Finally, we turn for our fifth case study to an instance of conventional military combat. Or nearly conventional combat – when modern troops are engaged in “military operations in urban terrain” (MOUT), many of the ordinary verities of warfare are suspended or modified. The wrestling in Iraq at the outset of Gulf War II revealed many of the characteristic difficulties of fighting in an environment in which armed enemy troops are intermingled with civilians and with irregular, nonuniformed – but deadly – opponents, and in which the troops' assigned mission may creep inexorably forward.

BACKGROUND ON THE BASRA CONFRONTATION

Basra is an ancient city, Iraq's second largest, situated in the southeastern corner of the country, at the confluence of the historic Tigris and Eurprates rivers. It commands Iraq's only port (on the Persian Gulf), and its population (variously estimated as between one and two million) is squeezed between Kuwait to the south, Iran to the east, and the rich Rumeila oil fields to the west. Importantly, 60 percent of the residents are Shia Moslems, the sect that is numerically more common in Iraq, but that had for decades been repressed by Saddam Hussein and his predominantly northern Sunni Moslem brethren. Basra has therefore long been viewed with suspicion, at best, by Baghdad, and the city was rightly considered a possible source of smoldering antiregime sentiment.