The Anglo-American ground forces have been advancing rapidly into Iraq from the south while taking two major airfields in western Iraq which would be crucial for logistic build-up as the forces start to concentrate around Baghdad.Meanwhile, heavy air attacks on Baghdad and some of the other key cities in the north have continued. Inevitable as such things are in the fog of war, there have been incidents of ‘‘friendly fire’’, the most serious being one where a British Royal Air Force Tornado returning from a mission against targets in Iraq was destroyed by a US Patriot battery. There has also been the curious grenade attack by a member of the US forces inside the headquarters of American elite 101st Airborne Division in northern Kuwait leading to one death and over a dozen injured.But the central development in the war has been the lightning advance by US forces northwards along the western highway from Basra to Baghdad. A force of nearly 250 Mi-A1 main battle tanks and armoured forces had advanced nearly 300 km in the first four days of the war by Sunday evening. The heavy forces would, of course, follow at a slower pace behind them. The purpose of the rapid advance, like the massive air strikes on Baghdad, has been to create a psychological shock to convince the Iraqi military, Baath party cadres and the Iraqi people that the US will win quickly and hence resistance was futile, and the regime’s fall was inevitable.At the same time, these advance forces would take up positions to bottle up Baghdad and start to control the approaches to the capital till the main forces join up.But in essence, the armoured forces have simply bypassed the sparse small towns and cities (including Nassirya, and they would do the same to An Najaf) along the line of advance and mostly driven north through the desert region. This is what Rommel (and later Montgomery) had done in the desert campaigns of North Africa in the Second World War. The reports of this rapid thrust towards Baghdad tend to indicate that Iraqi military is not offering any resistance.This may be misleading for the simple reason that the advancing forces are skirting any army deployments denying them battle. But resistance has been reported wherever it had been necessary to defeat Iraqi deployments to keep up the advance, and combat air power used substantively to facilitate success. Incidentally, this was the strategy adopted by the Indian Army in its campaign to liberate Bangladesh in 1971.Saddam Hussein has concentrated his elite troops in and around Baghdad, which will remain the centre of gravity of this war, with or without Saddam Hussein. US military strategy recognises this, and hence the drive that bypasses towns and avoids urban conflict that would have become necessary if an attempt was to be made to occupy them. The time for that occupation may come later, if at all, when the final decision on the outcome of the war is to be settled. The examples of the port of Umm Qasr and Iraq’s second largest city of Basra are symptomatic of the military strategy being successfully pursued by the US military and the Iraqi military resistance to it.Like the area of the oilfields west of Basra had to be occupied quickly to ensure damage by Iraq is limited, the port town of Umm Qasr had to be occupied too. This is the only port that Iraq has; and this is critical for use to offload military supplies in the immediate context, and humanitarian aid later on. US-UK official announcements had indicated that the port city had been brought fully under control by Friday.However, independent sources were reporting even late on Sunday evening that fighting with Iraqi forces was still going on and substantive use of combat air power was being used to neutralise opposition, while the British forces had yet to establish control over the town. The city of Basra, contrary to what some of our media had reported as early as Friday, was not occupied by the Anglo-American forces even by Sunday evening.More important, the strategy, in keeping with the overall strategy, was obviously to lay siege on Basra city since its occupation was not necessary as was the case with Umm Qasr. The US, therefore, had no need to get involved in street-fighting in Basra, at least at this stage. There have been conflicting reports of surrender of a complete division of Iraqi army in the area. But there has been significant resistance by Iraqi forces even on the outskirts of the city and US Marines had to extensively use missile and gun-firing AH-1 Cobra helicopters to suppress the resistance through Saturday and Sunday.US forces have established their headquarters 14 km outside the city and are deployed to control the highways running westward towards Baghdad and south to Kuwait. In this way, the Iraqi forces in the region remain neutralised even if they continue to possess Basra.
