In what the Daily Telegraph describes as “a spectacular U-turn” but I would call just plain pathetic, the British Army has figured out how to keep its soldiers from getting killed in Basra, a once relatively peaceful southern Iraqi city hard by the porous border with Iran that is now considered to be more dangerous than Baghdad.
In a solution that should send the Duke of Wellington spinning in his grave, the British have promised to stay out of the city in return for assurances that its forces won’t be attacked by Shiite militias.
Telegraph correspondent Gethin Chamberlain says that:
“Since withdrawing, the British have not set foot in the city and even have to ask for permission if they want to skirt the edges to get to the Iranian border on the other side. . . .
“The British appear to base their new strategy on an almost total faith in one man, Gen Mohan al-Furayji, who came down from Baghdad to take over responsibility for security, promising to sort out the city. The general, a Shia in his early fifties who spent time in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad after falling out with Saddam Hussein in the 1990s, is answerable only to Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister.”
The Brits have had a rough year with 44 troopers killed to date, and at this point are pretty much confined to base. They long have said that they would hand over control of Basra province to the Iraqis when their forces are capable of taking control, but it is going to take more than some sorting out before that happens.
Chamberlain reports that those Iraqi forces are unwilling to take on Shiite militias, let alone the death squads that roam Basra that often are indistinguishable from the militias because they include militiamen.
The stakes are huge because of the oil riches in the region and its proximity to Iran, which probably is arming the death squads, among perpetrating other mischief.
But a larger question looms:
Is Basra a template for what will happen when American forces are eventually withdrawn from other hot spots?
Will the transitory military progress in Basra, which has been undermined because there has not been a concomitant political progress, be replicated elsewhere?
Does this spell doom for the much-vaunted Surge?
Yes. Yes. Yes.
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