Could the US suffer the same fate as the French in Algeria?
Will the allied battle for Baghdad turn into a re-run of the 1960s French debacle in Algiers? Already, in Iraq, the spectre of an Algerian-style long, bloody, guerrilla war looms large.
In the small southern Iraqi town of Umm Qsar, with a population 4,000 people, 100 Iraqi soldiers held at bay for four days 3,000 US and UK troops. This is an ominous warning of the difficulties the invading allied armies will face as they attempt to conquer Baghdad and Basra.
If a mere 100 guerrillas can cause such disruption to western battle plans, just imagine the mayhem that could be unleashed by Saddam’s 130,000 fanatical Republican Guards and Fedayeen militia.
Attempting to capture and pacify Basra, with its population of nearly one million people, will be hard enough. But Baghdad is a city two-thirds the size of London. US and UK troops will have to engage in house-to-house street fighting to flush out Saddam’s soldiers. It may take many months and cost many lives.
As Algeria proved, an effective guerrilla war doesn’t require jungle like Vietnam. Buildings and walls provide equally good cover. And guerrilla fighters can hide just as easily in suburban houses and sewers, as in rural villages and mountain retreats.
Even when the allies eventually capture Iraq’s cities, they are likely to face years of guerrilla-style counter attacks by Saddam’s irregular units. Occupation does not necessarily mean control. Baghdad and Basra will be like Beirut and Belfast in the 1970s all over again, only 10,000 times more devastating. Car bombs and letter bombs, land mines and booby traps; plus sniper ambushes, hit-and-run raids, and suicide bombings. This covert, irregular warfare will be difficult to contain and defeat, as the French discovered in Algeria half a century ago.
The Iraqi resistance will come not only from pro-Saddam loyalists, but also from anti-Saddam nationalists opposed to the occupation of their country by western invaders. Copying the tactics of the guerrilla armies in Algeria, Vietnam and Ireland, they will fight a protracted war of attrition, avoiding set piece battles where they would be easily overwhelmed by superior allied fire-power. Harassing and wearing down US and UK troops instead, their aim will be to sap the will of the allies and force their eventual withdrawal.
The Iraqis certainly have the potential to defeat the American and British invaders. Whether they succeed will depend on their military astuteness. If Saddam avoids the mistakes he made during the last Gulf War, where he fought conventional battles in the open desert, he might succeed in repeating the defeat inflicted on the French in Algeria in the 1950s and 60s – the last great Arab victory against a western army.
The Algerian war began in 1954, with a nationalist uprising by the Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN) against the French colonial occupation. At first, the French dismissed the rebellion as an irritant. Like allied commanders in Iraq today, they mistakenly believed that their superior weaponry would enable them to easily crush the numerically small and rudimentarily armed FLN freedom fighters. But people, not weapons, are decisive in warfare. The French failed to realise the strength of nationalist sentiment. The will of the Algerian people to end the French occupation was a more powerful force than all the bullets and bombs of the Fourth Republic.
Similar misjudgements are being made by western political and military leaders in their attempt to topple Saddam. Pride and arrogance has led them to gravely under-estimate the strength of Iraqi nationalism. Most Iraqis hate Saddam, but they also hate the idea of their country being invaded and occupied by foreign armies. The ill-conceived strategy of western attack has already fuelled Iraqi nationalism and bolstered support for Saddam – not only in Iraq but throughout the Arab world. The allied invasion could, perversely, eventually unite pro-Saddam and anti-Saddam Iraqis in a common cause: national liberation. The blundering neo-imperial tactics of the US and UK are having the opposite effect to their stated intention. Instead of encouraging the Iraqi people to overthrow Saddam, they are driving patriotic Iraqis into his arms.
In Algeria, the French pursued a policy of “overwhelming force”, predating the (Colin) Powell doctrine by 50 years. But even 500,000 troops were not enough to defeat a mere 9,000 FLN guerrillas. Their hit-and-run ambushes out-smarted the French time and time again. The colonial army found itself bogged down in a protracted, impossible-to-win urban guerrilla war in the alleys and casbahs of the capital, Algiers.
The US commander in Iraq, General Tommy Franks, thinks he can succeed where the French failed – despite facing even worse odds. With further reinforcements from the US, he will soon have 350,000 troops, compared to Saddam’s 300,000 regular soldiers, 100,000 militiamen, and 130,000 elite, guerrilla-trained Republican Guard and Fedayeen. Many of Saddam’s regular forces and militia will crumble, but most of his elite units are likely to put up a stiff fight, not dissimilar to the resistance shown by the FLN. That must throw at least some doubt on the certainty of American victory.
The French response to Algerian resistance was savage: assassination, detention without trial, torture and summary execution. Two million Algerians were forcibly relocated into virtual concentration camps. But this repression only heightened popular hostility to French rule and encouraged more recruits to the ranks of the FLN.
Allied troops will face the same problem in Iraq. In a bid to crush the pro-Saddam guerrillas, they will resort to tough counter-insurgency measures, which will alienate ordinary Iraqis. Public opinion will swing against the Yanks and Brits.
The French thought the Algerian uprising would be quashed in a few weeks. Instead it dragged on for eight bloody years, killing 17,250 French soldiers and wounding 51,800. On the Algerian side, at least 500,000 died. Most were civilians. Could this be the human cost of a long, drawn out war in Iraq?
France finally withdrew from Algeria in 1962, defeated and humiliated. The FLN proved that a small and poorly armed guerrilla army can overcome a seemingly much more powerful enemy.
Is the French debacle in Algeria a portent of what may happen to the allied armies in Iraq? Could US and UK forces get sucked into an Algerian-style quagmire, ending in failure? All the evidence points in that fateful direction.
Published in a slightly edited version – Tribune, 4 April 2003
* Peter Tatchell is one of Britain’s leading anti-war, gay and human rights campaigners
Copyright Peter Tatchell 2003. All rights reserved.