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staterepublics · 2 years ago

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THE LAST STAND OF THE GUARDS

The Gulf War’s Ground Campaign and Iraqi Resistance

Good day everybody! Since I loudly declared I would be leaving Twitter until the Afrikaner rodent was dead or missing, I felt I should post this pet-project of mine here instead of on Twitter as a thread.

The Gulf War, at least in its political aspects, was a modern iteration of the Battle of Waterloo, as it represented the decisive military triumph of reaction over progress and development. It was, as Victor Hugo once described Waterloo, “intentionally a counter-revolutionary victory”. It was Iraq against the status-quo. It was the revolutionary Arabism of Baghdad against the triumphant imperialism of Washington D.C, the reactionary backwardness of Riyadh, the comprador-ship and treacherous realpolitik of Cairo and Damascus. The final extinction of that vast people which had been in eruption for thirty-five years, since 1956–such was the dream.

However, that is not what I will be talking about today. See, as much as I would like to delve into the political & historical consequences of this great war, I wish to cover its military details, Victor Hugo did with Waterloo. Today, I shall be focusing of the Coalition’s ground offensive and the Iraqis’ doomed attempt at resistance. So let’s set the scene.

Bombs over Baghdad and Gorbachev’s Deal

A month has passed since the Coalition started its massive air campaign over the skies of Iraq. A vast armada of close to 2.800 jets and hundreds of cruise missiles hit Iraq’s industrial centers, civilian infrastructure, energy production facilities, even research reactors, with the goal of quite simply returning Iraq, until then the Middle East’s sole modern economy, back into the stone age. More bombs were dropped on Iraq in a month than were dropped on Berlin, Germany’s capital, throughout all of WW2. The Coalition had more or less proven its point, and Iraq wanted out.

An agreement was reached with the Soviet Union, with the hopes that this would present a fait accompli to the Coalition and have them cease the bombings (and hopefully even end the sanctions). According to this agreement, Iraqi ground forces would immediately begin pulling out their units from the “Kuwaiti Theatre of Operations”, with the last units leaving in around a few weeks. In fact, a shadow retreat was already being allowed to happen, with individual divisions ‘melting away’ and reconstituting themselves back in Baghdad. With Tariq Aziz (Iraq’s Deputy PM & Foreign Minister) announcing Gorbachev’s deal and the pullout of all Iraqi forces from the KTO on the radio on the 22nd of February, this shadow retreat suddenly turned into a large and chaotic movement of units still under air attacks, with large traffic queues and more-or-less total abandonment of all Iraqi defensive works which had been prepared in the south of Iraq as well as inside Kuwait (like the well-known “Saddam line”).

As Iraqi troops were hastily withdrawing from their prepared defensive positions and clogging up the vast road networks of Iraq and Kuwait with huge lines of trucks, heavy vehicle transporters, tanks and other military equipment, the Coalition knew it had to act fast. The conclusion of the Gulf Crisis through Soviet mediation and without a crushing defeat of the mass of the Iraqi military was considered an unacceptable result, and thus plans were quickly drawn up to lunge forward at the retreating enemy columns and shatter the mass of the Iraqi military as it was attempting a cumbersome and chaotic march back towards Baghdad, Karbala, Najaf and Basra.

The first Coalition attacks struck (and quickly scattered) vastly outnumbered and confused stragglers from infantry divisions which had been attempting to withdraw from their prepared defensive fortifications. After quickly dealing with these minor centers of resistance, the Coalition units started a large-scale ground offensive relying on shock and speed to either cut off the retreat of Iraqi units on the road or to hit them from the behind and shatter them. Iraq’s military leadership, after shaking off the violent shock of the ground attack (and in their eyes, from the shock of Gorbachev’s betrayal), made the hard and rational, yet arguably callous, choice of ordering their armored-mechanized Republican Guard formations to immediately turn 180 degrees and lunge forward towards the Coalition offensive to either meet them in hastily and rather shoddily improvised defensive positions or to counter attack them with the purpose of delaying their general advance, so the rest of the 50 division strong Iraqi military could withdraw back to Iraq relatively unscathed. With great difficulty, these ‘elite’ formations were able to extract themselves from the large traffic jam which had almost entirely paralyzed the movement of panic-stricken Iraqi units and prepare themselves for the coming battle. This would be their last stand, for they were the modern iteration of Napoleon’s Old Guard, who had been cut down by British musket fire yet fought until destruction, to the bitter end.

Although the Republican Guard had been the preferred target of continuous Coalition air attacks from the outbreak of the war, they had not suffered serious losses due to their safety precautions and effective camouflage procedures. In an interview, a Republican Guard commander claimed that despite attacks from the most advanced planes at the Coalition’s disposal, his forces had suffered relatively few losses. In fact, attacks by A-10 aircraft would have to be called off for the rest of the campaign after suffering significant losses due to RG operated Strela-10 SAM systems.

When the ground offensive got underway on the 24th of February, the Coalition forces stepped up their bombing campaign on the Republican Guard, using large numbers of aircraft and combat helicopters that attacked them constantly. To make sure his units could set up mutually supporting defensive lines in the chaos of the 180 degrees turn and expected attacks by the Coalition’s tank forces, the commander of the Republican Guard decided to transfer the ‘Tawakalna’ RG Division to rear positions in order to close the gap between the ‘Adnan’ and ‘Al-Medina’ RG Divisions.

‘Mother of All Battles’

On the division’s way to its new position, they suffered an air attack followed immediately by an extensive armored assault in which 3 divisions from the American 7th Corps took part, with massive air support. The battle - known as ‘Battle of 73 Easting - was fought mainly between elements of the ‘Tawakalna’ Division and forces from the US 1st and 3rd Armored Divisions, the 1st Infantry Division and 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment. American artillery and MLRS batteries played an important role in the battle.

The ‘Tawakalna’ Division fought an incredibly hard battle in difficult visibility conditions due to heavy dust that was stirred on the sandy terrain. Some of its formations were badly damaged but the division succeeded in reaching its rear positions, ending its participation in the war. Parallel to this, the Americans also attacked the lines of the ‘Nebuchadnezzar’ and ‘Adnan’ RG Divisions, even succeeding penetrating the Iraqi defensive lines on the morning of 27 February. As a result of the withdrawal and partial destruction of the ‘Tawakalna’ Division, Republican Guard Commander Gen. Iyad al-Rawi ordered the ‘Hammurabi’ RG Division to advance its 17th Armored Brigade to occupy new positions on the border between the sectors of the ‘Adnan’ and ‘Al-Medina’ Divisions.

The brigade moved to its new positions followed by 2 additional mechanized brigades and prepared for a counter attack. According to their version, the Iraqis sought a confrontation with the Americans advancing towards them from the West, and all of the Republican Guard’s artillery units bombarded American positions for over 3 hours. Next, the 17th Armored Brigade along with 21st Commando Brigade attacked in the sector of the ‘Adnan’ Division in Rumelia and managed to push back the forces that had occupied the defensive positions of one of its battalions. The ‘Adnan’ Division was later instructed to move in the direction of al-Qurna.

Another clash occurred between forces of the ‘Al-Medina’ Division and the American 7th Corps on the night of 26-27 February, after the latter attacked the Iraqi 14th Mechanized Brigade. The division mounted a counter attack with its 2nd Armored Brigade, reinforced by additional battalions, forcing the enemy to withdraw its forces to the rear. As a result, the American forces in the area increased their artillery fire in order to block the Republican Guard forces, who were attacking relentlessly and even making minor advances in some sectors.

The American 1st Infantry Division, which tried to advance across the sand dunes to flank the Iraqi line from behind, got stuck in this area, becoming a target for Iraqi artilllery and retreating helter-skelter from the area. At that point, forces from the ‘Hammurabi’ Division arrived in force in the sector between the ‘Adnan’ and ‘Al-Medina’ Divisions, deploying to mount a counter attack along with the ‘Al-Medina’ Division— a move that had the potential to threaten and encircle forces from the American 7th Corps in the Iraqi view.

While all this was taking place, forces of the US 18th Corps attacked the Special Forces Division of the Republican Guard in the Nasiriyah sector. An American force the size of a brigade (from the 101st) was also operating inside Iraqi territory in the Basra-Nasiriyah axis. The corps’ forces (82nd and 24th Divisions) mounted a frontal assault on the Iraqi positions from the south and west, attempting to gain control over them. Brutal fighting developed and continued throughout the day and into the night of 26-27 February, with the Iraqis, supported by heavy artillery fire, demonstrating very stubborn fighting spirit. In the end, the attack was stopped by the resistance of the Special Forces Division and by the heavy fog which covered the entire area.

Post-Battle Assessment

The Iraqis viewed these two battles - of the ‘Hammurabi’ and ‘Al-Medina’ Divisions and of the special forces in the Nasiriyah area - as a great victory for the Republican Guard, which had warded off a combined attack of two American corps on Basra and Southern Iraq. In their eyes, these developments, along with the 7th Corps’ failure to slice through the lines of the Republican Guard’s armored forces, had prevented the Coalition forces from taking control of Southern Iraq, destroying the mass of the retreating Iraqi military and/or disrupting their withdrawal back to Iraq. They portrayed the battles conducted by the Republican Guard as being among the greatest armored battles fought in modern history since WW2 in terms of the size of the formations and the number of armored vehicles taking part.

In their eyes, they had at least temporarily succeeded in effectively defending against and pushing back various American assaults, and even partially enveloping the American 1st Infantry Division, albeit very briefly. They concluded that the American High Command’s concerns about the 7th Corps taking further casualties and even being pushed back by the ‘Hammurabi’ and ‘Al-Medina’ Divisions caused them to agree to a ceasefire on the 28th of February and to put an end to the fighting. However, the Gulf War as a whole caused horrendous losses to Iraqi ground forces, who according to statistics from the USAF lost 2.500 tanks, 1.500 APCs, and 2.200 artillery pieces to enemy ground and air fire. However, later studies of Iraqi casualties during the war have shown them to have taken around 15.000 to 25.000 casualties, indicating that the RG had, in the end, succeeded in its task of sacrificing its own armored-mechanized brigades and divisions to allow the mass of the Iraqi army in the KTO (around 900.000 men) to retreat relatively unscathed back into Iraq. These forces, as well as the remnants of the RG, would prove pivotal in the Iraqi government’s response to the uprisings and mass-infiltration attempts of 1991.

Thanks for your attention! For further reading I would recommend Majid Khadduri’s “War in the Gulf”, the “Iraqi Perspectives Project” article covering the Gulf War, Pesach Malovany’s “Wars of Modern Babylon” and lastly the article “Correcting Myths about the Persian Gulf War: Last Stand of the Tawakalna Division”.

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