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U.S. May Get Bogged Down In Iraq: Pakistani Analysts
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Baghdad might be the graveyard of the U.S.-led invasion troops |
ISLAMABAD,
March 30 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The U.S.-led
invasion troops may get bogged down in Iraq and face a bloody
guerrilla war, similar to the Soviet Union's 10-year misadventure in
Afghanistan, Pakistani military experts said Sunday, March 30.
"The
Americans may be bogged down in Iraq. Even if they occupy Iraq, they
will never be able to achieve their covert or overt objectives,"
defence analyst and former general Talat Masood told Agence
France-Presse (AFP).
"If
the Iraqis put up stiff resistance and the casualties on both sides
are heavy then this might turn into a long, drawn-out war," he
said.
General
Hamid Gul, former chief of Pakistan military's Inter-Services
Intelligence, said Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's tactics of combining
conventional war with guerrilla warfare marked a "new chapter in
the history of war."
Saddam
has not wasted the 12 years since the 1991 Gulf war, he said.
"He
raised his own Fidayeen and Republican guards, motivated them, trained
them and rehearsed them as a skilled force," Gul said. "The
Fidayeen are from his own Abu Ghaffari tribe. They are highly
committed and determined troops buoyed by their own tribal
pride."
Early
Operation Went Awry
Gul
said that the U.S. planners had "underestimated" the Iraqis,
and early operations had gone awry, Gul said.
"It
is an intelligence failure of enormous magnitude, worse than September
11" 2001, when hijacked aircraft crashed
into the Pentagon and World Trade Center.
"The
Iraq war can entangle them into a long guerrilla war," he said,
adding that fighters from the Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas,
and other Gulf-area resistance groups could join the fight against the
U.S. and British invasion forces in a "crescendo" of Arab
nationalism.
Gul
warned that the looming hot summer in Iraq would add to the
difficulties faced by U.S. and British troops.
"It
is going to be a long and difficult haul for them unless they (the
U.S.-led troops) go for scorched earth policy and destroy all villages
and routes," he added.
They
Won’t Win Hearts Of Iraqis
Masood
said U.S. plans to leave Iraq in the care of a U.S. military commander
after the invasion have not endeared it to the Iraqi people, noting
that the doors of hells would break loose.
"The
Iraqi people will not accept them. They will be their Karzais,"
he said referring to the administration of Afghan leader Hamid Karzai,
which has faced criticism that it is merely a U.S. pawn.
For
his part, Former chairman of the Institute of Strategic Studies,
retired general Kamal Matinuddin, said that while people had
differences with Saddam Hussein, however, the issue now is all about
“foreign forces occupying their country.”
“The
resistance so far shown by Fidayeen is very tough. They are ready to
die as their very name depicts,” he said.
Matinuddin
noted the imbalance in favour of the coalition and said: "They
are going to win the battle but they are not going to win the heart of
the Iraqi people."
Added
Masood: "People may not like Saddam but they don't consider U.S.
subjugation is an alternative."
“The
war is globally very, very unpopular and has robbed the United States
of the goodwill it earned in its ‘war against terrorism’ after the
September 11 attacks.
"Bush
has been challenging everyone that 'you are either with us or you are
with our foes' and mustered an international coalition against its war
on terrorism, but the U.S. is now on the back foot," Masood said.
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