Iraqi POWs: Huge Logistical Challenge

The good news for American and British forces invading Iraq is that thousands of Iraqi soldiers have raised white flags - putting up their hands rather than fighting.

The tough question now: What to do with all these people?

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 ragtag fighters in T-shirts.

But it may not be so easy in coming days.

In the 1991 Gulf War, U.S. 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. Minding 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 Friday as U.S. and British troops swept into southern Iraq: Iraq's 51st Infantry Division, numbering some 8,000 men, gave up outside Basra. The 51st's commander and deputy commander were among those who surrendered, making them the highest-ranking Iraqi officials to give up, said U.S. Navy Capt. Frank Thorp, a spokesman for Central Command.

American and British forces came under artillery fire Saturday as they moved up Highway 80 south of Basra. But groups of Iraqi soldiers came out to surrender on the highway while others held out against the U.S. and British convoy grinding past blazing oil pipelines and concrete barracks.

The roadside was dotted with Iraqi tanks blackened by direct hits on their dug-in dirt bunkers. White flags flew over some deserted, dilapidated barracks, including one where a white cloth had been hung over a picture of Saddam Hussein.

Other barracks still needed to be cleared. U.S. Marines used amphibious assault vehicles to surround clusters of low, crude concrete buildings and shell nearby tanks.

At one of the barracks, Iraqis emerged to surrender, stumbling across a rutted field clutching bags of belongings. As Marines moved toward them, the Iraqis knelt in the field with their arms crossed behind their heads.

Elsewhere groups of Iraqi men in civilian clothes stood near the highway. Allied officers believed they were Iraqi soldiers who had fled their barracks and changed out of their uniforms before the Marines and British forces arrived.

To the rear, other allied troops took custody of throngs of prisoners who surrendered Friday, including members of Iraq's 51st Infantry Division. Captives were being placed in improvised pens of razor wire, watched over by Marines; their partly disassembled rifles were piled beside the road.

The surrendering soldiers were not the elite Republican Guard which anchors Saddam's defense. They appeared to be underfed, ragtag fighters, many of them draftees in T-shirts.

Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf said those captured were civilians, and denied the 51st Infantry Division had capitulated.

In any event, the number of those who have surrendered at or near Basra is "in the thousands" and coalition forces have taken about 1,500 POWs, he said.

The large-scale surrenders pose logistical challenges as the U.S.-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, notes Kenneth Bacon, a former Pentagon spokesman who now heads Refugees International.

"One of the things they've promised officers is that they'd let them keep their sidearms, stay in their barracks, and try to use them as policemen, guards as soon as possible," Bacon said.

The Washington Post reported in its Saturday editions that, in an intensified effort to divide Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from his inner circle, U.S. military and intelligence officers in recent days have communicated with some Iraqi commanders and have secretly designated buildings in the capital for defectors to occupy, promising they will not be targeted by U.S. airstrikes.

U.S. 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 on 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 center inside Iraq. Kuwait and other Persian Gulf states have said they don't 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, according to a British media pool report.

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 shouldn't 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."

Several American POWs from the 1991 Gulf War reported being beaten and sexually assaulted by Iraqis. 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 by our brave Armed Forces.

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

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