Analysis: Encouraging defections

Analysis: Encouraging defections

By Steve Schifferes BBC News Online in Washington

US forces are encouraging defections among Iraqi military leaders by direct e-mails and offers of safe havens.

Encouraging the Iraqi army to surrender

A key part of the US strategy in Iraq is to encourage the Iraqi forces to surrender - by persuasion as well as by shows of force.

It has been notable that both President George W Bush and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have addressed remarks directly to the Iraqi people and military leadership whenever they have given briefings on the war.

On Friday, General Richard Myers, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, urged the Iraqi army "do the honourable thing, stop fighting so that you may live to enjoy a free Iraq, where you and your children can grow and prosper."

And he admitted that talks were going on with individual commanders, although not with the Iraqi leadership.

Direct messages

For some months, US communications planes have been broadcasting such messages to Iraqi radios, using AM, FM and short-wave broadcasts.

But now, US intelligence services are also using e-mail, telephone calls from relatives, and direct messages to try to persuade key military leaders to give up.

According to reports in the Washington Post newspaper, intelligence officials have also been offering defectors safe havens, directing them to buildings in or around Baghdad that would not be targeted in the "shock and awe" bombardment of the city.

And they are trying to gain promises from military leaders that they will not use chemical weapons against coalition forces.

Mr Rumsfeld said that the aim is "to be persuasive enough with the people who would have to implement the orders of the senior people in that regime, and persuade them that it is clearly not in their interests to obey those types of order".

And the US has threatened war crimes trials for commanders and troops who use weapons of mass destruction, and those who set oil fields on fire.

Disrupted communications

The US commander, General Tommy Franks, said that "this will be campaign unlike another other."

One of the biggest differences is the concentration on psychological warfare, and the targeting of the top leadership in order to block their ability to communicate with the forces in the field.

"The messages aren't going to the guys in the field like they used to," one defence official said.

The hope is that, cut off from their leadership, troops and commanders will be more receptive to US appeals to surrender.

According to former CIA analyst Kenneth Pollack, the Iraqi military is highly centralised, and only acts on direct orders of Saddam Hussein, his son Qusay, commander of the Republican Guard, or his personal secretary Abid Hamid Mahmud Tikriti.

The US believes that its ability to strike at - and possibly injure or kill Saddam Hussein - will make him reluctant to communicate by electronic means to ground commanders.

And beyond that, there are still hopes that with the leadership in disarray, military units might move to overthrow Saddam Hussein - a goal that the CIA has been seeking for the last year.