US forces thrust deep into southern Iraq, secure vital oil facilities

As the Iraq war lurched into its second day today with the US armoured forces thrusting deep into southern Iraq and moving swiftly to secure Iraq’s vital oil facilities, the general feeling in the South Block was that the calculations of the United States had gone awry and that this could lead to a long rather than a short war.

The political front is worrying for the US. Although there have been surrenders by some Iraqi soldiers, the Coalition of the Willing has not exactly grown by leaps and bounds and Bulgaria and the Philippines seem to be the US's most treasured allies.

Also, the US President signed on a pre-war strike on the basis of a CIA information that Iraq's top leadership would be eliminated if a house in southern Iraq was bombed.

However, the Indian foreign office is reported to have no information as to the success of the raid and the US media is reporting that only one person (they are unsure of the identity) is dead. So the success of the raid is dubious, government sources said.

With these setbacks, the clincher is the wide divergence between George Bush's first and second speech and the progression from a “short and swift” war to a “long and difficult” war, the sources said. Clearly the military strategy appears to have been reconfigured.

The capture of oil wells in Basra and Rumaila indicates that securing oil wells is now the US's top priority, rather than decapitating strikes. The battle is likely to be joined in northern Iraq in the next few days to prevent the Kurds from capturing them.

India's assessment is that the United Nations will have to willy nilly come back into the picture if the war carries on for a few more days because of the massive relief and reconstruction work that will be required. Several UN organisations are already in Ankara.

Kuwait has merely closed its airport for a brief while yesterday and today. The Indian government, whose main worry currently is the 300,000 odd strong labour force in Kuwait, believes that so long as there are commercial flights out of Kuwait Indians will be safe. It is evacuation and the attendant panic that represents the real danger for India.