The fall of Al-Faw .. The Iraqis were deceived and thousands of them were killed at the hands of the Iranian forces

The Iran-Iraq war is one of the longest regular wars in the modern era, as it lasted 8 years and led to the death of hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides, as well as the high material cost incurred by the two countries.

Despite the harshness of this war, Operation (Dawn 8), as the Iranians called it, in which they seized Al-Faw on February 11, 1986, was one of the harshest and most intense battles, as it took Iraq more than two years after it to return it with the fall of thousands of Iraqi soldiers.

The fall of the FAO

The city of Al-Faw, which is affiliated with Basra Governorate, is known as a coastal region (peninsula) and represents the administrative center of Al-Faw District, located in the southeast of Basra Governorate. It represents the southernmost point in Iraq and overlooks the Arabian Gulf and the banks of the Shatt al-Arab, and the city is 90 km away from the center of Basra. .

Former Iraqi Army Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Nizar Al-Khazraji, in his book (The 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, Fighter's Memoirs) describes the land of Al-Faw as soft and muddy and has a high groundwater level. When the rains fall, it becomes like a swamp, and large parts of it are submerged by shallow water, except for The areas bordering the Shatt al-Arab, where palm groves extend over a long strip, ranging in width between one and two kilometers.

A memorial to the dead in the Battle of Al-Faw indicates that about 53,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed (Al-Jazeera)

Iran's control of Faw is one of the most difficult for the Iraqis throughout the war between the two countries, as the Iraqi military leadership was deceived by Iranian forces, according to Majed Al-Qaisi, director of the Security and Defense Program at the Policy-Making Center for International and Strategic Studies.

Al-Qaisi, who worked before 2003 as an officer with the rank of a major general, added that Iran had deliberately mobilized in two areas, the first in Qurna, east of Basra, which was the trickster, and another towards Al-Faw, which the Iraqi military intelligence had referred to as the true Iranian target.

Khazraji believes in his book that the seizure of Faw and its retention was aimed at isolating Iraq from the Persian Gulf and forming a main base for Iran to launch its attacks in the north to seize the city of Basra and the oil fields of the southern region, as well as isolate Iraq and cut off its communications with Kuwait.

Al-Qaisi considered that the Iraqi army was subjected to a trick that enabled the Iranians to control Faw (Al-Jazeera)

And about how the Iranians took control of Faw, Al-Qaisi returns to confirm in an exclusive testimony to Al-Jazeera Net that they were able to manufacture a military bridge on Iranian lands and then they deliberately dragged it with military vehicles and boats towards the Shatt al-Arab and used it to cross infantry and vehicles towards the Faw, at a time when the Iraqi forces stationed in The place was scarce and militarily incapable of responding to the attack.

He noted that the bridge was semi-submersible and unclear to the Iraqi air force.

As for the commander of the Iraqi Second Republican Guard Corps, Lieutenant General Raad Al-Hamdani, he states in his book (Before history leaves us) that after a military anticipation that lasted for a whole month, and at exactly 10 p.m. on February 9, 1986, the Iranians launched a massive attack from the Kishk al-Basri area. In the north to the port of Al-Faw in the south, where the number of the attacking forces was estimated at 50 thousand Iranian soldiers.

Despite all that happened, the Iraqi military leadership still believed that the attack on Al-Faw was a deception only, according to Al-Hamdani, which ultimately led, on the night of February 12-13, to the fall of the headquarters of the 26th Iraqi army division, which was stationed in the Al-Malalah area. Faw.

As for the military expert and officer in the former Iraqi army, Muayyad Salem Al-Juhaishi indicates, for his part, that Iran exploited Iraq’s conviction that the Iranian forces were aiming to rush into the Iraqi center, as the capital, Baghdad, was about 140 km away from the Iraqi-Iranian border, starting from the Wasit governorate axis called An Iraqi b (Badra and Jassan).

He adds that Iraq believed that the FAO geographically did not allow the Iranians to target it because of the natural separation of the Shatt al-Arab, in addition to that the FAO was not within the line of battles between the two sides throughout the years preceding its occupation.

And in his testimony that Al-Khazraji cited in his book, he says, "This is how the Fao was lost, and although deception is a principle of war, the deception that our forces were subjected to in the Faw was of a heavy caliber and was carried out on an international level. The leaked US intelligence information and maps contributed to their investigation," But this major deception could have been aborted if the intelligence and operations authorities in the General Staff had freed their minds from prior convictions. "

Iraqi soldiers celebrate the recovery of Fao from the Iranians (French - Archive)

Historic moment

Meanwhile, Al-Hamdani notes in his book that "Al-Faw was the battle of the turning point in the Iran-Iraq war, when it fell in the hands of Iran and when it was liberated in the operations of Ramadan Mubarak on April 17, 1988."

He adds that the Iraqi leadership was not convinced that the attack on Faw was the main goal of the Iranians until 5 days after the start of the Iranian sweep of the city, and that about 1500 Iraqi soldiers had been captured by February 13, 1986.

Several attempts were made by the Iraqi army and the Republican Guard to regain control of Al-Faw a few months after its fall, but they failed to advance much, according to Al-Hamdani, after which Al-Hamdani documented that the Iraqi leadership and since August 1986 began preparing a long-term plan to restore it and avoid the great losses that had been lost. It was taken by the Iraqi forces.

The Iranian control of Fao lasted more than two years, and Iraqi forces were only able to regain the Fao on April 17, 1988, in an operation that the Iraqis called (Ramadan Mubarak) as the restoration of Faw coincided with the beginning of the holy month.

Al-Juhaishi: It took 15 months for Iraqi soldiers to train to restore Fao (communication sites)

Muayyad Salem Al-Juhaishi, a former Iraqi army officer who participated in the battle to retake Al-Faw, says that the first planner for the battle is the Chief of Staff of the Iraqi Army, First Lieutenant General Nizar Khazraji, who began training the Republican Guard more than a year before its liberation, specifically in July 1986.

Al-Juhaishi continues his interview with Al-Jazeera Net that Al-Khazraji created the 26th Brigade of the Frogmen and worked to create a simulated terrain for the environment of the Faw, then the Republican Guard established a saline (salty area) similar to the Faw and pumped water to it in a simulation of tides, where the guards trained 15 months for the battle before its start.

As a result of this preparation, Al-Juhaishi confirms that the process of liberating Faw took only 36 hours, in which Iraq used the method of deception for the Iranian forces, as the Iraqi deception plan included sending large camouflaged military units to the north of the country in the axis of the Iraqi-Iranian border in Sulaymaniyah province to delude the Iranians near Launch an attack from this axis.

Consequently, the Iranians mobilized their forces to boycott the north at a time when the Iraqi forces began their operations to restore Al-Faw, pointing out that the number of Iraqis who fell during the restoration of Faw was only 100 soldiers, and some of them were the result of wrong Iraqi bombing.

As for Major General Majid Al-Qaisi, for his part, he called the process of restoring Iraq to the Fao as (punishing the land), as Iraq used a very accurate and unprecedented artillery plan, which included launching tens of thousands of projectiles towards it, as after the Faw was restored, not a single square meter in Faw was handed over From a shell, missile or mortar (shell), the same plan that was used to liberate Majnoon Island (southern Iraq) later.

As for Al-Juhaishi, he believes that the battle to retake Al-Faw marked the beginning of the end of the Iran-Iraq war, since since 1986 Iraq began importing advanced weapons from tanks and armored personnel carriers, and all Iranian attacks on Iraq after the occupation of Al-Faw were in control of it.

As a result of the restoration of Al-Faw, Iraq was able - according to Al-Juhaishi - to exploit the victory in Al-Faw psychologically and militarily and rushed to rid all other Iraqi lands that were controlled by Iran, such as the Jassim River region, Majnoon Island, and then Halabja in Sulaymaniyah (north).

Although Al-Qaisi confirmed that the Iraqi victims in Al-Faw were many without specifying, Al-Hamdani pointed out in his book that the Iraqi sacrifices between the fall of Al-Fao and its recovery cost Iraq about 53 thousand deaths in Al-Faw alone.