IRAQI President Jalal Talabani has welcomed the announcement by UK Premier Tony Blair that 1,600 British troops will be withdrawn from southern Iraq in the next few months, leaving some 5,000 in and around their core operations center in Basra. The question is: Have the British done enough to undo the instability into which the invasion plunged this predominantly Shiite region?
Operation Sinbad was supposed to clean up the local police who had been widely infiltrated by members of two rival local militias, the Mehdi Army and the Badr Brigade. The exercise seems to have been a modest success in that the violence has declined and the number of gangland killings has dropped. But this could be a lull before another storm of civil unrest. There are concerns that as the US-led clampdown against both Sunni and Shiite militias in Baghdad continues, prominent Shiite militants have been moving south to Basra.
But British officers, speaking unofficially say the situation still remains highly volatile. The local police may have been purged of some militants, but the ability of these people to threaten and terrorize serving police officers and their families must not be discounted. An Iraqi government spokesman talked airily yesterday of the need to do a little bit more reorganization and “cleaning up” of the Basra police, as if this were the work of a mere afternoon or two. The reality is that since the chaos that followed the invasion, Basra has been turned into a modern-day Chicago in which honest men walk in fear of the gunmen. It is not all bad. The economic life of the city has revived but a significant part of this is based on smuggling and therefore inevitably involves the militias. To function at all, most businesses, if one faction or another does not back them, have to pay a high price in protection money.
Blair, however, will be gratified by the rapid Iraqi endorsement of his decision to run down the British military presence. Regardless of the reality on the ground, he is looking for a plausible excuse to disengage from a military adventure that has long been deeply unpopular with the majority of Britons. As long as the British can keep some sort of lid on further violence, he will try to extract some paper-thin triumph from his slavish following of President Bush’s deeply flawed lead.
The local Shiite militias, of course, will see it differently. Their regular attacks on British bases are likely to escalate as they seek to drive home what they must now believe is the start of their victory over the occupation forces. And tragically, it would seem that the day the last British soldier leaves Iraqi soil would not herald the start of peace and security. Too many armed and ruthless factions, both sectarian and criminal, now have a vested interest in prolonging the chaos that George W. Bush brought to the country. Decent “Baswaris” who long only for an end to violence already know that when the British go, the divisive bloodshed will almost certainly continue.
