How, and How Well, Will Iraq’s Armed Forces Fight?

A US war with Iraq may not yet be inevitable, but it increasingly seems inexorable, and while the debates in Washington and the United Nations continue, it is also clear (See Page One) that the forces likely to be needed by a US campaign are being put in place in the region. While policymakers debate the whether, there is also likely to be an increasing focus on the how. The various scenarios for how the US might fight such a war have received much attention. But how would Iraq fight?

Depending on the pace of events, The Estimate expects to publish a series of Dossiers examining the structure of the Iraqi Armed Forces, the Republican Guard, the security services, and the ruling elite. This first in this projected series offers an overview of how Iraq may choose to fight such a war.

The Iraqi Armed Forces, during the eight-year war with Iran in the 1980s, fought persistently and formidably if not imaginatively. Yet in Desert Storm, after a month’s pounding by American air power, Iraq’s Armed Forces collapsed within days when the ground war began, with only a few Republican Guard divisions putting up a fight worth noting.

Since 1991, Iraq has been deprived of any spare parts or rearmament except on the clandestine market, and much of the money spent on armament is believed to have been funneled to the weapons of mass destruction programs or to the Special Republican Guard, the elite force which seeks to protect the regime.

Those who have argued that a war with Iraq would be a “cakewalk” usually imply that the Iraqi Armed Forces of today will collapse at least as rapidly as those of 1991 did, and that only the Republican Guard will fight.

That may be true. There are some differences today, however. Despite the much-degraded quality of training and armament, in 1991 the Army refused to fight for Kuwait. This time it will be defending what every Iraqi considers the country’s own national territory. And what evidence exists suggests that the Army will not be deployed in bunkers at the border, where it can be pounded for a month by the air war, as it was in 1991, but will be used to defend the core area of central Iraq.

That difference does not transform the Iraqi Army into a first-rate force. But it reminds us that there may well be more motivation for the average soldier (and officer) to fight than existed in 1991 in Kuwait.

There is also a presumption on the part of some US planners that whole units of the Iraqi Armed Forces (except for the Republican Guard) will come over to the side of the invaders; that may be true, or — as was the case in 1991 — whole units might just dissolve when hit by an attacking force.

Comparisons with the way the Iraqi forces fought Iran in the 1980s also mean little, however, since the Iranians rarely used air power effectively and both sides fought fairly two-dimensional traditional World War I-style ground battles. Also, that war ended 14 years ago and few of the men in the lower ranks today experienced that level of fighting.

What follows offers an attempt to assess how — given the forces it has at its disposal — the Iraqi regime may seek to defend the country, conventionally or unconventionally, against an American or international assault.

In 1990-91 there were many predictions of a difficult war because of the long, slogging Iran-Iraq war and the fact that Iraq had what was often described as “the world’s fourth-largest Army”; today there appears to be a swing in the opposite direction, to predictions of virtually no resistance at all, even of a “72-hour ground war” and the like. But that may indeed overlook the difference between fighting for Kuwait and fighting for the homeland. Whether the US can maintain psychological warfare operations to the level of convincing the Iraqi Army that its best interest lies in changing sides remains to be proven.

Certainly, though,the main body of Iraqi regular forces are a mere shadow of what they were in 1991. A significant proportion of the Iraqi Air Force fled to Iran in 1991 to avoid being bombed out of existence; Iran kept most of those aircraft. The transports are in some cases used in Iran Air’s internal flights; those combat aircraft which were compatible with Iranian aircraft were assimilated, and others stored. Iraq has periodically protested, but has not gotten most of the aircraft back.

Because of sanctions, Iraq has largely been unable to maintain and repair its remaining aircraft though it has certainly acquired some spares on the black market. Its remaining aircraft are a mix of old Soviet and Chinese aircraft, fighters and ground attack mostly with some now obsolete longer range bombers, some remaining French Mirage F-1s, and a mix of trainers from a variety of sources. The northern and southern no-fly zones have limited air operations and training in much of the country. Although Iraq can and does get its aircraft into the air, its capabilities are limited. (More on the Air Force will appear in future Dossiers.)

Iraqi air defenses are another matter. It still maintains an extensive missile network and recent reports of acquisition of radars from Ukraine suggest that it is actively seeking to upgrade its air defenses. But at the same time, US and British aircraft in both the northern and southern no-fly zones have begun to systematically degrade the air defense network.

The Iraqi Navy was never very formidable. Its narrow outlet to the sea means that it has only the bases at Basra,Umm Qasr and al-Zubayr, and the redrawing of the Kuwaiti frontier after Desert Storm means that access to the sea is easily controlled by the Kuwaiti islands of Warba and Bubiyan. US and allied naval vessels have long patrolled the approaches in order to enforce sanctions. Much of the Iraqi Navy was either damaged in the Gulf war or, in the case of two corvettes still held in Italy, they are abroad and cannot return to Iraq.

That leaves the Army. Various estimates — by the United States Central Command, by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, by Jane’s, by Anthony H. Cordesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the like — place the regular active duty Army personnel at somewhere between 350,000 and 450,000 men, with reserve forces of about 650,000 who may or may not be genuinely available. Those reserve numbers, in particular, are probably far too high. The regular Army consists, depending on the account, of five or six corps, while the Republican Guard consists of two corps of about seven divisions. These numbers vary slightly according to the source.

Training has probably not been maintained at high levels, except perhaps for the Republican Guard. Armored forces in particular are aging and parts have either been cannibalized or sought on the black market. The inability to buy new model tanks over the past decade means that even the Republican Guard armor is out of date.

The elite force, the Republican Guard, consists largely of loyal Sunni Arab forces from the area from which Saddam Hussein and his family spring: Tikritis and others from the towns of the middle Tigris, with tribal and family links. The Republican Guard is likely to be the main combat force deployed to meet any attack.

In addition, the Special Republican Guard, a regime protection force commanded by Qusayy Saddam Hussein, has responsibility for much of the protection of the leadership in Baghdad and Tikrit. It has close links with the security services, which will be examined in detail in a forthcoming Dossier.

Though these are still substantial ground forces, it is believed that a lack of training and modern equipment, and the diversion of much of the defense expenditures in recent years to regime protection and a resumed WMD program, make the Army considerably less formidable an opponent than in 1991. But again, how it will fight and whether it will fight to defend the homeland, instead of Kuwait, is an unanswered question.

Defending a National Redoubt?
Some analysts believe, and some Iraqi statements lead one to conclude, that the Iraqi Armed Forces would not even try to defend the outer peripheries of the national territory. For one thing, Iraqi Kurdistan is already de facto autonomous under a US defense umbrella. The southern marshes are heavily Shi‘ite, and the Iraqi Armed Forces do not have the type of amphibious capabilities needed to defend against, for example, the United States Marine Corps. The deserts of western Iraq have one military value and one only: it is from them that Iraq could launch missile attacks against Israel in an attempt to turn the war into a general Arab-Israeli or Arab-Western war.

Some estimates suggest that Iraq has about 20 al-Hussein missiles left hidden, as well as other shorter-range missiles. It might launch these early in the war, with or without unconventional warheads, in an attempt to bring Israel into the war. But once the missiles were depleted or their launchers located, the western deserts offer little incentive for Iraq to defend them.

More likely, after using the desert areas to unleash a missile attack in an attempt to involve Israel (and US and Israeli special forces are likely to do everything possible to pre-empt such launches this time around), the Iraqis would fall back into the Mesopotamian heartland.

If the north is already under Kurdish control and the marshes neither loyal nor easy to defend, and the deserts are abandoned, that leaves Iraq defending what is essentially the Arab Sunni heartland, from the oilfields around Kirkuk, through Tikrit, to Baghdad and the areas just to its south. This would be a sort of national redoubt.

Kirkuk would almost certainly be an area which the US and Iraqi Kurds would seek to secure early on. The southern oilfields close to Kuwait are already vulnerable to a move from the Gulf. Kirkuk — a city with a mix of Arab, Kurdish, and Turcoman population — is close to the area under Kurdish control. If an assaulting force could seize the Kirkuk region, that would leave the Iraqi military defending only the core Sunni heartland from Tikrit to Baghdad.

For a force coming from the west, either through the desert from Saudi Arabia or Jordan, or in a swing through the deserts from Kuwait, there is a major challenge to be overcome in assaulting this national redoubt of the Sunni Arab power structure: the Euphrates provides a sort of natural defensive moat. In 1991 US and allied forces reached but did not cross the Euphrates in the south. It would likely be the major defensive barrier at which loyal Iraqi Republican Guards and other forces would seek to defend the core heartland.

There is some evidence that this is indeed part of Iraq’s defensive planning. There are reports that Republican Guard divisions normally stationed along the Iranian border or far north and south are being redeployed around Baghdad and Tikrit. That sounds like a plan to defend the heartland and let the peripheries go.

This sort of defense suggests that a US force would face several likely challenges:

• Chemical and Biological Weapons. Iraq has certainly in the past shown ingenuity and a willingness to use its chemical and biological weapons. If regime survival is at stake it is certainly likely that it would try to do so again. US forces are likely prepared to defend against such use, but Iraqi Kurds and others may be vulnerable.
• Fighting across the Euphrates in an attempt to penetrate the Sunni core redoubt. The US has sufficient amphibious force to cross the Euphrates and is apparently training with precisely that in mind; the Rhine in 1945 proved considerably less of an obstacle than planners had expected.
• The US loses its advantages if drawn into urban fighting in Baghdad. Obviously the Iraqis would like to force a house-to-house fight in Baghdad. All the advantages of technology and mobility are neutralized in urban warfare, as the US learned so memorably in Mogadishu.
• Those appear to be the main obstacles, or challenges, to a “cakewalk” advance into Iraq. The problems of reconstruction of Iraq and potential occupation have, of course, also been frequently raised. They remain a major issue as well.

As is true in every combat situation, plans are one thing, war is another. Certainly the bulk of the Iraqi Armed Forces are not the fighting force they were a decade ago, and even then they were no match for their opponents. Yet they do have manpower, armaments (if obsolescent and poorly maintained), a certain level of training, and the advantage of interior lines. Particularly in the Sunni heartland they may enjoy popular support, and if the government’s dominance of the media has succeeded in making its propaganda effective, many Iraqis will see an invading force as an enemy bent on conquest. Under such circumstances the Armed Forces may enjoy more popular support than some assume.

There is, of course, no way short of actual combat to determine how well the Iraqi forces will perform.

There will certainly be challenges. The “cakewalk” advocates may misjudge the mood of the average Iraqi, who may hate Saddam Hussein but also blame the United States for a decade of sanctions. The exact role to be played by unconventional weapons also remains to be seen, as does the potentially transforming element of Israeli involvement if the Iraqi government could provoke an Israeli strike, suddenly making it a defender of Arabism against Zionism. Such possible scenarios could produce a new and unpredictably volatile situation. But every war has that possibility; any war which was certain to play out precisely as it would in the war colleges would likely be settled diplomatically rather than militarily.

The Iraqi Armed Forces and, also very much a factor, the Iraqi security services which sit so heavily on the population of the country, will not only be major players in a war. They will also constitute a major challenge for the occupying or international powers seeking to reconstruct Iraq after a war. Like the “denazification” process after World War II, there will have to be a “de-Ba‘thization” or, perhaps more importantly, a de-mukhabaratization to remove the influence of the national security state. These other institutions, and the military in detail, will be examined in future Dossiers.

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