Irak : comment tout a commencé

A l’heure où le futur secrétaire à la défense américain est en train d’annoncer que les USA ne sont pas “en train de gagner la guerre”, Tom Pritchard, auteur d’un livre sur la bataille de Nasiraya (Ambush Alley: the Most Extraordinary Battle of the Iraq War), présente dans un article les péripéties de cette bataille commencée le 23 mars 2003, trois jours après le déclenchement de l’invasion de l’Irak.

La thèse de Pritchard tend à réconcilier les conceptions diverses sur les événements d’Irak: y a-t-il eu deux guerres, l’une que les USA ont gagnée et la seconde qu’ils sont en train de perdre? Y a-t-il une guerre que les USA ont gagnée et la paix qu’ils sont en train de perdre? Au contraire, Pritchard tend à fusionner les deux événements : l’attaque du 20 mars 2003 conclue victorieusement le 10 avril et ce qui a suivi.

Pour Pritchard, Nasiraya rassemble tous les ingrédients auxquels les USA vont se heurter à partir de fin avril 2003, jusqu’à la catastrophe actuelle. Cette bataille montre toutes les erreurs d’évaluation et toutes les erreurs opérationnelles et psychologiques des USA durant la phase d’après le 10 avril 2003, établissant ainsi un lien puissant entre les deux périodes et, d’une certaine façon, les fusionnant. Il n’y aurait donc eu qu’une guerre contre l’Irak, — ce qui permettra d’encore plus préciser la complexité et la richesse du concept G4G (“Guerre de la 4ème Génération”).

«One of the most difficult jobs for the US Iraq Study Group, which is due to report today, has perhaps been to pinpoint the moment that Iraq started to go wrong. How did scenes of joyful Iraqis hacking down Saddam's statue so quickly turn into images of car bombs, grieving mothers and burning helicopters? Some experts argued before the panel that it was a mistake to disband the Iraqi security forces. Others said there had not been enough troops on the ground. In most analyses, however, there is a tendency to treat the invasion and post-invasion of Iraq as separate entities. The invasion is generally portrayed as well planned and executed, the post-invasion strategy as ill thought-out, chaotic and undermanned; hidden somewhere in the months following the arrival of US forces in Baghdad there lies a magic moment when Iraq somehow began to descend into chaos.

»In fact, the fight to get to Baghdad and the one coalition forces have been engaged in ever since have much in common. All the information about the nature of the trouble to come was apparent from the first days of the war. If lessons learned then had been incorporated into military and political thinking, it would have injected a much-needed dose of realism at an early stage.

»Those lessons were best synthesised in a little known but bloody battle, fought in a lesser known part of Iraq on day four of the war. It was a battle that America nearly lost.

»It was dawn on March 23 2003 when marines from Task Force Tarawa approached the town of Nasiriya in southern Iraq. They had been assigned a routine manoeuvre, taking two key bridges to open up a route to Baghdad. Nasiriya was a predominantly Shia town that had rebelled against Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf war. US intelligence suggested that as soon as the Americans rolled into town, the city's defenders would lay down their weapons and, as one marine commander expressed it, “put flowers in our gun barrels, hold up their babies for us to kiss and give us the keys to the city”.

»But when Task Force Tarawa's lead units reached the outskirts they came across the burnt out remnants of several vehicles of the US army's 507th Maintenance Company. A captain in the 507th told wide-eyed marine commanders how his convoy had taken a wrong turn at night, driven into Nasiriya and been attacked by Iraqi fighters. Several US soldiers were still missing, including a young army private, Jessica Lynch.

»It was her fate that attracted attention in the days following. But it's what happened to Task Force Tarawa that is most instructive about the nature of the Iraq war and about what life would be like once coalition forces got to Baghdad.

»As marine units moved into Nasiriya they were attacked by massed numbers of Iraqi fighters. To the surprise of marines on the ground, few of the Iraqi combatants seemed to be wearing military uniforms. Many were dressed in the distinctive black pyjamas worn by Shia Muslims, and much of the gunfire came from dwellings flying black flags, denoting them as Shia homes. And yet the Shias were supposed to be on the Americans' side….»

Pourquoi donc cette révolte généralisée contre les Américains, ce jour-là, à Nasiraya? Pour une raison vieille comme le monde, que les bureaucraties occidentalistes et américanistes n’imaginent guère, derrière leurs raisonnements sophistiqués, argumentés, aseptisés : les Américains étaient des étrangers, des envahisseurs, une armée conquérant le territoire national. Et, contre cela, une population se lève. Vieille histoire.

Mis en ligne le 6 décembre 2006 à 11H53