Des Browne, the recently appointed and remarkably uncharismatic British defense secretary, was on the BBC Radio 4 Today program again, on May 30, offering reassurances over the position facing the 7,500 British troops in the four provinces of southern Iraq.
We were told that joint patrols with the Iraqi security forces have resumed and that cooperation with the local politicians has much improved.
Of course I understand why, like his predecessor John Reid, now home secretary, he feels he has to keep to the government line that Iraq is on course to recover, and the British forces will be able to withdraw when conditions have further improved.
Personally, I am getting increasingly annoyed that the British public is not being given an honest assessment of what is really going on in the Basra area. Political leaders have a duty to give the unvarnished truth, particularly so when the lives and the limbs of British servicemen, and, increasingly these days, servicewomen are at stake. Politicians should realize that when the truth finally emerges — as it will — for few secrets can be kept for long in our world of fast and mass communications, they will suffer from attempting to conceal it.
No doubt Des Browne was in the BBC studio because the United Kingdom had just suffered one of its worst days in postwar Iraq: Two soldiers were killed in Basra and two journalists in Baghdad. 11 British deaths took place in May. Some 300 attacks have been made against British troops so far in 2006, and there have been over 180 “incidents” against them in Basra province alone this year.
By “incidents” the Ministry of Defense means roadside bombs, mortar fire and rocket-propelled grenade attacks.
The death of the two soldiers on May 29, both of whom came from the Queen’s Dragoon Guards, were the result of a bomb that wrecked the Land Rover they were patrolling in.
Iran has been blamed publicly by the British Foreign Office for infiltrating agents into Iraq, and equipping its friends with infra-red “trip wires” to set off explosives, and a powerful new armor-piercing bomb which has caused many casualties.
The Foreign Office claimed that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard had supplied the new equipment with its advanced technology, which had been invented first by Hezbollah to attack the Israelis.
British vehicles are fitted with certain electronic protection devices, but this new equipment has given the attackers an advantage for the moment.
British diplomats believe Iran has been attempting to warn off Britain, from attempting to halt Tehran’s controversial nuclear program at the United Nations.
For many months the governor of Basra, Mohammed Al-Waili, refused to cooperate with the British forces. Other local politicians and officials also refused to cooperate following the publication in Western Europe of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammed, and footage — nearly two years old — of British soldiers savagely beating youths barely out of childhood, in a disgraceful incident which is being investigated by the Royal Military Police. To use the traditional military phrase, the soldiers are “in support of the civil power” and that has to work both ways.
British Ambassador William Patey hoped that the provincial elections due early this year would help clarify the political situation in Basra and thus make life easier for British troops.
But these promised elections have been put back time after time and might not even take place in 2006. This has dangerously increased the instability.
The new prime minister has been down to Basra in an attempt to stop the quarrelling between the main Shiite groups. But Nouri Al-Maliki will find that his untried government in Baghdad, which took five months to come together, has to struggle hard to exert its authority. Meanwhile the militias have resorted to murder and kidnapping, and there has been widespread infiltration of the police. Not so long ago the Basra police chief warned that no more than 25 percent of his force were loyal to the provisional government.
British soldiers have been horrified to see police cars openly carrying pictures proclaiming their support for the insurgency. It is the local police force they have tried to build up and support for three years. It is the Iraqis, and not the British, who must remove the rogue elements within the Iraqi police at this stage.
I must assume Des Browne has been told by his advisers in the Ministry of Defense, that relations between the British troops and the locals are far worse today than they were three years ago. British troops are mainly confined to their bases and 60 percent of their time is taken up with escorting their vehicles and endless general duties. With the best will in the world, they are going to find it hard to make a positive contribution in such circumstances.
