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March 30th,
2008 - Britain and the Battle for Basra |
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Britain and the Battle for
Basra By BBC News March 30, 2008 As Iraqi Shia cleric Moqtada
al-Sadr orders his Mehdi Army militia to withdraw from the streets of Basra
and other cities, BBC Middle East correspondent Paul Wood - at the British
military base just outside Basra - looks at the British role in the ongoing
conflict. Since a handover ceremony at
Basra airport in December 2007, the role of British forces in southern Iraq
has been to provide "overwatch" and such support as may be needed
by the Iraqi forces, who have primary responsibility for security. But the notion of what
exactly constitutes support was severely tested as a large Iraqi force became
bogged down in five days of street fighting against the Mehdi Army in Basra. Some are asking why
thousands of highly-trained British soldiers stood by, merely watching all
this from the relative safety of their camp outside the city. The British military was
being sucked into the conflict, even if it did not send in a large ground
force. British jets were overhead constantly, carrying out strafing runs and
blasting militia fighters with cannon. British artillery destroyed
militia mortar positions. The Iraqis were re-supplied with large quantities
of British ammunition. There have also been a small
number of both British and American special forces on the ground,
co-ordinating air support for the Iraqi troops. Maj Brad Leighton, a US
military spokesman, said an American special forces team identified snipers
on several rooftops before calling in aircraft to engage them with
"precision gunfire". Sixteen of what the Coalition calls
"criminal fighters" were killed. Britain’s role Back in December, when the
handover ceremony was conducted - indoors because of the danger of mortar
fire - the Defence Secretary, Des Browne, said: "It has been a
challenging journey, but we are not yet at the end of the road. Our role in
Basra is changing to one of overwatch, but our commitment to Iraq is
undimmed." In theory at least,
"strategic overwatch" as the military call it allows for British
forces to intervene on the ground if the Iraqis are really in trouble. Are
the British soldiers now failing to live up to that obligation? The Army's position was that
the Iraqis were not doing too badly on their own, that there was no need to
be rushed into anything precipitate. Its spokesman in Basra, Maj
Tom Holloway, told me: "This is an Iraqi-planned, led and executed
mission. They are standing on their own two feet. "It's an indication of
the Iraqi government's confidence in their own armed forces that they are
able to conduct this operation with the levels of British and Coalition
support that we are currently giving them." Major Holloway added:
"Fighting in an urban environment is not an easy thing to do. It's the
hardest form of warfare and taxes command and control and the basics of
fighting to the most extreme degree." Why then did the Iraqi prime
minister, Nouri Maliki, initially give the militias only until this weekend
to surrender? When he later extended that deadline to 8 April, it was clear
his gamble had failed. When things got difficult, it looked as if he had
blinked first. Now there is a ceasefire,
with Moqtada Sadr ordering his militia's fighters off the streets of Basra
and other cities in Iraq. But this is not a surrender. The Mehdi militia remain in
control of large swathes of Basra - areas like Timimiya, Jumairiya, Hamsa
Mile and the Shia flats. "Overwatch" for
the British has meant literally having to watch amateur video on satellite TV
of masked Mehdi fighters, weapons raised above their heads, doing little
victory jigs in the streets of Basra. Before the ceasefire was
announced, the British Army tried to get us on an Iraqi helicopter into the
centre of Basra. They wanted to be able to demonstrate that the Iraqi troops
were performing well under pressure. But as we were waiting on
the helipad, the MoD in London vetoed that idea as too dangerous. The Iraqi
base in the city was still under mortar fire. It all added to the impression
of an Iraqi Army under serious pressure and struggling to cope. The Iraqi defence minister,
speaking from the base we had been attempting to reach, admitted the strength
of the militia resistance had been a nasty surprise and that they were having
to re-assess their tactics. Civilian casualties? The Iraqi Army said that, as
a measure of its success, it had killed more than 120 militia fighters and
wounded some 450. Our Iraqi local staff, from
talking to hospitals, estimated there had been at least 300 fatalities during
the operation. Was the gap between the two figures accounted for by civilian
casualties? Certainly, one Basra
official, speaking by phone to an Arabic satellite channel, said that after
two days of fighting, more than 40 civilians had been killed. A photographer
for the AFP news agency said that in the aftermath of an air strike, he saw a
woman and two children among eight bodies. Local people said more bodies -
civilians - were inside four buildings damaged by the strike. The British Army, while
stressing that care was being taken about "collateral damage",
could neither confirm nor deny the details of that air strike or the reports
of civilian casualties in general. Just before the ceasefire
was announced, the British Army denied a report on Iranian satellite TV that
it was moving ground forces into the city. Eight to 10 armoured
vehicles had set up a checkpoint at the Zubair bridge south of the city and
were checking cars heading into Basra. But there was no intent, an army
spokesman stressed, of sending British armour into the city. Despite the Iraqi government's
welcome of Moqtada Sadr's statement, this is not victory. What exists now in
Basra now is a stalemate. The militias which have made
Basra a place of fear - murdering 100 women over the past year for failing to
wear Islamic dress, for instance - remain in place. And on the national
political stage Prime Minister Maliki has been weakened, while Moqtada Sadr
has been strengthened. The Coalition cannot be happy with any of that. The
question remains, what is the British Army doing in southern Iraq? External link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7321461.stm |