As U.S. military troops push toward Baghdad with the most modern equipment, technology and training money can buy, the Iraqi leadership will rely on a defense that is ancient as warfare itself: underground tunnels and bunkers.
Over the past 20 years, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is believed to have constructed an elaborate series of underground tunnels and bunkers around Baghdad where he, his leadership and the elite troops that guard them are able to move about virtually undetected and nearly impervious to U.S. munitions, according to Iraq experts, a former Iraqi scientist and Western construction officials whose companies helped build the warrens.
Among the more extensive tunnel complexes are those described by Hussein Shahristani, once Iraq's top nuclear scientist, who was tortured and imprisoned in Iraq. Shahristani, who escaped Iraq during the first Gulf War, said that subway plans developed by several foreign firms were actually used by the Iraqi military to hide and transport the country's chemical and biological weapons. Shahristani told CBS's "60 Minutes" in February that he believed Iraq had "more than 100 kilometers of very complex network, multi-layer tunnels."
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