Since the British started to withdraw troops from Iraq’s southern city of Basra at the end of the summer, observers have been watching carefully. Because Basra is seen as an important indicator of what would happen in the event of a broader troop withdrawal, both sides of the “should we stay or should we go” debate have been looking for evidence to bolster their case. It’s no surprise, then, that it’s so hard to get any idea of what’s actually going on.
On the one hand, you’ve got reports that suggests that violence is down and that the city is stabilizing without foreign forces. According to one widely-cited report, violence has dropped by 90% since the British forces left. Brandon Friedman, over at Daily Kos, wrote about this development, noting that it suggests that there’s “no reason to believe that Iraq’s only means of national survival is to depend on a 160,000-person fighting force of Americans.” (Assuming that this report is valid, and that things are actually improving in Basra, I’m not sure that Friedman’s right to assume that a national withdrawal will lead to a similar cutback in violence. Basra is much more homogeneous than much of the rest of the country and has significantly smaller numbers of Sunnis, al-Qaeda members, and foreign fighters.)
Meanwhile, on the other hand, you’ve got this Washington Post article which says that Shiite militias are literally butchering each other in the streets. With the drawback of British forces, Badr and Mahdi militiamen have been jockeying for who will control the city. Via Juan Cole, we learn that the Shia-on-Shia violence continues to this day, with assassinations and killings occurring on a routine basis. The AP is reporting that, in the past few weeks, the Mahdi army has come out on top in Basra and that they’ve forced the local police chief to flee.
What’s to be made of these contradictory narratives?
The only thing that’s clear is that the reality in Basra is a lot more nuanced than it is being portrayed to be by many partisan observers. Unfortunately, both sides of the withdrawal debate are trying to distort what is going on in Basra to use as evidence for their case. Friedman’s post at Daily Kos, with all due respect to him, distorted the reality far too much in order to present the argument for a national withdrawal. Conservatives, on the other side of the debate, have irresponsibly generalized about Basra’s Shia-on-Shia fighting as evidence that withdrawing troops on a larger scale would be an obvious disaster. Few commentators (save Juan Cole) have been willing to give us a more balanced portrayal of the situation on the ground.
My own reading of the situation is that, while there may be some positive signs, it’s probably a mistake to tout Basra as some kind of success. The reports that I’ve read about events in Basra have been overwhelmingly negative. According to one recent al-Jazeera article, people are leaving in droves to escape the fighting. The police force is now heavily infiltrated by militiamen and Shia groups are still battling it out in the streets.
All that is not to say that there isn’t a very strong case to be made for withdrawal; but it is important that we don’t sugarcoat how smoothly it might go.