Paul Buchanan: Terrorists inflicting death by a thousand cuts in Iraq

COMMENT

The past fortnight has seen an evolution in the war of resistance being waged by Iraqi guerrillas against American and British occupation forces.

Earlier attacks were more sporadic and haphazard in the choice of targets. Usually they involved random rocket-propelled grenade and small-arms fire on individual soldiers or small patrols carried out by isolated armed cells operating in decentralised and loosely co-ordinated fashion.

These attacks, which started a week after the fall of Baghdad and escalated to multiple daily engagements by August 1, served as tests of the larger conventional forces' ability to respond to and curtail insurgent activity.

It has become clear the United States has difficulties countering, much less preventing, most of these operations while simultaneously engaging in the search for Saddam Hussein and other Ba'athist leaders. The latter objective has taken on increased urgency as a result.

The latest wave of sabotage and terrorism has increased the tempo of the guerrilla campaign by combining conventional and unconventional approaches in a low-intensity conflict scenario. This has given a layered look to the armed resistance, something that complicates the efforts by the occupation forces to restore order and begin the process of national restoration.

At the lowest level, small-arms attacks continue. These are more likely to be carried out by individual Iraqis operating opportunistically without ties to a command and control structure, or by small units charged with such missions by remnants of the old regime.

Attempts to bring down American aircraft with shoulder-fired missiles (with at least two confirmed attacks) are a step up from this. Still a small-cell operation, this tactic involves more local intelligence, stealth and logistical preparation, as well as technical sophistication in handling the weapon system.

Although they have failed so far, those responsible remain at large, caches of anti-aircraft missiles are dispersed throughout Iraq, and future missile attacks are inevitable.

Sabotage of infrastructure, which began as isolated assaults on power pylons and electrical infrastructure, has graduated to co-ordinated bombing of major oil pipelines and water mains. These operations are conventional in that they display technical expertise in sapping and demolition as well as good local intelligence.

The oil pipeline that was bombed north of Baghdad is dug a few metres underground and extends for hundreds of kilometres to the Turkish border. The saboteurs knew how to locate, dig and plant explosives on sections of pipe while remaining undetected by patrolling American forces.

The attack on a Baghdad water main appears to be more opportunistic. Two individuals emerged from a passing car on a busy thoroughfare to fire a rocket-propelled grenade into the pipe.

These attacks have delayed reconstruction efforts by continuing the denial of basic services that fuels popular disenchantment with the ostensible liberators. With the military situation intensifying, American and United Nations civil administration experts find it extremely difficult to carry out the tasks that would shift local allegiances to the new regime.

For now they have become targets as well. The use of truck bombs against the Jordanian embassy and the UN headquarters in Baghdad are another tactic that increases the intensity of the guerrilla war.

In the acumen and preparation needed to carry out such attacks, in the designation of targets and choice of weapons, these operations have been the signature tactic of al Qaeda operations throughout the world, including Bali, Jakarta, Riyadh, Casablanca, Nairobi and Jerusalem.

This is an upper-end unconventional warfare approach using terror as the instrument since it targets soft civilian objectives with high symbolic value (for example, the Jordanians collaborated with the US in the war on Iraq by allowing US troops to forward stage on their territory; the UN represents the continuation of non-Iraqi authority should the US and Britain ever leave).

In its method of deployment and co-ordination with the other elements of armed resistance, the latest ratcheting up of the conflict shows tactical linkages between international and domestic guerrilla forces - the very linkages that were claimed but not found to have existed under Saddam's regime. In a supreme irony, the Iraq occupation has brought about the very coalition that many believed could never happen otherwise.

This is significant because it indicates that secular and fundamentalist Arab groups have put aside their differences to fight the common enemy in Iraq. Reports of the increased presence of Islamic internationalists - which reportedly includes Chechens - would appear to substantiate the view that the resistance is now well organised and co-ordinated and is capable of delivering a range of blows that will continue to stretch thin the resources of the US military.

There are not enough US troops on the ground to handle this variegated type of irregular warfare, and the British are starting to find out that even they are being targeted as part of the expanding guerrilla campaign. None of this augurs well for those responsible for ordering and overseeing the occupation.

It is much too early to predict whether the guerrilla campaign, for all of its sophistication and overlay, will prevail against such a formidable military machine. But the object of guerrilla war is not to fight strength on strength but to inflict a death by a thousand cuts that slowly, incrementally, and inevitably erodes the will of the superior power to continue the fight.

In the meantime, the war on terror has shown itself to be a two-sided affair that has opened on new fronts far from the Iraq battlefields, something that portends ominously for those responsible for security throughout the globe.

Because with global reach and tactical depth, irregular warriors in the anti-US/Britain campaign have reason to see in Iraq the makings of long-term success so long as they continue to fight unconventionally in other theatres as well.

For those lucky enough to be buffered by New Zealand's distance, both physical and ideological, from the conflicts of the day, this is very small consolation - and a portent of things to come.

* Paul Buchanan, a former US Defense Department analyst, lectures at the University of Auckland.

Herald Feature: Iraq