Maj. Gen. Abd al-Ameer Abaees who led the popular uprising in Southern Iraq in 1991 writes, "the Iraqi people no longer trust the Americans" and he and Dawa, the strongest of the Shia opposition groups, are advising against an uprising (the New Yorker has posted an article about the end of the Gulf War online).

This is part of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting new Iraqi Crisis Report (you can subsribe by email in the upper right corner). They provided some of the best reporting on Yugoslavia, Kosovo, and the war crimes tribunal (even though the US fought the war before last there, major events in Serbia are virtually ignored). They are again largely using writers from the region including an Iraqi in Bagdhad.

Here is the full text of his piece:

Drawing the Enemy to Baghdad

Saddam Hussein is seeking to pull American and British forces into guerrilla warfare and street-to-street fighting.

By Maj. Gen. Abd al-Ameer Abaees in London (ICR No. 07, 24-Mar-03)

Saddam Hussein has built his entire military strategy around one goal: to stay in power. All Iraq's revenue and all its institutions, military and civilian, are directed toward that purpose.

In this war for survival, Saddam's strategy is quite unique. Conventional military strategy is to defend ground, but Saddam's plan is to leave the North and the South of his country in order to defend himself in Baghdad.

By establishing the pockets of resistance we have seen in the South, Saddam is trying to wear down American and British forces so they arrive weakened at Baghdad.

I believe the allies will succeed in getting rid of Saddam if their strategy is continuous bombardment of Baghdad. But it will be a catastrophe if they try to enter Baghdad by force. The 1991 uprising destroyed approximately 10 per cent of the infrastructure of the South. Imagine what the destruction to Baghdad would be in 2003.

In this first phase of the war, the push across southern Iraq, American and British forces are hoping that ordinary Iraqis will rise up against the regime as they did in 1991 after Saddam was defeated in Kuwait. But I am advising against this - as is Dawa, the strongest of the Shia opposition groups.

In 1991 we rose up because we thought Saddam's regime had collapsed. The Americans had promised they would help us, but they didn't. When Saddam sent armoured cars to crush the people, American planes were flying above. They watched as our people were killed.

The Iraqi people no longer trust the Americans.

In the South today, the regular army is putting up almost no resistance. But pockets of Republican Guards are fighting - reinforced, according to our sources, by the Fedayeen, elite commandos under the command of Saddam's oldest son Odey.