Sometime last Saturday, Saddam Hussein was finally convinced that his French friends
could not buy him some extra time and that war was coming. And he acted the way he
always has by unveiling a war plan based on his favorite tactic of "cheat and
retreat."
Saddam's war plan has three aims;
The first is to slow down the advance of coalition forces as much as possible. He
hopes to do this by creating a tidal wave of refugees, including large numbers of
army deserters, in the densely populated southern provinces bordering Kuwait.
Over the weekend, elements of the Fourth Army Corps, "Saladin," were moved close to
the border with Iran, although there is no threat of an attack from that direction.
By sealing that border, Saddam wants to leave the would-be refugees no escape route
except toward the south, that is to say in the direction of the coalition forces. At
some point, he may use the threat of chemical weapons, or even such weapons
themselves, to foment panic among the population and thus force it to flee toward
Kuwait.
The idea is that the coalition forces would be swamped by hundreds of thousands of
panic-stricken Iraqi civilians who need to be cared for.
The second goal of Saddam's war plan is to hide his best and most loyal forces
behind units of the regular army.
In a sense, he is using the Iraqi Army as cannon fodder. His hope is that the
regular army will bear the brunt of the inevitable sacrifices, but will succeed in
inflicting significant casualties on the coalition forces.
The third goal of the plan is to maximize civilian casualties in the hope of
shocking world public opinion, especially in the US, into even stiffer opposition to
the war. This is why Saddam has positioned almost all of his best assets in densely
populated areas. Anti-aircraft guns, heavy artillery pieces, and tanks are stationed
inside cities, including in mosques, hospital courtyards, and school playgrounds.
Saddam's address to his commanders Sunday included this ominous phrase: "We shall
see how many Iraqis the aggressors are prepared to kill." Saddam has divided the
country into four military sectors, each headed by one of his relatives or
confidants.
Although two of the four bear the title of "general," none has had a military
career, even as an army conscript. They are there to ensure political control and
make sure that the regular army has no room for any independent maneuver, including
a move to topple the regime. Even the defense minister, the chief of the army staff,
and the nation's 20 most senior generals are excluded from the chain of command
announced by Saddam.
The arrangements highlight the narrowness of Saddam's support base: He emerges as
the leader of a clan, not of a state.
The northern part that includes the Kurdish areas and the oil fields of Mosul and
Kirkuk was put under the command of Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, the regime's No. 2. Duri
owes his rise in the Ba'athist regime to his mediocrity. He has survived more than
three decades of intraparty purges largely because no one ever thought he could pose
a threat.
"Duri is alive because he is stupid," says Saad Bazzaz, a former Ba'athist official
now in exile. Because Turkey has refused to allow US and allied forces rights of
passage through its territory, Saddam does not expect a major attack from the north.
This is why most of the Iraqi elite units, including the Adnan Division of the
Republican Guards, have just been withdrawn from Kirkuk and ordered to move south to
Baghdad.
The southern area, where most of the initial fighting could take place, is under the
command of Ali-Hassan al-Majid, Saddam's cousin. Majid is known as "Chemical Ali"
because of his role in organizing the massacre of thousands of Kurds with chemical
weapons. Most Iraqis regard him as a psychopath who is capable of killing large
numbers of civilians and blaming it on the coalition forces.
He will have his headquarters at Nassrriyah, a city where he crushed a popular
revolt in April 1991, while Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf's forces watched from a safe
distance.
The Shi'ite heartland of Iraq, south of Baghdad, is under the command of Mazban
Khader Hadi, a brother-in-law of Saddam. He will have his headquarters in Karbala,
where he has placed some of his weapons inside the holy shrines of Imam Hussein and
Hazrat Abbas. Once the coalition forces have extricated themselves from the chaos of
the south, they will have to pas through Hadi's area to reach Baghdad. Hadi's
mission is clear: to slow down the coalition advance by creating as big a
humanitarian disaster as possible.
The central area, including Baghdad and Saddam's hometown of Tikrit to its north, is
under the command of Saddam's younger son, Qusai. This is an area of around 5,000
square kilometers. But it will be defended by virtually the entire Republican Guard,
some 200,000 men.
According to Iraqi sources, Saddam has moved most of his estimated 4,000 French and
Soviet-built tanks into that area. He has also installed more than 3,000 anti-
aircraft guns and various powerful machine guns to create what is known in military
jargon as a hornet's nest. The most vulnerable edges of the protected area are
marked by a string of deep trenches designed to slow down the coalition advance.
Saddam remains in overall command and will have sole authority in the use of surface-
to-surface missiles and combat aircraft.
He hopes that his tactics will slow the coalition advance toward Baghdad for several
weeks, during which his European friends could go to the UN Security Council and ask
for an immediate cease-fire followed by negotiations between the coalition and who
else President Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti, under the auspices of the Security Council.
All this may sound fanciful. But US President George W. Bush should beware. He has
already been duped once by the "unanimous" victory he won with Resolution 1441 and
should remember that French President Jacques Chirac has vowed to do all he can to
prevent Saddam's overthrow.
One scenario that Saddam is likely to pursue is to offer to resign at the last
minute and hand over power to Qusai, who would immediately call for a cease-fire and
full cooperation with the coalition forces.
"The world is on our side," Saddam told his commanders on Sunday. "We can win this
war as we won the last one."
This is no empty boast. Saddam may have no supporters inside Iraq itself, but he
does enjoy widespread support in many countries, because he has come to symbolize
all the strands of anti-Americanism. All those who hate the US for whatever reason
will do all they can to make sure that Saddam is not toppled. George Galloway, a
British Labor MP and one of Saddam's most ardent supporters, puts it starkly: "If
Bush and Blair start their war, we in the peace movement shall bring the war to
them. Our message is: Start the war, we stop your country!"
In one of our meetings in the 1970s, Saddam told us a story about his childhood. He
said that he and other boys had great fun jumping on trucks passing through Tikrit,
then a sleepy mud village. The truck drivers' assistants would whip the boys, even
crush their fingers, to force them to jump off. Most did, but not Saddam.
"I learned that what mattered was to hang on," Saddam said. "Injuries to my hands
because of the whips would soon disappear. But the feeling that I had managed to hang
on would last a long time."
