In November 2002 I was one of six experts who met Prime Minister Tony Blair in Downing Street in a largely futile attempt to explain to him the size of the task that he was about to undertake in Iraq. I pleaded with the prime minister: “Are you prepared to commit yourself and your government to a generation-long project needed to rebuild this country?”
“Yes,” he answered without a moment’s hesitation.
A month before the invasion, as a million people marched through the streets trying to stop the war, Blair got to his feet in Glasgow attempting to justify the most unpopular decision of his premiership. We should, he argued, “be as committed to the humanitarian task of rebuilding Iraq for the Iraqi people as we have been to removing Saddam”. On the eve of the war itself, Blair met with US President George Bush and Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar in the Azores. Here they undertook a “solemn obligation: Our commitment to support the people of Iraq will be for the long-term”.
Given the repeated promises made by Blair to the Iraqi people in the run-up to the invasion, it is ironic that British troops handed over their responsibilities for Basra to the US military on April Fools’ Day. By the end of May British forces will stop combat missions, with the majority of soldiers flying home in July. They will leave behind a city that has been ravaged by uncontrolled militia violence under Britain’s watch. Basra was only brought back to its current tenuous stability by Iraqi troops in an operation that the British were not even notified about. The claim by the secretary of state for defense, John Hutton, that Basra “has a bright economic future” is an attempt to spin this political and military debacle and bears absolutely no relation to the city itself, whose economy, local government and sewage system still lie in ruins.
In common with the rest of Iraq, the demise of the Baathist regime in Basra was greeted with widespread looting. This evolved into a bloody militia campaign of retribution against former members of the regime and the city’s small Sunni community. By then, British troops had already been nicknamed the “borrowers” by their American counterparts because of their dependence on US capacity. British strategy in Basra made a necessity out of their weakness and adopted a “softly-softly approach”, attempting to mediate between the parties and militias, using violence and intimidation to tighten their grip over the city’s population. From the very beginning of the British intervention in Iraq, it was clear that the military did not have the troop numbers, resources or, indeed, political backing from Whitehall to embark on what Blair had promised: An extended campaign to reconstruct the capacity of the Iraqi state to provide law and order and satisfy the humanitarian needs of the population.
The result of this chronic lack of troops, resources and political will was documented from Basra by the Guardian’s own Ghaith Abdul-Ahad. Militias with strange names dominated the police force, demanding on pain of death that women adopt the veil in public. Meanwhile, Basra’s local government, port and customs posts became militia fiefdoms, ravaged by unchecked corruption.
In the end this state of extreme lawlessness forced Nuri Al-Maliki, Iraq’s prime minister, to send the army into Basra to clear up the mess that Blair’s policy had created. Maliki did little to hide his anger at Britain’s decision to abdicate responsibility for the city, and allowing militias and criminal gangs to take over.
Sending troops into combat is certainly one of the most difficult and controversial decisions a statesperson is ever likely to take. When this is done in the name of “humanitarian intervention”, abrogating another country’s sovereignty in the name of its own people’s suffering, there is always a temptation to exaggerate what can be achieved — to promise that short-term military action will somehow lead not only to stability but democracy, prosperity and the rule of law. Britain’s chastening experiences in Basra stand as a powerful warning to all those who still claim that Western military power offers an almost magical solution to the long-term political problems that continue to haunt countries such as Zimbabwe and Sudan, and even Afghanistan.
The lesson that should be taken from Basra is that foreign troops have a lamentably poor record as nation-builders in other people’s countries. The creation of state capacity, and building government institutions that can deliver law and order, economic development and a better life for the population, is a task that takes many generations. Blair’s simplistic hubris on the eve of the invasion of Iraq was certainly born of his own ignorance, but it also sprang from a post-Cold War arrogance that he and his fellow invaders knew the answers, and could deliver them quickly and cheaply. It is this dangerous mix of arrogance and naivety that led to the Iraq debacle. It could certainly be repeated if the lessons of Basra are not learned.
— Toby Dodge, the author of Iraq’s “Future: The Aftermath of Regime Change”, teaches Middle Eastern politics at Queen Mary, University of London.
