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Thursday, March 27, 2003

By Jack Kelly, Post-Gazette National Security Writer

On Tuesday, U.S. Marines fighting to gain control of the key city of Nasiriyah in central Iraq captured a hospital that Iraqi forces had been using as a staging area.

	Royal Marines sweeping the town of Umm Qasr yesterday found rocket-propelled grenades and mortars in a school where the Iraqi army had been stationed. (Jon Mills, pool photo via AP)

In the courtyard was a T-55 tank. Inside the hospital were more than 200 weapons and more than 3,000 chemical protective suits and masks.

Ten Marines were killed and five injured in the battle there that many think is a harbinger of things to come.

Republican Guard units have been dispersing into towns and villages along a defensive line running just south of Baghdad from Karbala in the west to Kut in the east. They are sheltering themselves among civilians and threatening to draw U.S. and British forces into street-by-street city combat. Once they breach this line, coalition troops might then face the most nightmarish urban battle of all: the fight for Baghdad.

Fighting in cities is the bloodiest form of war. On-the-ground urban combat negates U.S. advantages in precision bombing and long-range firepower, and it exponentially raises the risks to coalition forces and Iraqi civilians.

"The main problem is that urban terrain soaks up troops like crazy," said John Thompson, a former Canadian army officer who is managing director of the MacKenzie Institute, a Toronto think tank. "In open ground, a 30-man platoon can easily dominate a square kilometer. But in a city, a 900-man battalion would have difficulty dominating the same area."

U.S. forces currently in the Gulf are poorly suited for troop-intensive nature urban combat, Thompson said. "There are only 1,000 dismounting infantry in the whole 3rd Mech (3rd Mechanized Division)" he said. "That'll take care of a city block."

But, said Thompson and other experts, U.S. troops have proven themselves adept at urban combat and are less likely to have as much trouble subduing Saddam's forces as they had in attempting to capture a warlord in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993.

"Recent history suggests that well-equipped armies, especially if their soldiers are taught to exercise initiative, can seize urban areas at a surprisingly low cost," said Daryl Press, an assistant professor of government at Dartmouth and an associate of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard.

Press and other experts point to the recapture of Hue, Vietnam, after the Tet offensive in 1968. Marines inflicted about 100 casualties on the Viet Cong for each one they suffered.

Since the United States doesn't have enough infantry to control Baghdad block-by-block -- and because that isn't a smart way to fight -- U.S. forces are likely to isolate Baghdad, then conduct surgical raids on leadership targets, said retired Army Brig. Gen. David Grange.

"The biggest problem is going to be identification of targets, telling the good guys from the bad guys," Grange said.

One of those responsible for seeing to it that Marines can seize cities at low cost is Jim Lasswell, director of experimental plans at the Marine Corps' Warfighting Laboratory at Quantico, Va., and a retired Marine colonel.

"The biggest dangers are in crossing open spaces, so we teach Marines to stay inside, and to stay off streets," Lasswell said.

Tanks, which are all but invulnerable to infantry weapons like the rocket-propelled grenade out in the open, are vulnerable in cities because the enemy can shoot down on tanks from rooftops, where their armor is thinnest. Even so, the tank remains the most valuable weapon in urban combat, Lasswell said.

"Our experience in urban combat is the tank is what keeps you from being stalled," he said. "If you have a tank surrounded by infantry, you'll succeed."

Helicopters also are at greater risk in urban combat, because soldiers on rooftops can shoot directly at them or down upon them. This is what happened in Mogadishu in 1993, when Blackhawk helicopters were downed by rocket-propelled grenades. U.S. trooped got chewed up trying to save the crew.

Coalition forces are likely to protect tanks and helicopters by putting snipers on rooftops to eliminate Iraqis who get on the top of buildings. "It's the old principle of bounding overwatch," Lasswell said. "Our Marines had a tendency not to look at buildings as terrain. But the old principles apply: 'Seize the high ground.'"

Thompson and Austin Bay, a Pentagon consultant and colonel in the Army Reserve, said the greatest danger in urban combat comes from booby traps, which means combat engineers play a critical role.

Though much of the U.S. technological advantage is forfeit in urban combat, U.S. troops still will have a big edge, Press said.

"Night vision goggles are widely distributed among American and British infantry," he said. "Coalition forces will use sophisticated wall-breaching explosives to enter buildings without using doors or windows."

Baghdad, moreover, with its broad boulevards and relatively low buildings, is a poor place for urban defense. The wide streets ought to allow for rapid armored advances to places where Saddam and his top leaders are hunkered down.

Bay said the Americans are more likely to have surprises for Saddam than Saddam is likely to have surprises for them.

Retired Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, a leading strategic thinker, isn't worried about urban combat in Baghdad. He thinks Saddam has inadvertently guaranteed that he'll have few effective troops left to defend the city.

"The hand-wringers are warning that Saddam, in a stroke of genius, has deployed his Republican Guard in towns and villages, threatening us with deadly urban combat and inevitable destruction," he said.

"What Saddam actually has done is to break his last, best armored divisions into little pieces. He'll never be able to put them back together. And we'll destroy them, piece by piece."

Nasiriyah may indeed prove to be a harbinger of things to come. The Marines who died were killed when Saddam's troops feigned surrender, and then pulled out guns. But after that act of treachery, Marines secured the city without suffering another death.

Jack Kelly can be reached at jkelly@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1476.