that can be hoped, if more American lives are not to be lost, is that surrender among the Iraqis will become infectious.
Still, the Americans are demonstrating their overwhelming military superiority, both in manoeuvre, re-supply and combat. Saddam, if he has time at present to reflect on his mistakes, must be bitterly regretting his decision to invade Kuwait in 1990.
True, that decision is the cause of his current troubles. Had he, however, refrained from annexing Kuwait, it is unlikely that that state, weak as it is, would have granted the United States basing facilities in any effort to bring Saddam down.
Saddam is the architect of his own failure, which will shortly be complete.
