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So, what did we achieve After
four years and 174 dead? Britain's lead role in Basra is over
Raymond Whitaker
London
Independent
Sunday December 16, 2007
The symbolism will be overwhelming. Today, at the
last British military base in Iraq, Britain will formally hand
over security in Basra, the last of the four Iraqi provinces for
which it took responsibility after the invasion in 2003, to the
local authorities. Bands will play; there will be a reading from
the Koran; and speeches will declare this to be a historic moment.
In reality, however, nothing will change today. British forces
stopped patrolling the rural areas of Basra province well before
early September, when they finally quit Basra Palace, their last
foothold inside Iraq's second largest city.
At that point, more than three months ago, the Iraqi army and
police effectively took over security in the area which contains
more than 70 per cent of the country's proven oil reserves and
supplies 90 per cent of government revenue. Nor, after the ceremony,
will hundreds of British soldiers be relieved of their duties
in time to fly home for Christmas.
(Article continues below)
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has already outlined the timetable:
the 4,500 troops remaining at the contingency operating base,
known as the COB, at Basra airport will gradually be reduced by
2,000 over the first three months of 2008. Those left will continue
training Iraqi forces and maintaining an "overwatch"
role, ready to intervene in an emergency if asked to by the Iraqis.
Despite their retreat from the streets of Basra, British forces
are not completely out of danger. Last week Guardsman Stephen
Ferguson of the 1st Battalion, the Scots Guards, was killed when
his Warrior armoured vehicle slid into a canal. He was the 174th
British soldier to die in Iraq since the invasion. And, though
the British force has not suffered a death from "hostile
activity" since September, rocket and mortar attacks on the
COB continue. Many of the troops still sleep in tents, with blast
walls made of breeze-blocks or sandbags surrounding each bed,
so that, while a direct hit would be fatal, the rest of the tent's
occupants might escape without serious injury.
All this is out of sight and out of mind as far as Basra's inhabitants
are concerned. "We do not see them [British troops], and
we do not know what they are doing," said Abdullah Haji,
a 52-year-old electrician. "We do not know how many are left
in Basra, or how much longer they will be staying here. Now we
have our police and army, and we also have the militias. But I
do not want to talk about the militias."
Mr Haji's nervous comments go to the heart of the dispute over
what, if anything, Britain has achieved in Iraq. No weapons of
mass destruction were ever found, of course, but four and a half
years after Tony Blair proclaimed "Iraq will be a significantly
better place as a result of the action that we have taken",
can we claim any success? Or have we allowed politicians and military
commanders to redefine the mission in such a way that they can
deny it has been a complete failure?
"Whatever mistakes have been made," Mr Blair was saying
in mid-2004, "... let us be pleased that Iraq is liberated."
But only two years after the invasion, British officials in Basra
were emphasising, off the record, that it was unrealistic to expect
that south-east Iraq would ever be like south-east England. It
had always been a lawless, violent place, where tribal rivalries,
smuggling and bloody vendettas were a way of life.
Full
article here.
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