The Mogadishu debacle of 1993, when neighbourhood militias inflicted 60 percent casualties on elite army rangers, forced US strategists to rethink what is known in Pentagonese as ‘Mout: Militarised Operations on Urbanised Terrain’. Ultimately a National Defence Panel review in December 1997 castigated the army as unprepared for protracted combat in the impassable maze-like streets of poor cities. As a result, the four armed services launched crash programmes to master streetfighting under realistic Third World conditions. ‘The future of warfare’, the journal of the Army War College declared, ‘lies in the streets, sewers, high-rise buildings, and sprawl of houses that form the broken cities of the world.’
Socialist Review, May 2004
The results of this are currently on display in Iraq…
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