Anyone who has studied the Russian front of WW2, or has seen the first 15 minutes of the movie ENEMIES AT THE GATE, knows what "penal troops" are and how they are used. For those who don't, Stalin used "condemned" men in suicide attacks against the Germans. His NKVD henchmen armed penal troops just before battle, under their eye and massed machine guns. These troops were driven to attack and if they fell back, they were machine gunned for their troubles.
Saddam's Fedayeen bully boys have taken this one step farther. They don't use condemned enemies of the regime. They are taking any men or male children they can catch from their homes under the threat of torture, rape and murder of their families, driving them forth in "technicals," then staging these human wave assaults on American forces. Most of the luckless impressed "penal troops" die and most of the Fedayeen bully boys survive, escape and repeat the process.
CTD
The "fanatic attacks" we are seeing in Iraq are a straight forward application of that Stalinist tactic by Saddam Hussein. Jim Dunnigan says as much over on Strategypage.com:
Iraq's use of Stalinist terror tactics to force Iraqis to make suicide attacks on American troops was unexpected. (Trent: Austin Bay agrees here.)Saddam's secret police, Baath Party and Fedayeen have long used terror to compel compliance from the population. Refugees have told of this sort of brutality for decades. Saddam's thugs typically tortured and killed relatives of anyone who betrayed Saddam. This group punishment is an ancient practice, and still widely used in the Middle East. But the brutality of Saddam's henchmen is off the scale, including rape and mutilation that was, at first, not believed by Western officials. Then they saw the scars from wounds on defectors who had survived this treatment, and kept encountering more and more victims. Oddly enough, there was never much of an uproar against this in the West or in the Moslem world. Saddam was seen as "bad" but "someone we could do business with." Now Saddam's way of doing business is forcing Iraqi men to make suicidal attacks on coalition troops or see their families tortured and killed. This is being heard from Iraqi attackers who survive their encounters with coalition troops. Saddam's people supervise these attacks, standing behind the attackers, ready to shoot any that hesitate. Coalition troops have found many attackers who were shot in the back while advancing on coalition troops.
For American forces to be safe from these tactics, Saddam's terror apparatus in areas they over ran must be rooted out...but that is the subject of another post.
Update:
Donald Sensing sent the following link and message to Joe:
"Joe,
Here is the link to a column I put up last night on the similarities and the crucial differences between the bushido-driven Japanese in WW 2 and the Islamist-driven fedayeen in Iraq. Thought you'd be interested.
http://www.donaldsensing.com/2003_03_01_archive.html#200063862"
Trent:
I,ve been reflecting much on the penal batallion tactics and how to counter them. I think it's time to unleash the Coalition snipers. Give them a carte blanche to infiltrate say Basra and hunt those low lives down. When enough buddies heads explode or disappear, they'll panic. The Coalition has to break that sense of temerious impunity that the scum have.
They must never be safe; never rest; always looking around.
I'm deeply fed up with how those pistoleros take advantage of the Coalition's upholding of the laws of war. We need to make example of the more bloodthirsty creeps. A public execution or 2 will act as a tonic but sniper units sysmatically annhiliating the thugs will be more effective.
xavier
It is telling that the press has discussed these "penal troops" very little. They continue to speak superficially of "stiff Iraqi resistance," rarely raising the question of WHY they resist.
Unfortunately stalinist war technique creates high bloodshed and body counts. We can expect the battle for baghdad to pay witness to some atrocities, but we need to remind the world that most of soldiers fight under duress and the citizens become terrorists at the point of a gun.
Looks like the spam filter needs some maintenance.
Robin: I just did a bit of cleanup. If activity of that sort picks up I'll ask the Powers that Be to consider banning the miscreant.
Thanks for the heads-up.