BATTLE FOR BAGHDAD: With US troops reportedly 80 kilometres from the Iraqi capital, some commentators are predicting that the Battle of Baghdad is about to begin. It is a prospect the Iraqis welcome, writes Lara Marlowe.
The US had hoped to take the capital without a siege or battle, but that now looks unlikely. The US-British invasion was predicated on the assumption that Saddam Hussein's regime would collapse, and Allied forces would be greeted as liberators.
That "fantasy" - in the words of the Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz - has been punctured by the stiff resistance mounted in the Shia south of the country during the first six days of the war. One regiment of regular Iraqi army troops withstood the Americans in Umm Qasr port for several days.
British troops are struggling to enter the broken-down city of Basra, population two million, and are now shelling the very people they say they want to liberate.
A column of 4,000 US Marines finally crossed the Euphrates river at Nassiriya, a third of the way to Baghdad, yesterday, after a four-day battle. The Marines entered the "fertile crescent" between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers under heavy fire from Iraqi forces, with cover from US attack helicopters.
So the pre-war strategy for a two-pronged invasion is being fulfilled. One pincer is going through the south-west desert towards the capital, the other up the alluvial plain between the two rivers.
There are fears the Iraqis may blow up dams and flood the plain, literally swamping the invasion force. The water level of the Tigris has rarely been so high. In a speech last week, the US Defence Secretary, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, specifically warned the Iraqis against flooding the river valley. It all bodes ill for the Battle of Baghdad.
On Monday night and yesterday, the deafening explosions of bombs and cruise missiles in Baghdad were replaced by a constant low rumbling - assumed to be the carpet bombing of the Republican Guard's Medina Division south of the city. But it's doubtful that the guard, considered the best Iraqi fighters, are massed together.
"Do you expect our forces to appear in front [of the Americans\] in large numbers, so they can be picked off" Mr Aziz said on Monday night.
The US must now decide whether to advance on the capital leaving unconquered territory behind its forces. With five million residents, Baghdad is nearly as vast as Los Angeles, and it could be a nightmare for invaders. The longer the US waits, the more time the Iraqis have to prepare their defences, and the more the Americans lose any element of surprise.
It's conceivable the Americans could drive an armoured column into Baghdad one night this week and declare the city of five million - or at least part of it - "liberated". But that could mean heavy casualties. Alternatively, the US and Britain could stage paratroop drops into specific areas, then send in reinforcements. But this too would claim a high cost in Western lives.
In recent days, the Baath Party militia and other security forces have been setting up sandbagged gun positions, and digging up parks, flower beds and the central reservations of Baghdad's boulevards for trenches and dug-outs.
It was the British who built army barracks in Baghdad during their 1920-1932 occupation - just as they built barracks in British cities in the late 19th century - out of fear of street mobs and revolution.
So it is somewhat disingenuous to accuse Saddam Hussein of "hiding behind civilians" by vowing to make his stand in the capital. In any case, Iraqi troops are not going to sit in barracks waiting to be bombed.
Saddam himself predicted that the siege of Baghdad would be another Stalingrad. The second World War siege lasted almost all of 1942. Stalin, whom Saddam admires, ordered the civilians of Stalingrad to remain in the city, so that his soldiers would know they were fighting for their people.
Both Stalingrad and Baghdad are divided by rivers. Baghdad, like Stalingrad, has factories, railway yards, grain silos, tunnels - with vantage points and hidden crannies to fight from. Even the weather seems to conspire against invaders, with strong winds and sandstorms that interfere with hi-tech electronics.
Stalingrad was constantly resupplied from the rest of the Soviet Union. Baghdadis have received six months of basic food staples, but shop shelves are nearly empty already. The US might have to encircle the entire city to prevent supplies arriving from the provinces, leaving themselves open to attack from within Baghdad and from behind their rear ranks.
Iraq's old Soviet tanks cannot compare with US and British armour, but as tracked artillery pieces, hidden in garages or underground parking lots between sorties, they could return fire on besieging forces.
German forces at Stalingrad did not have to contend with world opinion, as Mr Bush and Mr Blair do. If the US and Britain want to limit their own casualties, they may end up shelling Baghdad as well as bombing it from the air. Shelling population centres is a desperate and iniquitious strategy, that invariably kills large numbers of civilians.
While the US claims to limit suffering with precision bombing and accurate cruise missiles, artillery fire is far less exact.
Artillery radar can follow the trajectory of mortars fired at besieging troops, but in the time it takes to retaliate, the man who fired the mortar can flee. The artillery gunner has no idea whose house or apartment building he's hitting.
Furthermore, Baghdadis might weather bombing and shelling better than Washington and London could fend off international criticism. Iraq underwent eight years of bombardment during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war and Baghdadis know how to adapt. The longer they hold out, Iraqi officials keep saying, the greater their chances of victory.
The Iraqis have been burning oil-filled trenches called berms since March 22nd. These darken the sky and may confuse sophisticated electronics, but they cannot perform the function of a medieval moat.
The city is far too big, and advancing armour could simply drive around them. There are probably mine fields around the city as well, though to what extent is not known. Ultimately, Iraq's best defence may be the city itself. "We are waiting for [the Americans] in Baghdad," the oil minister, Lt Gen Amer Rashid said yesterday. "They will see; we will crush their head. We will defend ourselves honourably."
It is worth noting that no one talks any longer of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.
If US forces enter the city, the Americans would no longer be able to bomb or shell Baghdadis, because the risk of hitting their own combatants would be too great. They might be able to use helicopter gunships against militiamen and buildings where officials were known to be stationed, but that too would be risky. Baghdad's high-rise buildings make ideal sniper's nests. The walled gardens of residential areas are good hiding places. Much of the city is surrounded by date palm plantations, as lush and thick as a Vietnamese jungle.
So great is the paranoia of the regime that it is impossible to find a reliable map of the city. Its straight, long, wide boulevards provide no cover for armour or troop formations. Iraqis armed with AK-47 assault rifles, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, anti-armour missiles like the Russian Milan, or "technicals" - guns mounted on top of pick-up trucks (like those used in Somalia in 1993-94) could stage hit-and-run attacks on US forces. The Iraqis might use a strategy perfected by the Syrian-run Palestinian militia Saiqa in Beirut in 1982: wait until a tank column has nearly passed, then attack one of the last ones. Those ahead cannot turn back and are trapped. The Information Minister, Mr Mohamed Said al-Sahaf, has called this strategy "cutting up the boa constrictor".
Israeli Merkava tanks in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are draped with protection so that anti-armour weapons explode on the outside. But the US and Britain, in their ideology-stoked fervour to "liberate" Iraq did not take the precaution of equipping their Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles with similar measures.
As the Hizbullah have demonstrated in Lebanon, if you get within several hundred metres of a battle tank and fire a shoulder-held anti-tank missile, you can destroy it. But the man launching the missile must stand still for up to 12 seconds, with his cross-hairs on the tank, for the wire-guidance system to work.
The tank or armoured personnel carrier crew hear the bang of the missile firing, and spray gunfire around them, in the hope of hitting their adversary in the 12 seconds before the missile explodes. Needless to say, spraying gunfire at 360 degrees inside a densely populated city is likely to kill and wound civilians.
If the US and Britain succeed in taking Baghdad, the army, Republican Guard and Baath Party militia can be expected to take off their uniforms and melt into houses. This would force the invaders to play the role they did not want to play, of an occupation army, staging house to house searches for combatants and weapons.
Residents could claim they had weapons for self-defence, and without collaborators to identify Baathists and military leaders, the foreigners would not know with whom they were dealing. As long as there is significant resistance, it is unlikely many Iraqis will try to help them.
The Iraqis learned a bitter lesson in 1991, when George Bush Senior called on the Shias and Kurds to rise up against Saddam, then allowed the defeated Iraqi dictator to use his helicopter gunships to massacre the insurgents. That lesson was consolidated by US indifference to the slaughter of Palestinians by the Israeli army.
Iraqi leaders speak often of the role of men like the Deputy Defence Secretary, Mr Paul Wolfowitz, and the Pentagon adviser Mr Richard Perle - who are both close to the ruling right-wing Likud Party in Israel - in planning this war.
It could take a lot more than proclamations of principled intentions - now coupled with round-the-clock bombing - to make Iraqis trust America now.