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Iraqi brigadier explains how Saddam lost the war
By Robert Fisk
For the brigadier-general commanding Baghdad's missile air defences last month, it was the voices that cut into his military radio traffic that signalled the end of the war.
"I would talk to my SAM missile crews and suddenly the Americans would come on," he said yesterday.
"They would talk in Arabic and they would say 'We have taken Nasiriyah, we have captured Najaf, we are at Baghdad airport'.
"It was the psychological war that did the worst damage to us.
The Americans knew all our frequencies.
I could have replied directly to those voices, but we were ordered not to, and I obeyed for my own security."
The brigadier-general - he asked that his name not be used - is the most senior Iraqi army officer so far to have given his version of the last days of Saddam Hussein's regime.
He said entire Republican Guard regiments were withdrawn from the desert west of Baghdad on the orders of Saddam's son Qusay.
These soldiers, vital to the city's defence, then took off their uniforms and went home.
The general's 30 batteries around Baghdad fired more than 200 Russian-made SAM anti-aircraft missiles at American and British aircraft.
He lost 30 of his own crew members.
"They were my men and I knew them all," he said.
The ex-general was speaking at the home of a relative, in a house furnished with giant china pottery and chandeliers - a conversation interrupted by a constant supply of hot tea and the noise of children.
But nothing could take away from the drama of his story.
Baghdad's anti-aircraft missile commander realised the end was near, he said, when he fired his last missile - a SAM-3 - from a battery in the Dijila area of Baghdad at a low-flying US aircraft at 8pm on April 8, the night before US forces arrived in the city.
"Just after that, we lost all our telecommunications with our most senior officers.
On the morning of the 9th, we went out in civilian clothes to check on our crews in the city.
"That's when we saw the looting - and we realised everything was finished.
We remembered what happened in 1991 (after the Iraqi rebels rose up in response to President Bush senior's appeal) - at that time, the robberies had started and there were many killings of army officers.
For us, that was the end."
Like many other senior officers in the Iraqi defence force, the general believed until the last moment that war could be averted.
Even after the US-led invasion began, he thought the setbacks around Basra and Nasiriyah would force the Western armies to open negotiations for a ceasefire.
"Our troops were fighting in the south much better than around Baghdad.
They had help from the people in the villages.
The Americans and the British thought these people would support them, not fight against them.
"The defence of Baghdad was planned with two belts of army defenders, one set 100km from the city, the other at 50km.
The inner ring ran through Hilla, Tarmiya, Suweira and Mishaheda.
"Our southern troops were in real fighting in the south in the first days of the war but on around 30th or 31st March, the Republican Guard were ordered out of the deserts and back into Baghdad.
We don't know why.
Most had specific orders to stay at home."
When the army in the south heard the same news, the general said, their resistance, which had hitherto prevented the capture of a single city, began to collapse.
It was on April 6 that the army was ordered to abandon the south of Iraq and redeploy for the defence of Baghdad.
"When we heard that the Americans had arrived in the city, none of us there believed it.
This was impossible, we thought.
There was a story that the Republican Guards had abandoned their desert positions.
"The result was chaos.
Our resistance was now very limited."
Since April 9, the general and his former officers have spoken of little except the war, contemplating the supremacy of American arms - "their air-to-air missiles had a range of 120km," he said, "ours only 30km" - and Iraq's inferior military equipment.
"Their planes could detect our radar and fly faster than my missiles, and then turn round and bomb my crews.
So I would send only one battery to engage a US aircraft and keep the rest safe.
We shot down 12 planes.
We saw them fall.
But they rescued the crews and took away the wreckage."
Hope springs eternal, perhaps, among the defeated.
Independent Foreign Service
http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=132&fArticleId=158501
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