A war with no front lines

ALONG HIGHWAY 8, Iraq -- As American soldiers and Marines swiftly advance toward Baghdad, British forces left behind to staff the checkpoints, control the roads and occupy the cities here in southern Iraq say the military campaign for them has taken on the feel of a Belfast-style guerrilla war.

It is, they say, a war with no front lines, no heavy troop concentrations, no fixed positions -- and no safe areas.

From Safwan, just north of the Kuwaiti border, to Umm Qasr, 15 miles to the southeast on the Persian Gulf, to the highway leading north to Basra, Iraqi troops armed with rocket-propelled grenades have staged hit-and-run ambushes against British outposts and U.S. convoys passing through on the long way north. They have laid landmines on roads, set booby-traps and caused British units camped along the highways to constantly shift positions at night to evade attack.

British officers said they had to briefly close the border with Kuwait Sunday night and early Monday morning because of fears of ambushes on U.S. convoys driving through Safwan, which was captured on the first day of the war. With most of the U.S. Marines and 3rd Infantry Division soldiers who rolled across the border Thursday now far up the road to Baghdad, some of them 200 miles or more, they have created for themselves a potentially vulnerable supply line from northern Kuwait.

An estimated 1,000 Iraqi troops armed with Soviet-era tanks and artillery have held out for four days in Basra, a city of more than 1 million people that is the regional capital. Umm Qasr, a key port for military or humanitarian supplies, was declared to be under U.S. and British control three days ago, but house-to-house battles still raged Monday in the gulfside city.

In both cities, Iraqi defenders have defied the U.S. claims of victory by interspersing themselves with civilians and putting up a determined resistance. Just as troubling, British soldiers say, is the danger of attack along the region's roads, sometimes from troops and sometimes with Iraqis in civilian clothes but carrying AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

U.S. officials and analysts had predicted that the south's largely Shiite Muslim population would rise up against President Saddam Hussein's Baath Party government once the American-led invasion began.

The Shiites, a thin majority of Iraq's 23 million inhabitants, have long resented the fact that Sunni Muslims, the country's other main group, have dominated its government and economy. They rose up after the 1991 Persian Gulf War but were put down harshly by government security forces. In addition, an Iranian-supported Shiite-based rebel group, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, has several thousand armed guerrillas in Iran and, it claims, an underground ready to rebel in southern Iraq.

But so far, no such popular insurrection has been seen. In addition, the civilian population in general has been reserved toward the U.S. and British forces, many of whom expected to be greeted as liberators.

Army Gen. Tommy Franks, the U.S. Central Command chief who directs the war here, said in a news conference at command headquarters in Doha, Qatar, that the reason is simple; "It's fear," he declared. "Fear. The practice of this regime over a long time."

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, speaking in London, said another reason is the failure of U.S. forces to assist the rebellion in 1991. "They cannot be sure in their own minds yet that we mean what we say," Blair said. "In their own minds, they have to be very circumspect until they're sure the regime's gone."

Whatever the reason, British troops in the dry, sandy expanses here and in the humid port installations of Umm Qasr have gone on permanent alert, trying to avoid civilian casualties while also trying to avoid getting killed themselves.

"The buzzword here is 'asymmetrical battle,' " said Capt. Jim Bowen, stationed along Highway 8 with a British signal corps. "What you're seeing here is an asymmetrical battle. Instead of going in like last time with a clenched fist, we're kind of poking. Unfortunately, we've got many years of experience in Belfast," he added. "This has taken on more of a counter-insurgency feel, with vehicle checkpoints."

Another British fusilier, stationed on the road to Basra stopping Iraqi civilian vehicles wanting to enter the besieged city, had a similar comment. "This is more like Northern Ireland," he said.