Global Policy Forum

Experts Dispute US Denial of Guerrilla War

By Michael Kilian

The United States is facing a guerrilla war in Iraq that is comparable to past struggles in Asia and Latin America, according to military analysts who express fear that the Bush administration is underestimating the insurgency.

By dismissing the fighting in Iraq as a small-scale harassment campaign waged by shrinking, disorganized groups of Saddam Hussein's supporters, the Bush administration may end up paying a political price if the violence persists, the analysts said.

"We have to look at Iraq as the beginning of a classic counterinsurgency campaign," said Charles Heyman, editor of Jane's World Armies and a former British army major with experience in counterinsurgency warfare.

"How long will the American people put up with this?" asked former Air Force Lt. Col. Bard O'Neill, political science professor at the National War College and author of "Insurgency and Terrorism," a CIA and military text. "When will they start asking, `What was this all about?' Our leadership has got to know what it's up against," O'Neill said.

So far, 68 dead

Since President Bush declared major combat in Iraq over on May 1--appearing on an aircraft carrier with the words "Mission Accomplished" on a banner behind him--68 U.S. service members have died in near-daily snipings, ambushes, accidents and other incidents.

Heyman noted that former Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz warned last year that Hussein's regime could turn Iraq into another Vietnam, even though the country has no jungles.

"He said, `Our deserts will be our jungles, and our cities will be our swamps,'" Heyman recalled. That may not have been the case as U.S. troops swept Hussein's regime out of power. But some fear it is the new reality with U.S. troops subject to virtually ceaseless sneak attacks in cities and open countryside. As the casualty toll rises, the U.S. high command has ordered large raids to suppress hostile elements.

While acknowledging that the American presence in Iraq is likely to last a long time, the White House and Pentagon have gone to great lengths to deny that U.S. occupation forces are up against a guerrilla war.

They strongly dispute the notion that they face anything similar to what the U.S. confronted in Vietnam, where a determined band of the Viet Cong mounted an effective, long-term resistance aided by a populace broadly hostile to the U.S. presence and supported from the communist regime in the north. In recent appearances, Bush characterized the enemy merely as the last remnant of Hussein's supporters, vowing they would be defeated.

At a Pentagon news briefing, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld characterized the attackers as looters, freed criminals, Hussein supporters, foreign terrorists and local Iraqis under the influence of Iranian fundamentalists. "The reason I don't use the phrase `guerrilla war' is because there isn't one, and it would be misunderstanding and a miscommunication," Rumsfeld said.

Military analysts agreed that the parallels between Iraq and Vietnam are imperfect, but they sharply disagreed with Rumsfeld's assertions.

"Are we facing the prospect of a guerrilla war? The answer to the question is yes," said Kenneth Allard, senior associate at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former Army colonel. "When you are doing the kind of sweep operations that are being done over there right now--guess what, you are in a guerrilla-style conflict."

Support network

Others said that even if the attacks are the work of a small number of operatives, they reflect the support of a much larger segment of the Iraqi population. The fighters need food and places to hide, these experts said, and they need to rely on a populace that will not turn them in to the U.S.

"There is quite obviously a large groundswell of support among the ordinary people for operations against the coalition, especially in the Sunni areas," Heyman said. "Mao Tse-tung said the guerrilla is the fish that swims in the sea of the people, and you have got to have a sea of people for the guerrilla to swim in."

Joseph Cirincione, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, also warned that the threat should not be downplayed simply because the enemy appears to be small and scattered.

"Insurgency doesn't have to be that well-organized," Cirincione said. "The last time we were doing counterinsurgency, it was El Salvador. We are talking about big investment--years, lots of people dying--and it starts to imply that there's a popular base to it. I can see why they don't want to use the term."

Michael O'Hanlon, a military specialist at the Brookings Institution, said he thinks the U.S. is likely to prevail in Iraq. Rumsfeld's analysis of the enemy as looters, criminals, fundamentalists and so on, he added, is on the mark.

"Mr. Rumsfeld is wrong. It is an insurgency," O'Hanlon said. "But I think the way he broke it down analytically--into four or five different groups--was correct. Some of those groups will be easier to defeat than others. But if the overall momentum builds in a positive way on politics and economics, I think we have a good chance over a period of months."

`Time's on our side'

"I think, overall, time's on our side," O'Hanlon added, "because I don't think most of the Iraqi population really misses Saddam or really will object to our presence if it's clear that it's temporary."

Others are less sanguine and said the Pentagon should significantly increase its deployment in Iraq from the current 156,000 troops.

"There aren't enough boots on the ground," Heyman said. "The lesson of every counterinsurgency campaign is, you have to have lots of troops."

Allard said that while outgoing Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki angered Rumsfeld by saying 200,000 troops would be needed, Allard thought it should be about 250,000. "If anything, he was being conservative," Allard said. "It's very, very clear even now that whatever it is the Pentagon did in getting ready for the war is no way replicated by its getting ready for the peace."

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