& çâÌæÚUæð´ ·¤è ¥ôÚU Îð¹Ùæ ÁæÚUè ÚU¹ð´ ¥ÍæüÌ ¥ÂÙð ÜÿØ ÂÚU ŠØæÙ ÚU¹ð´Ð ãæÚU Ù ×æÙð´, €UØô´ç·¤ ·¤æ× ·¤ÚUÙð âð ¥æÂ·¤ô ©gðàØ ·¤è Âýæç# ãôÌè ãñ ¥õÚU ÁèßÙ ·¤æ ¹æÜèÂÙ ÎêÚU ãôÌæ ãñÐ ÖÜð ãè ÁèßÙ ×ð´ ç·¤ÌÙè Öè ·¤çÆÙæ§ü €UØô´ Ù ¥æ°, çÁ™ææâæ ¥õÚU ©ˆâæã ÕÙæ° ÚU¹ð´Ð ŠØæÙ ÚU¹ð´, ÜÿØ ã×ðàææ ¥æÂ·Ô¤ Âæâ ãôÌð ãñ´ çÁ‹ãð´ ÂæÙð ·Ô¤ çÜ° ÂýØæâ ¥æÂ ·¤Öè Öè àæéM¤ ·¤ÚU â·¤Ìð ãñ´Ð

The Final Resistance

Will Republican Guard be able to protect Baghdad?

WASHINGTON POST
As United States troops close in on Baghdad, a central question facing American commanders is how fiercely Iraq's Republican Guard will fight.
The roughly 100,000 soldiers in six Republican Guard divisions are considered Iraq's most loyal and capable force, better trained and better equipped than the rest of Saddam Hussein's 350,000-man army.
Three of the divisions are now guarding approaches to Baghdad. Perhaps the toughest unit of all, the Medina Division, is dug in with its Soviet-made T-72 tanks to the south of the Iraqi capital and is the focus of a new American air assault.
"It is one of the best of the Republican Guard divisions, one of the most powerful," Maj. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, vice director of operations for the military's Joint Staff, told reporters today. "It is a linchpin to the consistency of
the Republican Guard defense."
For more than a decade and especially in the last year, as planning proceeded for this war military intelligence officers and independent analysts have been paying special attention to the strength and tactics of the Republican Guard.
Created from a small palace guard during Iraq's war against Iran in the 1980's, the Republican Guard came of age as a formidable fighting force in the last two years of that long conflict. Republican Guards were volunteers not conscripts who were given bonuses, new cars and subsidized housing to join.
Unlike the American military, which relies on speed and firepower, the Republican Guard fought largely set-piece battles that relied on detailed planning and logistics.
When the first President Bush waged war in 1991 to evict Iraqi troops from Kuwait, American
commanders assumed that the Republican Guard would stand and fight. But after 38 days of airstrikes and artillery barrages from Army forces, battered Guard divisions retreated to Iraq from Kuwait when they saw they were outflanked by the advancing United States Army.
"Generally, they fought, but they were not elite forces," said Gen. Ronald H. Griffith, a retired Persian Gulf war commander. "They made a valiant effort, but they were far less skillful than I anticipated."
This time, however, the Republican Guards are fighting for their lives on their soil. Although their equipment is degraded now after 12 years of sanctions against Iraq, military commanders say they believe that the Guard units around Baghdad are near full strength, and may have been issued chemical weapons.
Apache attack helicopters, Army long-range missiles and
Navy and Air Force bombers have been pummelling the Guard divisions, especially the Medina, for two days in an effort to destroy not only their armour but also their will to fight.
To defend Baghdad, the Republican Guard has established two defensive rings: one about 50 miles from the capital, and the other just on the outskirts. In addition to the Medina Division, the Nida is to the east and the Hammurabi to the west. A fourth division usually based in the north, the Adnan, moved close to Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's power base.
Historically, the Republican Guard has been used as a buffer between the regular Iraqi Army and Baghdad, to prevent mutinies. The divisions also serve to deter uprisings by Shiites in the south and Kurds in the north.
But Saddam Hussein has never fully trusted the Republican Guard, either its generals were involved in attempted coups in the 1990's and
has kept them outside the capital.
Baghdad itself is defended by the Special Republican Guard, the most reliable Iraqi unit, which numbers more than 15,000 troops and also guards other presidential installations, including Saddam Hussein's compound in Tikrit.
An array of other security forces and militias carried out the assaults and guerrilla raids in Basra, Umm Qasr and Nasiriya last weekend.
Pentagon officials said much of the resistance in southern Iraq was probably driven by fedayeen, a security force under the control of Saddam Hussein's son Uday that is trained to maintain order in peacetime and operate as a guerrilla army in war.
In urban areas in the south, fedayeen troops were forcing regular Iraqi troops to hold their positions and carrying out operations on their own, officials said.
The fedayeen have been organised into provincial units, and trained to operate independently
of and even in the absence of orders from Baghdad, these officials said.
"To tell you the truth, they've always been above the law they're Saddam's internal terror troops," a Pentagon official said. "They have no role in post-Saddam Iraq. It's no wonder they're fighting to the death. Themselves, they are forming pockets of resistance. And they're going through residential areas finding deserters."
On Iraqi television Saddam Hussein exhorted the fedayeen to continue their attacks, saying: "The Iraqi mujahedeen are now inflicting very serious damage against the enemy. And as long as the enemy works to make it a short period so that they can get out of this quagmire, we are trying, and we will do our best, to make it last as long as possible and to lead the war to stay down on us until they are strangled, until they believe they are strangled under the horse's hoof of resistance."