Top Officers Fear Wide Civil Unrest

CAMP COMMANDO, Kuwait, March 18 — As they prepare to head across the border, U.S. military commanders fear that Iraq will become consumed by "rolling civil strife" erupting all around advancing troops, confronting them with the dilemma of how and whether to intervene.

Military intelligence analysts have concluded that unrest likely will follow an invasion as different tribes, religious groups and ordinary Iraqis exact retribution for abuses during President Saddam Hussein's long rule. Senior U.S. officers, basing their predictions on intelligence and past experience, said they fear thousands of Iraqis could die.

Such turmoil could present a challenge for a U.S.-British invasion force tasked with racing toward Baghdad. Military officers agree that if they come upon murders or war crimes they have an obligation to halt them if they can. But less clear is when Army and Marine units should divert from their primary mission to intercede in violence that does not directly threaten them.

"There's a better-than-even chance that there's going to be rolling civil strife just in front of us and just behind us," said Col. Alan Baldwin, intelligence chief for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, which will help lead the way into Iraq when and if President Bush gives the order. "And that creates a real challenge for us."

A majority of Iraq's 24million people are Shiite Muslims who predominate in southern Iraq and have long chafed under Hussein's government, which like those before it is run chiefly by Sunni Muslims. With U.S. encouragement, they rose up after the Persian Gulf War in 1991, only to be crushed by Hussein's remaining forces while nearby U.S. troops stayed out of the conflict.

"The Shia in the south won't likely fight us," said a veteran U.S. military intelligence officer who specializes in Gulf affairs, "but they are quite likely to massacre every Baath Party official and family they can lay their hands on — and when we try to step in the middle we will incur Shia enmity as well."

Long-standing tribal enmities also could reemerge. Moreover, Kurds in the north have long resisted the central government's authority, even as two rival Kurdish factions vied with each other for supremacy and smuggling revenues. Kurdish leaders have warned they will oppose Turkish troops if they intervene, as Ankara has threatened.

"There's going to be a bloodletting all over the country," said a senior U.S. military officer who asked not to be named. "It's going to start early, and it's going to probably happen in spurts. It's going to start in the south. ... It may become wanton butchery. ... We will be on the horns of a moral dilemma."

U.S. commanders have civil affairs units charged with making contact with local leaders as soon as the invasion force enters to build relationships and try to maintain calm. Military planners have already turned their focus to managing the war's aftermath even before the first shots have been fired.

During training classes in the desert in the last few weeks, Marine officers taught their young troops that they had to step in if they encountered cases of reprisals. In one such class, the instructor depicted a scenario in which a group of Iraqis bring a beaten official from Hussein's ruling Baath Party to the Marines and vow to kill him unless the Americans arrest him.

"You can't let a war crime happen right in front of you," the instructor told the Marines.

Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, the top Marine commander in the Persian Gulf region, said he consulted with five Arabic linguists on the matter the other day — three Iraqis, an Egyptian and a Lebanese.

"The Iraqis cautioned us that there may be bloodletting in the cities," Conway said. "That concerned us a great deal. ... If we see that type of thing, our moral responsibility is to halt it. And yet these people would say that it needs to happen, it needs to be a natural sequence in the wake of a dictator that has abused certain sects of the population for several decades now."

The risk for Americans, Conway added, was that either standing aside or choosing sides would invariably alienate many Iraqis and "possibly create some antagonistic relations from the beginning."

For that and other reasons, the Marines have been reluctant to get involved in any postwar occupation of Iraq, although they may have no choice. Conway said he thinks the Marines will have to stay in some capacity after Hussein's government has fallen but made clear his distaste for such a task, if for no other reason than the long presence of so many troops here, which has warped deployment schedules across the Marine Corps.

"If I had a vote," Conway said, "I'd say let's get out of here."

Plans for a postwar occupation have not been finalized and could depend on the course of the war and the passions it ignites within the fractious Iraqi population. Military officers have been studying their obligations under international law should they step into the role of foreign occupiers.

"As an occupying power," the United States would take on "the obligation of civil government in Iraq," said Col. Bill Durrett, the staff judge advocate, or lawyer, for the Marines here, and so would have the responsibility to preserve and protect the civilian population.

No one is more conscious of that responsibility than the British commanders in the region who would be the first to take on the role of occupiers. The 1 UK Armored Division has been assigned to fight under Conway's 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in southern Iraq and then remain in the southern city of Basra to administer its approximately 1 million residents while the Marines continue toward Baghdad.

With that in mind, the British have been urging U.S. commanders to temper their war plan to avoid estranging the Iraqi population.

"There are two slightly different approaches," said Lt. Col. Jamie Martin, the chief British liaison at the Marine headquarters here at Camp Commando, about 25 miles south of the Iraqi border. "The British approach is in line with ... a good quote from Virgil — 'spare the weak and disarm the strong.' "

Staff writer Thomas E. Ricks in Washington contributed to this report.