Posted on 03/25/2003 12:19:22 AM PST by gaucho
The port of Umm-Qasr, the main Iraqi exit to the sea, has begun to evolve into some kind of symbol of resistance. For the past four days, continuous fighting has been taking place in the city. Every day has ended with an optimistic report that the city is in U.S. hands, only for it to emerge the following day that the battles there are still ongoing.
Similar reports have started to come in about Nasiriyah and Basra - that "they are under control." These reports are not fictitious. Rather, they are partial. The cities are under external control but not total occupation.
The significant thing as far as the psychological war is concerned, is that the Iraqi people, who listen both to Iraqi television and Western radio reports (some of them on satellite channels), can now reach the conclusion that they can relate with almost the same degree of credibility to western reports as to those emanating from their own government.
On Sunday, for example, they could see the Iraqi Vice President, Taha Yassin Ramadan, who has not been seen on a television screen for the past four days and so was thought to have been killed.
With Ramadan appearing live on television, the Iraqis can then also extrapolate that the appearance of Saddam Hussein on television two days ago was not fabricated. "This is an important contribution to the morale of the Iraqis, when they see their leadership speaking again and even attacking the conquerors," one Jordanian journalist explains.
The issue of Iraqi morale is also important in another context. For months and even years, heads of the Iraqi opposition had been priming the U.S. administration in Washington that the moment the war in Iraq began, large numbers of civilians would rise up in a revolt that would topple Saddam's regime from within.
The belief held by the opposition was, among other things, that the conquering of Basra would be easy, since most of the citizens of the city are Shiites who were just waiting for the Americans to show up in order to join them. For now, it seems these promises have proven empty.
After the first Gulf War, the Shiites didn't even wait for the Americans to arrive, and trusted that when the revolt broke out, it would receive U.S. backing. The Americans let the Shiites down, and they learned their lesson.
Will the Iraqi civilian component be absent from the war, then? A Jordanian analyst believes that it cannot be taken for granted that the civilian population will assist in the U.S.-led war effort.
"The Iraqis are at the stage at which they are agonizing. On the one hand, some of them want Saddam to be removed, but on the other hand, they are still not convinced that the Iraqi leadership is on its way out. In Baghdad they see and hear the heavy bombardments, but in Basra, Mosul and Kirkuk - which are also bombed - one can also hear the Iraqi resistance. And there is another factor that is difficult to estimate: To what extent do the Iraqis view the war as one of liberation from Saddam and to what extent do they see it as a war of American occupation?"
In this situation, Jordanian analysts believe, the behavior of the Iraqi civilians will be determined by their immediate surroundings. They see the Iraqi soldiers and not the Americans, they hear the planes and bombings, but the guns of the Iraqi army are more threatening.
The belief is that the longer the war goes on, and the more the U.S. soldiers remain little more than an image on the TV screens, the civil revolt, which is supposed to be a major factor assisting the U.S.-led forces, will not take off.
To say the least. We control three bridges & an airstrip...
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