The top US infantry commander in Iraq has said that his troops’ overstretched supply lines, coupled with unexpectedly stiff Iraqi resistance, had stalled the advance on Baghdad and increased the possibility of a long war.
Contradicting many of the upbeat assessments from the Pentagon, which repeatedly insisted Operation Iraqi Freedom was on or ahead of schedule, Lieutenant General William Wallace said his troops had been taken by surprise by Iraqi irregulars using guerrilla tactics.
”The enemy we’re fighting is different from the one we’d war-gamed against,” said Lt Gen Wallace, the commander of the US army’s V Corps overseeing ground operations.
When asked whether the resistance would lead to a longer than predicted war, he said: ”It’s beginning to look that way.”
The off-message remarks brought to the surface growing unease among army officials that the 480 kilometre supply lines between the leading US forces and logistics bases in Kuwait are too vulnerable to mount a decisive assault on Baghdad.
Troops of the 3rd Infantry Division spent much of the past week fighting their way up the Euphrates, and have told journalists with them they are short of fuel and food.
The Washington Post also quoted unnamed army sources as expressing concern at the gap opening up between the army, advancing along the west bank of the Euphrates, and the US marines moving towards Kut 170km due east on the Tigris.
There were 125 000 coalition troops in Iraq as of yesterday, 25 000 of them British. Another 40 000 were reported ready to move over the border from Kuwait.
Some 60 000 US troops have deployment orders, but the first batch, the 4th Infantry Division, is only due to be ready for battle in mid-April.
Hours earlier, France’s normally mild-mannered prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin delivered a stinging attack on the campaign, saying it could become a bloodbath.
Raffarin said: ”We were expecting a technological war, a quick war, a 21st century war. And we have discovered a war that is among the most horrible, like those of the 20th century.
”We are seeing there are major consequences in the horrors of a war that is taking place before our very eyes, in conditions we did not expect.”
Equivalent views were expressed yesterday by the Iraqi regime.
The defence minister predicted that the siege of Baghdad could begin in five days, but vowed that American soldiers would become entangled in months of bloody street fighting.
Sultan Hashim Ahmed spoke in Baghdad as US infantry were told to prepare for a potentially decisive battle in the next 72 hours with the Republican Guard near the holy Shia city of Kerbala.
His announcement came a day after 1 000 US paratroopers opened a northern front by landing ona Kurdish-held airfield.
The first Iraqi response to the 173rd Airborne Brigade came last night with a surprise retreat from positions defending the northern oil city of Kirkuk. Kurdish rebel troops moved in quickly to take their trenches.
The brigade is there to allow tanks of the 1st Infantry Division to be flown in, but US officials said that it was expected to be a light force intended to deter Turkish intervention and perhaps secure northern oilfields.
Nevertheless, Donald Rums feld, the US defence secretary, appeared determined that the US infantry should take on the Republican Guard’s Medina Division dug in around Kerbala.
The division was subjected to near constant bombing yesterday as the coalition planes flew 600 sorties, taking advantage of the return of good weather.
”I think it’s only reasonable to expect that it will require the coalition forces moving through some Republican Guard units and destroying them or capturing them before you’ll see the crumbling of the regime,” Rumsfeld said.
The Pentagon’s strategy of launching a lightning assault on Baghdad with only one heavy infantry division, with two relatively light airborne and marine divisions also available, also came under fire in Washington and London yesterday.
Before the war, the CIA and the DIA (defence intelligence agency) were reported to have warned Rumsfeld that an invasion might be met with guerrilla resistance.
Those warnings were ignored in favour of more optimistic assessments from Iraqi opposition exiles, according to a report in the Washington Post.
Meanwhile, serving and retired army officers have privately warned that the US commander, Gen Tommy Franks, did not have enough troops in reserve to protect his supply lines and deal with the guerrilla threat.
The 4th Infantry Division, originally earmarked for deployment in Turkey, is due to begin arriving in Kuwait at the weekend, but their tanks and artillery will still take up to three weeks to arrive by ship.
Asked whether Britain would send reinforcements to Iraq, the British defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, replied: ”We are absolutely confident that we have sufficient forces in theatre to deliver the military objectives that we set out.”
But the Guardian has learned that an infantry brigade of some 5 000 troops is on standby if required.
Meanwhile, in the north near Mosul, the Iraqi soldiers who had been encamped in bunkers overlooking the town of Chamchamal staged an orderly withdrawal yesterday.
Their unexpected retreat illustrates the Iraqi army’s growing confidence that it can best defeat coalition forces by luring them into Iraq’s cities. – Guardian Unlimited Â