Financial Times; Oct 18, 2002
WORLD NEWS: Iraq war "would bring bloody street fighting"
By Mark Odell in London and Peter Spiegel in Washington
A US-led invasion of Iraq could lead to extensive street fighting, with the attendant likelihood of heavy casualties among allied troops and Iraqi civilians, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) warned yesterday.
The London-based think-tank said the Iraqi leadership had made it clear it was planning to draw any invasion force into cities, towns and villages to negate the US military's technological advantage.
Superior air power would be of little use in intense house-to-house fighting because of the risk of inflicting heavy civilian casualties with even the smallest bombs.
Colonel Christopher Langton, head of the defence analysis department at the IISS and a former British army officer, said the aim of any invasion force would be to avoid built-up areas, much like the strategy employed during the Gulf war in 1991.
Then, allied ground forces were deliberately kept away from Kuwait City as they drove the Iraqi army out of the country.
"Urban warfare favours the defenders. Local knowledge is everything. The technological advantage is reduced and it offers the best chance of inflicting maximum casualties on the attackers," said Col Langton at the publication of the IISS's annual "Military Balance", which catalogues the strength of the world's armed forces.
Col Langton said it would be dangerous to assume that the Iraqi army would collapse as fast as it did during the Gulf war. "That won't be clear until the day itself."
The structure of the Iraqi army means soldiers will be defending their own communities. This was not so in the Gulf war or the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, which both raised questions about the efficacy of Iraqi troops.
The view is shared by military analysts in Washington, including former senior officers. "The nightmare scenario is that six Iraqi Republican Guard divisions and six heavy divisions, reinforced with several thousand anti-aircraft pieces, defend the city of Baghdad," General Joseph Hoar, former commander-in-chief of US central command, told a Senate armed services committee hearing last month.
"US forces would certainly prevail, but at what cost, as the rest of the world watches while we bomb and have artillery rounds exploded in densely populated Iraqi neighbourhoods?"
Allied forces have little experience of urban warfare. Other than a disastrous attempt to rescue downed helicopter crews in Mogadishu in 1993 and limited urban combat in Vietnam, US forces have not engaged in intense house-to-house fighting since the second world war.
The IISS said it remained "more probably than not" that a war would be fought against Iraq in the next six months. The think-tank dismissed concerns the US was over-reaching resources by trying to conduct a campaign against Saddam Hussein, Iraq's leader, while fighting global terrorism.