Prisoners pose big challenge for advancing troops

The first prisoners of war captured in southern Iraq were searched and herded into temporary barbed wire enclosures.

Troops then went to work building camps and providing medical care, food and water for the mix of uniformed soldiers and fighters in T-shirts. But it may not be so easy in the coming days.

In the 1991 Gulf War, US forces were overwhelmed by 69,000 surrendering Iraqi soldiers, many of whom wandered around the battlefields looking for anybody, including reporters, to take them captive.

Looking after the POWs hindered some American combat units.

This time around, military officials say they expect 270,000 Iraqis – or more than half the nation’s army – to lay down their arms.

That began yesterday as US and British troops swept into southern Iraq: an Iraqi division, numbering some 8,000 men, gave up outside Basra.

Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf said those captured were civilians.

In either case, it poses logistical challenges as the US-led forces advance on Baghdad and prepare to occupy Iraq for an extended period of time when the conflict ends.

It could also pose a threat: Captured enemy troops will be behind advancing troops, noted Kenneth Bacon, a former Pentagon spokesman who now heads Refugees International.

“One of the things they have promised officers is that they would let them keep their sidearms, stay in their barracks, and try to use them as policemen, guards as soon as possible,” Bacon said.

On the road to Basra today, about 50 Iraq prisoners could be seen packed tightly into two circles of concertina wire.

US forces have issued English-Arabic command cards to front line units, with phonetic translations of such phrases as “Stop or I will shoot,” “Surrender” and “You are a prisoner.”

Troops have been trained how to keep civilians out of harm’s way while dealing with POWs, and how to use judo holds to search a belligerent prisoner.

Military police following behind attacking troops are to collect prisoners and move them to a better, more secure holding area and then to a permanent detention centre inside Iraq.

Kuwait and other Persian Gulf states have said they do not want POWs on their turf.

Almost immediately after hundreds of Iraqi troops surrendered to Allied forces invading southern Iraq, Britain’s Queens Dragoon Guards began setting up POW camps in the desert.

Plans call for Army lawyers to be on hand to ensure compliance with international treaties like the 1950 Geneva Convention and for visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Iraq’s Interior Minister Diab al-Ahmed warned that American and British forces should not count on Geneva Convention protections if they get captured.

“Most probably they will be treated as mercenaries, hirelings and as war criminals,” al-Ahmed said.

“For sure, international law does not apply to those.”

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman declined to say how the United States might respond if American prisoners were mistreated, but he said such actions by Iraq “would be a terrible mistake”.

Later, the Iraqi Satellite TV released a statement from Saddam Hussein that Iraq will respect the enemy prisoners who are captured.

“Their rights will be respected in accordance with the law on prisoner rights provided by the Geneva Convention, despite our knowledge that the US administration perpetrated the most grotesque crimes against our people and humanity,” the statement from Saddam said.

Later, Iraqi Minister of Information Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf said the Iraqi president “ordered that despite all the crimes, treatment of foreign soldiers will be according to the Geneva convention.”