Peter Ravenscroft


What follows is in part fact and in part conjecture. I think if the factual components of this are not general public property they perhaps should be. I suspect the people in the US and in Iraq who are running the war will know if the scenario below is likely or not, but maybe the ordinary troops on both sides do not. Maybe they should get the opportunity to think about it, if they haven’t already.

Here’s the story and the conjecture:

Saddam Hussein, his Minister of Information, and other Iraqi officials, over the past few weeks, seem more confident than they should be given the situation, and talk of the opposition forces being burned, and alternately being trapped in a quagmire or swamp from which they will not emerge. These are scraps of phrases, used days apart.

Last night an Iranian website, in English, said the Iraqi resistance group that has its headquarters not far downriver from the Darbandikhan Dam, says that the Iraqi government forces will blow that dam when the US and allied forces enter Baghdad. That is their biggest dam, I think. It will flood a large part of Iraq, and some parts of Iran, they say. I can’t work out if the water would back up to Baghdad, but they have other dams under their control that probably will inundate the capital anyway, if breached. They did this in the war against Iraq.

Aid agencies yesterday said that 500,000 people in northern Iraq are fleeing the big towns and heading for the villages. It is put down to fear of the advancing invaders. But no-one is advancing there in force that I now of, and people are not fleeing the southern cities, on which the invaders are advancing. As the big towns are on the major rivers, may be that the people in the north are heading out of the river valleys and for the hills.

In the Sacramento Bee yesterday, a long article says the US brass is bothered that the Iraqis may blow the dams. There is concern there are not enough engineering units.

So far, it seems that not an Iraqi plane has taken to the sky. Best estimates are they should have 150 to 300 still workable, minus what has just been bombed. Why is this?

US heavy armor is amphibious, apparently, but whether or not it can operate in thick mud I do not know. You only get one shot at a flooding. Or do you? It bothers me that they would see the US forces would simply wait till the water went down.

But you can add a refinement. If you have a tight double ring of pre-prepared defensive positions around a relatively small perimeter, as at Baghdad, and if you have a lot of refined petroleum, and have buried top-open tanks and pipes outside that perimeter, when you flood the low ground just beyond, the gasoline will rise and can be also pumped to the surface, around the opposition’s armour, trucks and troops. Those black smoke flare trenches the Iraqis were fiddling with yesterday could be their cover for getting this other lot ready. You can add to the floating petrol from aircraft, if you still have any, and from trucks on high ground. Then you strike a match.

That’s the burn component of the past speeches, is my guess; not chemical weapons.

Here are the reports found on the net yesterday
Report 1

Khorramshahr, March 23, IRNA (Islamic Republic News Agency - Iran)-- Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has ordered his forces to break Darbandikhan Dam, in northern Iraq, as soon as they see US and British forces moving into Baghdad, according to Iraqi dissidents in the southwestern Iranian city of Khorramshahr. In the event the dam is opened, most parts of Iraq would be engulfed in water and, it is feared, Iranian border areas would also face a disaster. Last Update: Sunday, March 23, 2003. 6:24pm (AEDT) (Australian Eastern Time)

Report 2 This was issued last night:
Aid agencies report of mass exodus. A United Nations aid agency says up to 500,000 people in northern Iraq have fled their homes ahead of the US-led invasion, with the movement continuing. The UN Office of the Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq says most of the people have fled the major towns in the region and are heading to outlying villages further north into the Kurdish-held areas.

Report 3. Background on the Khorramshahr dissidents

Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq — SCIR
• Supported by Iran.
• The SCIR's militia, the lightly-armed Badr Corps, has two bases in the PUK zone in northern Iraq — one in Sulaimaniya and another in Maydan, 60 km to the south.
• Most of the Badr Corps forces are based in Iran, with headquarters at Kharamanshahr. Training is provided by former Iraqi military officers.
• The Badr Corps' strength is estimated at about 15,000. They are equipped with small arms, grenade launchers, mortars and light artillery captured by Iran during the Iran-Iraq War.
• They have armored, infantry, artillery and anti-aircraft units, but no aircraft.
• The SCIRI also has guerrilla fighters, especially in the Marsh area of the mainly Shi'a southern part of Iraq. They seek to harass Saddam's regime through sabotage, attacks on government forces and security personnel and assassinations of senior officials. Operations are also mounted in Baghdad itself.
• One such operation involved the firing of a number of Katyusha rockets at a presidential palace in the Al-Karkh district of Baghdad in May 2000. A SCIRI spokesman claimed that several officials were killed during this strike deep at the heart of Saddam's power.
• The SCIRI believes the only way to oust Saddam is through military action. The organization appears to be hoping that guerrilla attacks carried out by its own fighters and sympathetic Shi'a tribes will encourage dissident elements in the military to rise up against Saddam and stage a coup.
• In a post-Saddam situation, SCIRI says it favors a democratic parliamentary system, in which they would share power with Kurds and Sunnis.