Masses of Iraqi POWs Slowing Allied Advance

Allied soldiers who had expected to face flaming trenches and lethal minefields in the opening hours of the ground war found they had a quite different problem on their hands when the invasion actually began: a mass of surrendering Iraqis.

More than 10,000 Iraqis were reported to have given up during the first 24 hours of the ground offensive, slowing the allied advance and creating logistic snarls that Defense Secretary Dick Cheney described as “one of our biggest problems.”

And Pentagon officials predicted they would be handling many more prisoners of war, perhaps as many as 100,000, as the campaign continues.

“Thousands of them are coming out of their holes,” said a Pentagon official in Saudi Arabia. “We just hope they don’t all surrender at once.”

“They just keep coming and coming,” said an amazed staff officer at 1st Marine Division headquarters. “I didn’t know they had that many to give.”

Pentagon officials had long expected that thousands of Iraqis might surrender, and they had made elaborate preparations for such an eventuality. But they had expected most of the surrendering to come after they had surrounded large chunks of the Iraqi forces, not while they were making their initial forays across the border.

As a result, advances that were planned as lightning surprise thrusts have been slowed, at least to some extent.

“You’ve got to take the time to surround them, disarm them, tie them up and arrange to get someone to take custody of them,” one Pentagon official said. “It’s not nearly as bad as having to root them out of bunkers. But it’s still a big pain.”

The large numbers of POWs could quickly strain available transportation. While prisoners are usually trucked to the rear in empty supply vehicles, with these numbers some may be simply disarmed and marched to the rear, military officials said.

Indeed, by nightfall Sunday, the Marines of the 1st Division found that to be their biggest problem--finding enough buses and trucks to ferry their more than 3,200 Iraqi prisoners, including an army general, to holding centers in Saudi Arabia. Most had surrendered without any fight.

Military officials said the prisoners would be forced to walk south if the Iraqis stage a counterattack or begin shelling the allies’ forward positions.

“If we’re taking Iraqi rounds, then we don’t have any other choice,” said Maj. Rex Forney, a deputy provost marshal of the military police for the 101st Airborne Division in northern Saudi Arabia.

Some believe the large number of POWs so soon in the offensive also could strain allied food supplies.

Jeff Shaffer, a military analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said U.S. forces had set aside for the POWs about 40,000 of the MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) that are the staple field diet of American troops. But he said that supply could run out quickly, considering the hunger of some of the Iraqi troops.

“Some of the men have gone through two of these meals in one sitting,” Shaffer said.

An additional complication, he said, is that these meals may not be suitable for the Iraqis to eat under Muslim law, since about one-fourth of the supplies of MREs contain pork--sausage, pork and beans, and other food items.

One reason for the large number of POWs may be that many Iraqi troops expect better treatment from U.S. forces than they have received from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

“Some of their commanders have told them we will torture them and even kill them,” said Forney. “But they say they don’t believe that.”

And many may know that the Saudis have gained a reputation for giving even greater comfort to captured Iraqi troops, whom they call “military refugees.”

Television footage released Sunday of prisoners at the front suggests that many may be ready for an easier life. The videotapes showed tired and dirty Iraqis, some bleeding and without shirts, sitting between Saudi captors with guns trained on them.

Nearby are some of the bunkers that have been destroyed by weeks of allied shelling. Other TV footage shows a long line of prisoners walking slowly away from the front, their hands clasped behind their heads, as allied armor speeds in the opposite direction.

POWs sometimes pose security risks for their captors, but Pentagon officials and military analysts said they do not think the Iraqis captured so far would be likely to cause such dangers.

“You would probably be safe escorting them with one jeep with a machine gun at the front, and another jeep at the rear,” one Pentagon official said.

According to Pentagon plans, the prisoners are to be held near the front lines for a day or more in improvised compounds that sometimes consist of little more than 10-to-20-foot holes surrounded by razor wire.

Army doctrine calls for captors to use “the six S’s” in their initial handling of prisoners: The POWs are (1) safeguarded from harm, (2) searched, (3) secured--tied up or corraled--and (4) silenced, so they cannot discuss escape plans or coordinate false stories. The officers are (5) separated from enlisted men so they cannot put on lower-rank uniforms to try to escape interrogation. Finally, the POWs are (6) sped to the rear for further questioning and legal disposition.

Prisoners of the U.S. troops are interned at two camps, nicknamed Brooklyn and the Bronx, located on the eastern and western ends, respectively, of Saudi Arabia’s northern border. There they are fingerprinted, interviewed and inspected by doctors.

After several weeks, they will be turned over to the Saudis.

Analyst Shaffer said the presence of so many POWs may be a complication for the allied military offensive because U.S. soldiers in past wars have shown that they will interrupt their usual assignments to help out POWs. In World War II, captured Japanese troops were sometimes invited to take hot showers and eat with American soldiers before they were sent off to POW camps.

“If you’re trying to make a fast advance, that kind of stuff could be a distraction,” Shaffer said.

Iraqi conscripted troops also surrendered en masse during Iraq’s eight-year war with Iran, Shaffer said, even though they might have expected much harsher treatment from their longtime Iranian enemies than from the U.S. or allied troops.

But he said Iraq’s professional soldiers--including members of the Republican Guard, now positioned north of the Kuwaiti-Iraqi border--took losses of up to 50% without surrendering.

The Pentagon made special plans for POWs in this campaign in part because American commanders remembered the logistic nightmare that ensued in 1943 when more than 100,000 Germans and Italians surrendered to Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and Gen. George Patton in Tunisia.

The Americans had been expecting no more than about 10,000 POWs, and the prisoners had to be transported to camps at the end of a long rail line. To make matters worse, the Germans refused to eat the garlicky fare that was prepared for the Italians, while the Italians balked at the bland food favored by their allies.