I understand that the Lads go in at first light.
Godspeed to them, then.
Be Seeing You,
Chris
Posted on 03/25/2003 4:18:26 PM PST by SolidSupplySide
CIVILIANS have fought with axes and knives against Saddam Hussein's heavily-armed militiamen during an uprising in Basra, an Iraqi opposition group has said.
The "Iraq Headquarters" of the US-backed Iraqi National Congress (INC), located in Kurdish-held northern Iraq, said it had received reports from "field officers" by satellite phone. "Civilians fought with axes and knives against Saddam's Fedayeen", who used mainly mortars and Kalashnikov rifles, an INC spokesman said.
There were casualties, but no figures were available, he added.
Saddam's Fedayeen, a paramilitary militia which according to the British military has 1000 men in Basra, is headed by the Iraqi president's elder son Uday.
The British defence ministry said earlier today that Iraqi forces in Basra had fired mortars against their own people and that US and British forces had destroyed the mortars and some artillery pieces.
"Following a number of reports of insurrection in Basra, it has been confirmed in theatre that Iraqi forces have fired mortars against their own people," it said.
A rebellion in Iraq's second-largest city would mark a major turning point for US and British forces.
The allies have been surprised by fierce resistance in the south of the country so far.
British tanks are massed outside the city of more than one million residents, mostly Shiite Muslims, waiting for orders to attack.
But the Iraqi government has denied any rebellion is under way.
"These are lies issued by the US administration and British government ... with the aim of demoralising (the Iraqi population)," Information Minister Mohammad Saeed al-Sahhaf said
Maybe not, they seem to have fire support from US and UK Marine Artillery and Air. Take away the heavy weapons from Saddams thugs, and put a few AKs in the hands of the rebels and they stand a chance. AKs can be procured via the use of the ax, the knife or a handy piece of heavy pipe. Handguns too would be usefull in the effort, but the rebells aren't likely to have many if any, until they start taking them from dead Saddamite officers.
"How we burned in the prison camps later thinking: What would things have been like if every police operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive? If during periods of mass arrests people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever was at hand? The organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt."
-- Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Prize winner and author of The Gulag Archipelago, who spent 11 years in Soviet concentration camps.
The parallel gives me chills.
I heard that figure on Sky News this afternoon. I have no idea whether it's true, but it's a big city.
1000 troops don't have a chance if the population becomes a mob.
I understand that the Lads go in at first light.
Godspeed to them, then.
Be Seeing You,
Chris
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