US faces up to guerrilla war

By Jonathan Marcus BBC defence correspondent

It has taken a change in command for senior US officers to utter the "G" word about Iraq.

The new man at the top of US Central Command, General John Abizaid, acknowledged on Wednesday that US forces were indeed facing a "classical guerrilla-type campaign".

US forces are on a high state of alert following repeated attacks

He noted that attacks on US forces were now better co-ordinated and that the insurgents were demonstrating "some level of regional command and control".

But he also said that the current US force levels were about right - adding that if things got worse he would not hesitate to ask for more troops.

The use by the new CentCom commander of the word "guerrilla" marks a significant shift by the Pentagon.

His boss - the US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - has consistently refused to accept that the US is being drawn into a guerrilla struggle - perhaps because in presentational terms at least, guerrilla wars tend to be seen as unwinnable.

'David and Goliath'

If Iraq is indeed turning into a counter-guerrilla struggle, the fear is that comparisons with Vietnam, Somalia and other disasters will all too easily come to mind.

But the Americans clearly have a problem on their hands, and perhaps the first step in solving it is to coolly and accurately identify its scope.

General Abizaid is establishing himself as a clear-talker from the outset - his public rebuke to US troops who criticise Pentagon policy in the media provided additional evidence of that.

Iraqi militias loyal to Saddam Hussein are believed to be behind the attacks

But now he has to prove he is a clear-thinker too. And confronting a guerrilla struggle poses particular problems for which the high-tech US forces are not necessarily sufficiently trained or prepared for.

Classic guerrilla war pits the "David" of local resistance against the "Goliath" of the occupying power.

But guerrilla war is not so much about brute strength. It is won or lost in terms of popular support, morale and sticking power.

The key task for the Americans is to try to ascertain how much real support their opponents are getting, and then try to undermine this.

It is a battle of hearts and minds as much as military muscle. Progress in restoring basic services, education, hospitals, and real efforts to transfer some power to local Iraqis - this will be the real battleground.

In the meantime, US troops will have to protect themselves as best they can, and where possible go onto the offensive against the Saddam Hussein loyalists.

Intelligence plays a key part here. Contacts with Iraqis on the ground will be every bit as important as high-tech wizardry.

High-profile operations tend to upset local people and risk being counter-productive, so all such operations have to be weighed carefully.

Above all, the US has to clearly show that it has the will and staying power to get the job done. The very public unhappiness of US troops at having their tours of duty extended, while understandable, does not help here.

Limits of unilateralism

The Pentagon is under pressure. Reports suggest that two US National Guard brigades made up of reserve part-time soldiers may be deployed to Iraq as soon as this winter.

Washington badly needs to share the burden - hence US Secretary of State Colin Powell's overtures about a possible United Nations mandate in Iraq.

The whole Iraq experience is interesting in that it demonstrates the potential limits of US unilateralism and pre-emption. Winning a war largely alone is one thing, winning the peace quite another.

Some might argue that the Bush administration is finding out all too quickly about the burden of empire.

It should be remembered that more than 100 years ago, the British poet Rudyard Kipling wrote his famous poem about what he styled as "the white man's burden" - a warning about the responsibilities of empire that was directed not at London but at Washington and its new-found imperial responsibilities in the Philippines.

It is not clear if President George W Bush is a reader of poetry or of Kipling. But Kipling's sentiments are as relevant today as they were when the poem was written in the aftermath of the Spanish-American war.