Christopher Bellamy: After seven days of warfare, Baghdad is 'centre of gravity'

With the deep-water port of Umm Qasr secured at last and British troops moving into the outskirts of Basra, the decisive point of the war yesterday was still the approach to Baghdad, which for Allied strategic planners is the Iraqi "centre of gravity".

The Defence Secretary said Saddam Hussein's government had lost control of southern Iraq and the British would be switching some effort to reinforce the US grab for the Iraqi capital.

After the seventh day of the war and the sixth of land combat, British and US leaders took stock. The national leaders' focus has probably shifted to the "end-state", although that should have been decided at the beginning. To the type of government to be installed after President Saddam falls, and to the role of the United Nations.

On the battlefield, considerable gains have been made in the first six days, although the predominance of "friendly fire" deaths, especially those suffered by the British, has been a shock. The US-British-Australian force (it can hardly be called a coalition, for it is not) has a deep-water port, and largely surrounds Iraq's second city.

The "rising" in Basra reported on Tuesday night does not seem to have taken hold as fast as initially hoped. The British fought artillery duels with 1,000 pro-Saddam militia. An assault into Basra itself may still be some way off.

Continued resistance behind the advancing ground forces was probably inevitable, although it has been much stiffer than expected. An even bigger shock has been that many Iraqis did not welcome the invaders as liberators, as forecast.

Many in the areas seized by the British and Americans said they still feared the secret police. Only time and extensive foot patrolling and "hearts and minds" operations will reassure them.

Unsurprisingly, the British, with their long experience of peace operations, in Northern Ireland and elsewhere, have proved more effective in Umm Qasr and Basra than the Americans.

The US troops are incomparable in the open field but their tendency to stand back and blast at the landscape does not work when fighting in built-up areas. At least, it does not unless they are prepared to inflict huge numbers of casualties indiscriminately.

Yesterday dawned with reports of ferocious fighting around Najaf, on the main approach to Baghdad from the south, as the US V Corps repelled fanatical assaults. Hundreds of Iraqis were reported to have been killed, with no US losses.

This extraordinary difference in casualties can be attributed to the superiority of US weapons, armour and training, and to the night-vision and other surveillance equipment the Americans use. To them, the night is day: to the Iraqis, it is still dark. Some US officers reported Iraqi infantry taking on US armoured troops, with predictably bloody results.

If the Iraqis were making a desperate attempt to dislodge the Americans, that would make sense. The US troops have been moving slowly towards Baghdad, delayed by sandstorms, but they are also at the end of long, stretched supply lines and they are exhausted. It is the time to attack them.

And Najaf is a crucial communications centre. Here the main supply route running along the Euphrates from Nasiriyah and the ports seized, or in the process of being seized to the east, meets another road coming up, west of the Euphrates, from the airfield at As-Salman. Najaf, too, has an airfield. And from here, roads run on both sides of the Euphrates to within 30 miles of the capital.

Yesterday the Iraqis seemed to be responding in text-book fashion. A contingent of the Republican Guard, 1,000 vehicles, suggesting a brigade at least, was reported to be heading south, into the open space to the east of the advancing US V Corps and straight towards the key crossing at Nasiriyah, where US Marines are still engaged.

Were the sides more equal, this almost Napoleonic stroke could cut the Americans' line of communication along and across the Euphrates, and isolate the extended and V Corps troops.

But such "revolving door" movements, reminiscent of the 1914 Schlieffen Plan or the fighting on the eastern front in both world wars, is unlikely to succeed in Iraq.

America has total air dominance, and can track this formation easily, more easily than it can track the movements of small groups of lightly armed infantry. This could be the last example of a classic armoured manoeuvre, severed in a 21st-century collision with information-age warfare. We shall see.

Christopher Bellamy is professor of military science and doctrine at Cranfield University