http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/world/middleeast/29basra.html
July 29, 2007
British Pullback in Iraq Presages Hurdles for U.S.
By STEPHEN FARRELL [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [bush administration’s “surge option” or “new way forward” underway] [some positive indicators of improvement] [nevertheless, violence while surge unfolds] [pentagon’s recent status report—pretty awful but also predictable] [followup] [chaos increases] [more violence] [eve of PM Gordon Brown’s first visit to US—Camp David no less—Brits signal changes?] [*****]
BASRA, Iraq — As American troop levels are peaking in Baghdad, British force levels are heading in the opposite direction as the troops prepare to withdraw completely from the city center of Basra, [*****]300 miles to the south.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/world/middleeast/29basra.html
July 29, 2007
British Pullback in Iraq Presages Hurdles for U.S.
By STEPHEN FARRELL [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [bush administration’s “surge option” or “new way forward” underway] [some positive indicators of improvement] [nevertheless, violence while surge unfolds] [pentagon’s recent status report—pretty awful but also predictable] [followup] [chaos increases] [more violence] [eve of PM Gordon Brown’s first visit to US—Camp David no less—Brits signal changes?] [*****]
BASRA, Iraq — As American troop levels are peaking in Baghdad, British force levels are heading in the opposite direction as the troops prepare to withdraw completely from the city center of Basra, [*****]300 miles to the south.
The British intend to pull back to an airport headquarters miles out of town, a symbolic move widely taken by Iraqis as the beginning of the end of the British military presence in southern Iraq.
The scaling down by America’s largest coalition partner foreshadows many of the political and military challenges certain to face American commanders when their troops begin withdrawing. [******]
Skepticism is widespread in Basra, as in Baghdad, about whether Iraqi forces are ready to take over. The British and the Americans will have to assuage the fears of Iraqis that they are being abandoned to gunmen and religious extremists. [******]And each is likely to face intensified attacks from propaganda-conscious enemies trying to claim credit for driving out the Westerners. [********]
As the British prepare for the withdrawal from the city center — and the wider transition of handing over Basra Province to Iraqi security forces during the coming months — Brig. James Bashall, commander of the First Mechanized Brigade, concedes that his men will almost certainly “get a lot of indirect fire as we go backward.” [***********]
It is no coincidence that he is reading up on Britain’s withdrawal from its former crown colony Aden in what is now Yemen, and lessons from other theaters, with the American experience in Vietnam as the “obvious parallel.”
Rear Adm. Mark I. Fox, an American military spokesman in Baghdad, parried any suggestion that Basra was a model for the Americans.
“I think that our focus right now is on the operations that we are conducting,” he said. “Certainly that’s the thing that is in front of us right now, and I wouldn’t characterize us as necessarily peeking over the shoulders of somebody else to see how they are doing it.”
The British commanders studiously avoid talk of dates for the same reason American commanders are resisting such pressure in Congress — they fear it would embolden insurgents. [******]But it has escaped no one’s notice that Britain’s new prime minister, Gordon Brown, could score political points by withdrawing from an unpopular war.
The British pullback, and British commanders’ talk of moving toward “overwatch,” and intervening “in a limited sense” if requested by the Iraqis, is viewed with dismay by many Iraqis in the city.
Mustapha Wali, a 49-year-old teacher, was blunt. “If they withdraw, we will live in a jungle, like the early days,” he said. “The parties control the government, and the aim of officials is to fill their pockets with money, millions of dollars inside their pockets and nothing to the city.” [*******] [and if they don’t they live in the current jungle] [makes decisions difficult]
The educated and secular middle classes fear that the Iraqi security forces — particularly the police — are hopelessly infiltrated by the extremist Shiite militias and Iranian-backed Islamist parties competing, [*****]often murderously, for control of Basra’s huge oil wealth.
Basra, an overwhelmingly Shiite port city controlling Iraq’s gateway to the Persian Gulf, is much less affected by the Sunni-Shiite sectarian violence plaguing Baghdad. But, as a June 25 report by the International Crisis Group concluded, it is virtually controlled by Shiite militias.
Since the 2003 invasion, the British-led coalition forces have adopted a far less aggressive and interventionist stance than American troops have farther north. Some contend that this was the only realistic approach, with far fewer troops at their disposal and a more benign environment.
But critics accuse the British of simply allowing the Shiite militias free rein to carry out their intolerant Islamist agenda, which involved killing merchants who sell alcohol, driving out Christians and infiltrating state institutions and the security forces.
“The British are very patient — they didn’t know how to deal with the militias,” said a 50-year-old Assyrian Christian who would identify herself only as Mrs. Mansour. “Some people think it would be better if the Americans came instead of the British. They would be harder on the militias.”
The report by the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit organization that seeks to prevent or resolve deadly conflicts, concedes that a recent British-led crackdown was a “qualified success” in reducing criminality, political assassinations and sectarian killings, yet nevertheless concludes that Basra “is an example of what to avoid.” [*****]
It said the British had been driven into “increasingly secluded compounds,” a result, the report said, that was viewed by Basra’s residents and militia as an “ignominious defeat.”
British and Iraqi leaders point out that although there have been problems with intimidation and infiltration, particularly of the Iraqi police, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has appointed new police and army commanders in recent months to take charge of the city. And the officials say there are encouraging signs.
But certainly a city that was once relatively safe for British troops is no longer.
Where they once patrolled in soft hats and open-topped vehicles, soldiers now move in heavily armored vehicles and are regularly attacked with mortar shells, rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs.
This year is already the most deadly since 2003 for British forces in Iraq, with 36 killed as of Saturday. [*****]Sixty-one rockets and mortar shells rained down on the palace in one day last week, a record high.
In such an environment, say British commanders, removing the troops from the city center takes away a “magnet” for attacks, and deprives the Mahdi Army, led by Moktada al-Sadr, and other Iranian-backed militias of a cause to justify their continued violence. Instead there will be a transition to control by Iraqis.
When the withdrawal from the palace is complete, there will be 5,000 British soldiers here, 500 fewer than before.
Although American commanders are sure to watch the British pullout closely, there are distinct differences between the military situations in the north and south.
“Basra is a totally different environment from what the Americans are facing,” said a British official in Basra. “The problem here is gangsterism, not violent sectarianism. And a foreign military is not the right tool for closing down a mafia.” [*******]
“A Baghdad-style surge would be 100 percent counterproductive,” he added.
Nevertheless, everyone expects attacks to intensify, and soldiers have cautionary tales for American generals looking ahead to an eventual drawing down of troop levels.
On May 25,[****] Basra’s small Permanent Joint Coordination Center — a joint British-Iraqi base in the city’s center — came under sustained attack by militias enraged by the killing of a senior Mahdi Army commander that day.
The lesson drawn by soldiers inside was that the militias had carefully watched the reduced British troop movements around the city, noticed where they were no longer patrolling and prepared accordingly.
Cpl. Daniel Jennings, 26, said the Mahdi Army appeared to have stockpiled rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns in advance.
“What they did was very well planned,” he said. “They knew they could pre-dump weapons and ammo. They knew that if they hid R.P.G.’s under a bridge or a gun under a tree it wasn’t going to be found.”
During one army patrol in a village overlooked by the palace’s watchtowers, built during the Saddam Hussein era, residents were confused to find themselves in the cross-fire between the Mahdi Army and the British.
Picking from his car shrapnel from what appeared to be an errant rocket fired at the palace, Mohammed, 20, said he was angry at the militias for using the villagers’ houses as cover to fire, but also at the British for firing back and damaging the homes.
“We are caught in the middle,” he said.” At the start the American and British forces came and the situation was much better, but now it is beginning to get worse.”
Another Iraqi youth, when asked what the Iraqi police were doing about roadside bombs intended for British troops, said, “The police are the ones who are doing it.”
In Basra itself one 26-year-old Mahdi Army fighter was unequivocal about what he wanted. “I hope to see them withdraw today, before tomorrow,” he said.
But for most, it is an issue heavily shaded in gray.
“Some people are asking, ‘Are we any longer part of the solution, or part of the problem?’ ” said Capt. Toby Skinner, 26, of the Fourth Battalion, the Rifles Regiment, in Basra. “An Iraqi told me: ‘You stay here for three years you will be our friend. You stay for four years, you will be our enemy.’ ”
Riyadh, a 22-year-old Iraqi and Basra native who is an interpreter for the British, expressed little confidence that the Iraqi Army was ready to take over from his paymasters, and none at all in the Iraqi police.
“Right now the militias are busy concentrating on getting the British Army out of Iraq,” he said. “After that is done they will turn on the people and try to control them in a very difficult way.” [*********]
“They will kill people who don’t do what they want,” he added. “There will be no punishment by courts; they kill people on the streets.”
But he acknowledged that if British troops stayed they would be sucked into further deadly confrontations with militias using civilians as cover, leading to inevitable innocent casualties and more hostility.
“If they leave, the militias will eventually fall apart,” he said. “There will be no reason to join them because they will not be fighting the British Army.”
This is what the British hope, but cannot guarantee, will happen.
At Basra Palace, the rocket attacks at all hours of the day and night have led soldiers to christen it, with characteristic dark humor, “probably the worst palace in the world.”
Despite the rocket-shredded roof and garden labyrinth of head-high sandbags, morale remains high. However, some soldiers question their continued presence in the city center.
“I don’t see the point,” shrugged Trooper Charles Culshaw, 21, an armored vehicle driver. “ We are training the Iraqi Army and doing a couple of bits and pieces that are useful, but I don’t think it’s worth it, to be honest with you.”
“All we are doing now is resupplying ourselves,” he said. “It’s going round in circles. People are getting killed for us to resupply ourselves, and if we weren’t resupplying ourselves, people wouldn’t be getting killed.”
Unsurprisingly, Lt. Col. Patrick Sanders, commander of the Fourth Battalion, the Rifles Regiment, has a different view.
“If that were true and that were all we were doing, then I would be saying the same thing, but it’s not,” he said, pointing to recent battles in which the British had killed at least 100 insurgents.
But while such raids will continue against wanted men, a speedy transition to a Basra run by Iraqis is the game in this town.
“I think that the route is one of reconciliation, and that means taking some risk,” Lieutenant Colonel Sanders said. “The other option is that we do what has been done in the past and what is being done elsewhere, which is to thrash around killing people by the dozen because they are attacking us. But I’m not sure that is constructive.” [********]
Mudhafer al-Husaini contributed reporting from Baghdad.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company