Urban Warfare in the Twenty-First Century. Anthony King

– have been much greater in 2003 had Saddam deployed his heavy forces into his cities. For Stephen Biddle, ‘perhaps the most serious Iraqi shortcoming was the systematic failure to exploit the military potential terrain’.⁵¹ Indeed, Iraq officers were bizarrely opposed to urban fighting: ‘Why would anyone fight in a city?’⁵² Yet, combat was still concentrated in urban areas. The battle of Al-Kaed Bridge, notwithstanding, most of the major engagements occurred in An Nasiriyah, An Najaf, Samawah and Baghdad. For instance, An Nasiriyah was the site of a major battle because two crucial bridges over the Euphrates River and a canal on Highway 7 were located there. The bridges were strategic choke points on the US line of advance. The Iraqi Army’s 11th Infantry Division, supported by Fedayeen fighters, put up a formidable defence in the city on 23 March 2003 against the US Marine Corps’ Task Force Tarawa.⁵³ The battle was the single most costly action in the whole campaign for the US: eighteen US marines were killed in the course of the fighting.⁵⁴

      In addition, 101st Airborne Division mounted a major assault to clear An Najaf, while 82nd Airborne secured Samawah. The two battles were the largest ground combat operations in which either formation was involved. Finally, although it had been involved in a number of engagements during its advance, the 3rd Infantry Division experienced its most intense challenge when it eventually reached Baghdad during its famous ‘thunder runs’ into the city. The 2003 Iraq invasion was a relatively urbanized campaign, then (see Map 2.2).

How is the scale of urban fighting during the invasion to be explained? Demography was plainly not irrelevant. An Nasiriyah, An Najaf, Samawah and Baghdad each had large populations, of respectively 300,000, 400,000, 200,000 and 5.6 million.⁵⁵ Because the objective was Baghdad, the US forces had to advance through these urban areas in order to defeat the Iraqi Army and bring down the regime. It was, therefore, highly likely that there would be extensive urban fighting, especially since American weaponry was so devastating in the field. However, while demographics played a part, force numbers were very significant too. Yet, they have been overlooked. It is possible to rectify this neglect by thinking comparatively. Here, the influence of numbers on the distinctive geometry of the Iraq War can be illustrated most graphically by comparing the invasion of 2003 with the Gulf War of 1991. During the 1991 conflict, a US-led coalition sought to eject Saddam Hussain’s forces from Kuwait, which he had invaded in August 1990. After a massive build-up, the Gulf War began in early January 1991 and involved six weeks of coalition air bombardment before a four-day ground battle. The Iraqi Army suffered a crushing defeat in the deserts of southern Iraq and Kuwait. There were evident parallels between the two campaigns.

Map 2.2: The Iraq War, 2003

      Source: Reproduced with permission from Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (Pantheon, 2006), xviii.

      Because the 1991 Gulf War was fought in Kuwait and southern Iraq, which are deserts, the lack of urban fighting has always been taken as self-evident. In fact, it was actually a rather striking fact. Indeed, on the basis of demography alone, significant urban fighting might have been expected. After all, in 1991, Kuwait was not without towns or cities. On the contrary, Kuwait’s coastline was heavily urbanized: Kuwait City had a population of 1.5 million surrounded by a series of suburban towns, such as Mangaf, Abu’Fteira and Al Jafrah. It might be thought that urban warfare would have been inevitable in this war, especially since Kuwait City, located only a hundred miles from the front line on the Saudi border, was the ultimate coalition objective. Yet, the only urban battle – a small engagement – took place in Khafji, in Saudi Arabia, when Iraqi forces raided across the border before the major ground operations began.⁵⁶

      At this point, the insufficiency of the demographic argument becomes clear. While both Kuwait in 1991 and Iraq in 2003 had significant urban areas, there was one very obvious difference between the two campaigns: force size. In 1991, opposing forces were radically bigger than in 2003. For Operation Desert Storm, the US deployed 700,000 personnel as part of a multinational coalition of more than 900,000. The coalition ground force comprised 500,000 soldiers in sixteen divisions; the US Army and Marine Corps fielded 334,000 troops in almost ten divisions.⁵⁷ Iraq eventually mobilized 1,100,000 soldiers, deploying forty-three divisions, approximately 336,000 troops, to Kuwait and southern Iraq.⁵⁸ The 11th Iraqi Division defended Kuwait City, but the rest of Saddam’s army was positioned along the border of Kuwait and Iraq to form a front of about 350 miles. Combat densities were very high, therefore.

      Saddam’s deployment requires some explanation. A number of factors influenced him. Naturally, he wanted to defend not just Kuwait City but Kuwait in its entirety. This could only be accomplished by positioning his forces on the border. In addition, following his experiences in the Iran–Iraq War, he presumed that his forces would be best able to stop the US-led coalition in the desert, where they could bring their full combat power to bear. Indeed, he boasted that his deployment would generate ‘the mother of all battles’.⁵⁹ Of course, Saddam disastrously underestimated coalition airpower. Nevertheless, as a result of the large forces involved and their subsequent deployment along a front, ‘the battles and engagements of the first Gulf War were set-piece battles, reflective of World War II European combat’.⁶⁰ The most famous encounters, the battles of 73 Easting and Objective Norfolk, for instance, occurred in the desert miles from any human settlement (see Map 2.3).

Map 2.3: The Gulf War, 1991

      Source: Courtesy of The Map Archive.

It would be wrong to reduce the Gulf War or the invasion of Iraq to force size alone. Nevertheless, when compared with each other, it is possible to see the limitations of the demographic argument. Above all, it becomes apparent that force sizes played a significant role in generating their respective geometries. In 2003, Iraqi and American forces engaged in a few brief, one-sided encounter battles in the field, but the war was relatively heavily urbanized. Because neither side had sufficient combat forces to form major fronts in 2003, Iraqi and American forces converged on decisive operational locations: roads, bridges and other transportation nodes. These decisive points were typically located in urban areas which, then, became the foci of combat. By contrast, in 1991, even though there was significant demographic potential for urban combat in Kuwait City and its suburbs, the armies fought each other exclusively in the open desert, very substantially because of their mass. The 2003 invasion and the Gulf War seem to confirm Duffy’s thesis; as armies contract, urban warfare becomes more prevalent.

Although great care needs to be taken, it may be useful to consider the 1991 Gulf War counterfactually in order to affirm this thesis. How might it have been fought if the US-led coalition and Saddam Hussein had had the forces available in 2003? If Saddam Hussein had defended Kuwait in 1991 with four divisions and some Fedayeen fighters, and the coalition had attacked with only five divisions, it seems probable that the campaign geometries would have been very different. In particular, the lineal defence Saddam actually adopted for Desert Storm along the Kuwait border would have made no sense. The five coalition attack divisions would have easily bypassed their positions on the border and driven straight on to Kuwait City. Consequently, the classic tank battles of that war might not have occurred at all. Rather, with only 112,000 troops, it seems more probable that Saddam Hussein would have been compelled to draw his forces back to Kuwait City, creating a defensive ring around that city or even inside it. Under air bombardment and ground attack, Iraqi forces might have been driven deep into urban areas. Fought with 2003 combat ratios, the mother of all battles is more likely to have taken place in and around Kuwait City, rather than in the desert. In this scenario, the Gulf War would have been an urbanized war – not primarily because of the demographics – but because of the force numbers.

      Russia’s war in the Donbas seems to confirm the evidence from the Iraq invasion and the Gulf War. There, force size seems to have played a significant role in defining the campaign,