Craters, Iranian Prisoners Mark Site of Iraqi Victory

From the slits in their cement and sandbag bunkers on the eastern side of this marshy island, Iraqi troops peer out across the Shatt al Arab waterway towards the Iranian lines at Khorramshahr, a scant 300 yards away.

Everything on the other side appears deserted. But through binoculars, a figure can be seen darting swiftly behind a wall of sandbags that fringe the shore of the shell-shattered and now destroyed and unusable Iranian oil port.

It was across this narrow strip of water, its shimmering surface pierced here and there by the rusted superstructure of a sunken oil tanker, that thousands of Iranian Revolutionary Guards launched a Christmas Eve offensive, briefly capturing most of Umm al Rasas and three other islands and gaining the Iraqi western bank of the Shatt al Arab at several points.

The Iraqis, in a fierce counteroffensive that relied heavily on superior firepower, recaptured all of the overrun positions the following day and repelled the invaders.

Portraying the successful defense of the western bank and the islands as a “decisive victory” in the six-year-old Persian Gulf War, the Iraqis asserted that they killed more than 30,000 Iranian soldiers and captured hundreds more, while suffering only several scores of casualties on their side.

“You may not believe it, but it is the truth. Our casualties were in the tens--many tens, but only tens,” said Lt. Gen. Maher Abdul Rashid, commander of the Iraqi 7th Corps headquartered near the southern port of Basra. “But the enemy’s casualties were in the thousands, the many thousands.

“In all the battles I have witnessed, I have never seen such casualties,” he continued. “You do not believe it, but the ones who believe it are the Iranian mothers . . . whose sons’ fate was to become food for the fishes.”

Western military analysts in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, tend to discount Iraq’s claims of a major victory with thousands of Iranian war dead as an exaggeration intended to boost morale and polish the tarnished image of the Iraqi army both at home and abroad.

The figure of more than 30,000 Iranian war dead “is absolutely ridiculous,” one Western military expert said. “Knock off at least one zero and maybe two.”

Nevertheless, it was clear from a two-day tour of the southern war front that the fighting, if brief, had been fierce.

Craters, Shell Casings

Everywhere the reporters were taken, they saw the litter of battle--bomb craters and spent shell casings, huts and bunkers scarred by shrapnel and groves of palm trees whose scorched, blackened trunks had been snapped in two like twigs by the force of explosions.

At a makeshift POW camp at Abu al Khasib, a mile or two from the front, the reporters were shown about 200 Iranian prisoners captured in the attack, along with piles of Chinese- and Soviet-made weapons. There was also other gear used in the crossing, such as life jackets and wet suits made in the United States, Britain and Italy. One reporter, sifting through a pile of captured field radios, found one with Hebrew letters stenciled on it.

The prisoners, many shaking from fear and shock in the cold morning air, were ordered to kneel on a concrete roadway while the reporters photographed them.

Most were barefoot and many were bandaged. Some grimaced and moaned in pain, some held their heads in their hands to hide their expressions while others just stared, eyes wide and blank, at nothing.

Wound Brings Tears

One young prisoner, with a leg wound still bleeding through its fresh bandage, was carried to join the others by an Iraqi soldier. Before he was set down, his injured leg brushed the shoulder of another kneeling prisoner and he screamed out in pain. The Iraqi laid him quickly on the ground, where he pressed his face to the cold concrete and started to cry. Iraqi officers said the prisoners ranged in age from 15 to 56.

The tour itself was a rare event, because the Iraqis seldom take Western reporters to their front lines. However, having scored a clear if less than epochal victory over the Iranians, the Iraqis seemed determined to make the most of it for propaganda purposes.

And for Iraq, the victory came none too soon. After several years of stalemate, the balance of the war appeared to shift in Iran’s favor when Iranian troops crossed the Shatt al Arab and captured the Iraqi town of Al Faw at the mouth of the Persian Gulf in February.

The Iraqis tried but failed to take it back. In retaliation, they seized the Iranian border town of Mehran on the central war front in May, but could not hold onto it and retreated with heavy losses before an Iranian counterattack in early July.

Assessments Changed

Until this year, most military analysts in the West believed that the war was virtually unwinnable by either side, since Iraq’s 5-to-1 advantage in aircraft and armor more or less neutralized Iran’s 3-to-1 advantage in manpower and its willingness to suffer enormous casualties in so-called “human wave” offensives.

However, after the Iraqi setbacks on the Faw Peninsula and Mehran, some Western military analysts began to rethink their assessments and to shift to the opinion that Iran might actually win the war that has become the longest-running conventional conflict this century.

That perception was damaging not only to Iraqi morale but to the substantial financial and political support that Iraq receives from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other gulf countries that fear that an Iranian victory might speed the spread of Islamic fundamentalism and lead to the destabilization of their own regimes.

Lately, however, there have been signs that these countries may be trying to balance their horror at the prospect of an Iranian victory with the pragmatic need to come to terms with Tehran should it win the war. Reports of an extensive Saudi role in the covert sale of U.S. arms to Iran and recent Saudi and Kuwaiti attempts to appease Iran on the question of oil pricing and production by members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries have been cited by analysts as examples of this shift.

Iraq Needed a Success

“After its ignominious failures at Faw and Mehran, Iraq badly needed a military success both for domestic consumption and for its backers in Jordan and the gulf,” a Western diplomat in Baghdad said.

“We have broken the enemy’s backbone in this battle,” declared Maj. Gen. Talea al Douri, commander of the 3rd Army Corps which, together with the 7th Corps, is responsible for the defense of the southern front.

“What Iran has been planning for 10 months, we finished in 14 hours. Their casualties were unbelievable. Iran has now lost its well-trained Revolutionary Guards,” he said.

Despite such grandiose assertions, Western diplomats--and privately, a number of senior Iraqi army officers interviewed at or near the front--indicated that they do not think the Iranian attempt to cross the Shatt al Arab was the abortive start of the so-called “final offensive” Iran has long been threatening to launch.

Iranian Troops Massed

Noting that the Iranians have an estimated 650,000 troops massed on their side of the border, Western military analysts said the latest fighting appeared to involve no more than about 30,000 troops on both sides.

While insisting that much larger numbers were involved, senior Iraqi commanders conceded that the Iranian attack was aimed at achieving the more limited but nonetheless critical objective of capturing the islands and gaining a bridgehead on the west bank of the Shatt al Arab in preparation for an assault on Basra, Iraq’s second largest city.

Only 10 miles from the front, Basra bears the scars of years of periodic Iranian shelling. Here and there, buildings lie in cratered ruins while sandbags line nearly every street, protecting doorways and shop windows against the blast of explosions.

‘We Were Ready for Them’

“The enemy’s goal was Basra,” said Gen. Douri. “But we knew this and were ready for them.”

Indeed, Basra’s defenses are formidable. Several hundred thousand Iraqi troops are believed to be in the area, and a giant earthen wall studded with tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery positions stands between the city and the front-line defenses along the Shatt al Arab.

Were the Iranians to succeed in capturing Basra, they would sever Iraq’s overland link to neighboring Kuwait, heightening the fears of the jittery gulf states. Western analysts believe such an achievement could also prove deeply destabilizing to the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, whose overthrow Iran has made the main condition for ending the long and bloody war.

Expects New Attack

Western analysts and Iraqi military strategists agree that if and when Iran does launch its “final offensive,” Basra will be its initial strategic objective. Thus the Iraqi determination to defend it at any cost.

Gen. Rashid, the 7th Corps commander whose forces defended Umm al Rasas, said he does not think that the failure of the latest attack will deter the Iranians from trying again. “We expect them to attack at any time,” he said, “but we are ready for them.”

A New Year’s Day tour of Umm al Rasas and other front-line positions, however, suggested that the Iraqis did not expect another attack to be imminent.

Long lines of weary troops were packing up their bedrolls and being pulled back from the front, while others were washing socks, cooking meals or lounging outside their bunkers, seemingly oblivious to the sporadic artillery and mortar exchanges whizzing overhead. Most of the fire was outgoing, but now and then an Iranian shell would land with a loud thud and a puff of black smoke. On two occasions, the shells landed within a few hundred yards of the reporters, but the Iraqi soldiers around them seemed unconcerned. Their morale appeared to be high and they flashed victory signs and broke into war dances whenever they saw a television camera being pointed at them.

“Death to the invaders!” one soldier shouted. “And happy new year to you,” he added with a grin.