Posted on 03/29/2003 5:46:54 PM PST by 11th_VA
Part three: The Fedayeen have vowed to step up their suicide bombings. Neil Mackay reports that they are just one string of militias ready to fight to the death for Saddam
YOU'LL have seen one of their number already -- a middle-aged man in a blue serge suit with a keffiyeh scarf wrapped around his head. As the TV cameras rolled, he triumphantly waved his Czech-made assault rifle in the air while Iraqi villagers in the distance behind him stripped down the US Apache helicopter he'd just shot down.
This avuncular-looking farmer, Ali Obeid, now praised as a national hero by the Ba'ath party in Baghdad, is just one of the estimated 60,000 men who make up the main legion of Iraqi fighters threatening to turn Baghdad into a bloody, Mesopotamian Stalingrad: the Saddam Fedayeen, or Saddam's Men of Sacrifice.
The Western press is currently fixated on the Fedayeen, and little wonder. Not only are its suicide squads, which are now claiming allied lives, the main tactic of Iraqi resistance, but this cadre of men -- who sometimes wear white jumpsuits and balaclavas, symbolising the death shroud they will wear when they martyr themselves for Saddam -- has carried out appalling atrocities against its own people. But the Fedayeen, despite the suicide squads it has now dispatched into southern Iraq, is just one of a series of Iraqi special forces, elite units and paramilitary irregulars who hold sway in Saddam's regime and are now forcing the coalition forces to redefine their combat strategy in the deserts and cities of Iraq.
Jeremy Binnie, the Middle East editor of Jane's Sentinel Security Assessments, says: 'The Iraqi regime has surrounded itself with concentric circles of military, security and paramilitary units. Each one offsets the power of the other.' This keeps Saddam's troops loyal for fear one of the other elite units will turn on them. Nearly all these loyalists are Sunni Muslims, as is Saddam, and ultra-politicised members of the ruling Ba'ath party with many drawn from Saddam's home town of Tikrit and his tribe, the al-Bu Nasir.
Binnie says: 'They come from a very backward region. The regime gave them their break and when the regime goes, they go. They know that. Without the regime they are just Sunni Muslims linked to torture and oppression. These units are not military elites in the way we think of special forces in the West. They are not trained to our levels, but their commitment to their cause is without question.'
Many members of these elite units are deliberately 'blooded' by the Ba'athist regime. Once they have carried out a killing, taken part in a torture session or extorted money, they are complicit in the regime's crimes and left with no option but to fight to the bitterest of ends for the political leaders who gave them their power in the first place.
Saddam's special forces are:
The Republican Guard: The best-known Iraqi elite unit which numbers around 70-80,000. It has been operating since the 1960s, but was massively expanded during the Iran-Iraq war when the regular army -- now around 375,000-strong -- proved it wasn't up to scratch. Its fighters have better weapons, equipment, pay and conditions than the regular forces. In effect, these troops will become the main battlefield fighting force as most regular conscripted soldiers have been press-ganged into combat and will probably surrender or be obliterated by the coalition's military juggernaut.
However, of all the elite units, it is the RG which is the most likely to buckle as the war goes on and it comes under severe morale-sapping aerial bombardment . Its strength runs to three armoured divisions -- two mechanised divisions and one infantry -- and 400 tanks. This sounds impressive but after the pounding of the first Gulf war, the RG is still well below strength. It should have 1300 tanks, and each division should have 11,000 men rather than the current 8000. Currently it has 1000 armoured vehicles, instead of the required 2250. Its armour is no match for allied tanks either. Pitted in a straight fight against the Allies' Challenger, the Iraqi T-55s, T-62s and T-72s (the numbers stand for the decade in which the tank was made) would be blown to smithereens.
While its members may get three times the pay of ordinary troops, the RG's battle experience -- apart from the humiliations of Gulf War I -- is limited to the Iran-Iraq conflict in the 1980s, which was comparable to the warfare of the first world war. Ian Kemp, an ex-army officer and news editor with Jane's Defence Weekly, says: 'They know how to fight an attrition war, but not one like the present conflict -- a manoeuvre war. Nor are they refined in combined arms where tanks, planes and infantry fighting are all integrated.' What they do possess, however, is tenacity. They didn't run in 1991, they stood and fought, and they aren't expected to run this time either.
The Special Republican Guard: This 20-25,000 strong unit is hand-picked from the ranks of the Republican Guard. It acts as Saddam's Praetorian Guard and checks the power of the RG, which the regime views with suspicion due to a number of coup plots emanating from its ranks. The SRG's primary task is not on the battlefield, but in guarding Baghdad and key military and security installations. Saddam's undeniable faith in the SRG is shown by the fact that it is the only military unit allowed in the capital overnight. No other units are permitted within city boundaries during the hours of darkness in case they launch a coup. The SRG is unlikely to turn on its political masters until Saddam's bunker falls and he is killed or captured. The SRG is divided into 14 battalions and four brigades and has around 100 tanks.
Fedayeen Saddam: This paramilitary unit is the core of the irregular forces even though it lacks any real military structure and was initially a toy for Saddam's son Uday. Upset that his brother Qusay had command of most of the elite military units and he only had control of a party newspaper, Uday became commander of the Fedayeen, which was created in 1995. Uday lost control in 1996 after he transferred specialist equipment intended for the RG to the paramilitary unit. After a short period under the more rational stewardship of Qusay, the Fedayeen returned to Uday's control. Its current second-in-command is Staff Lieutenant Mezahem Saab al Hassan al Tikriti.
Military analysts say the Fedayeen -- defined as a lightly armed militia -- are recruited from 'village toughs' in and around Tikrit who are turned into 'political bully-boys'. Kenneth Pollack, the CIA analyst, has described them variously as 'thugs and bumpkins' and 'a strange cross between a goon squad and a kamikaze brigade', but that is a dangerous underestimation. Initially, they were tasked to carry out anti-smuggling duties -- or rather smuggling duties which the regime sanctioned. Now they are highly trained, equipped with rocket-propelled grenades, assault weapons and truck-mounted cannon, and taught to think asymmetrically, meaning that if they are confronted with tanks they won't fight them face on, but might plant booby traps and detonate them by a command wire while watching an armoured column advance. The guerrilla war will be theirs, as their current role shows: the harrying of US-UK supply lines, staging fake surrenders only to open fire on British and American troops and ambushing coalition forces. The allies can only hope the oppressed Shi'ite Muslims turn against them.
'They look for weak spots and exploit them,' said Binnie. Currently, they are rumoured to be dressing in coalition uniforms, or wearing civilian clothes, in an attempt to confuse the allied troops. They are also taking on a quasi-political role. During the second world war, all Soviet units had a political officer attached, to control regular soldiers. The Fedayeen are operating in a similar fashion, harassing soldiers and telling regular army units not to desert with warnings like: 'Who do you fear more, the Americans or us?'
The Fedayeen usually dress head-to-toe in black, masked with black balaclavas, to symbolise the death they will bring to others. One of the Fedayeen's off-shoots is the Fidayi -- or death squadron -- a brutal militia within a brutal militia. It has carried out various atrocities against the Iraqi people, including the spate of public executions between June 2000 and May 2001 of women accused of prostitution -- many of whom were dissidents or the wives of men deemed to be political troublemakers.
Robin Hughes, a former paratrooper and the Middle East editor of Jane's Defence Weekly, says of the Fedayeen: 'They are fiercely loyal and one could characterise them as criminal. In Iraq power is everything and they have a lot of power. Their plan is to confuse the allies and make them distrust every Iraqi they see.'
Saddam admires the Fedayeen and they admire him. Many have photographs of themselves posing with the leader and he recently praised them for vowing to fight to the death saying: 'You are the people of sacrifice. Go after [the Allies] and beat them wherever you find them ... Your days are days of great victory, awaited not only by Iraqis but by all good people worldwide.'
Peter Wall, chief-of-staff of the UK forces in Iraq, says the majority of resistance is coming from the Fedayeen as 'these are men who know they will have no role in the building of a new Iraq and have no future'.
Saddam's Lion Cubs, the Ashbal Saddam: This unit, often compared with the Hitler Youth, is comprised only of children. It was formed in 1998 to reinforce the Ba'ath party's grip. Boys -- and some girls -- aged between 10 and 15 are taken to camps and taught small arms and tactics. Conditioned by propaganda, they are tasked to set up roadblocks, conduct ambushes, sniper assaults, sabotage and psychological warfare operations. This army of child soldiers serves as a feeder programme to the Fedayeen. Families have reportedly been denied food and rations if they fail to send their sons to Lion Cub camps.
The SSO: The 5000-man Special Security Organisation was created in the late 1980s from a cadre of military officers. They are the regime's secret police. It was the SSO that procured any weapons of mass destruction ever owned by Iraq. General Abed al-Hamid Mahmud, Saddam's personal secretary, helps run the SSO with Qusay. It also includes the shadowy Ba'ath execution squad, known as the Firqet al-Idam.
Presidential Protection Squad: The Himaya al-Ra'ia numbers around 5000 men who are the most loyal of the loyal. They are tasked solely to protect Saddam and his family. At its heart are 40 men known as 'the companions' or al-Murafiqin, who never leave the president's side. They would die with Saddam .
Other state forces include: the 4000-man al-Mukhabarat al-Amma (General Intelligence Directorate); the 5000-man al-Istikhbarat al-Askariyya (Military Intelligence); the 5000-man al Amn al-Askariyya (Military Security Service) and the 8000-man Mudiriyat al-Amn (General Security Service). The biggest is the Jaysh al-Sha'abi (Popular Army), a party militia with 150,000 troops in Baghdad alone.
If and when the war finally ends, what can these Saddam loyalists hope for? As Jeremy Binnie says: 'As the apparatus of terror is so widespread, it will be impossible to imprison all the Republican Guard, Special Republican Guard and Fedayeen who survive the war. Only the top echelons will be purged, the Allies can't prosecute them all. There has been coalition talk of a South African-style truth and reconciliation. But reconciling torturers to their victims will be a long, hard and painful task.'
Doin' a good job of it ....
Someone posted a Debka article that said there were 800,000 in the Fedayeen.
I saw the title but skipped the read ... 60,000 sounds more credible ...
Depends on how many survive the war, I'd say.
Quite right. Leave some for the Kurds to play with.
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