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Wednesday Aug 22 2007 All times are London time
COMMENT & ANALYSIS Analysis
How the British army lost Basra
By Stephen Fidler
Published: August 20 2007 18:33 | Last updated: August 20 2007 18:33
In the immediate aftermath of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, British troops were regularly shown on UK television walking around Basra wearing berets. There was a sharp contrast with the way nervy, heavily protected US troops were throwing their weight around in Baghdad.
The message received by the British public, which holds its military in high regard, was that this softly-softly approach would – thanks to experience in Northern Ireland and elsewhere – succeed in a peacekeeping mission where the Americans' heavy-handed tactics would fail.
It was a view held almost universally in the British army. "British military guys can be totally insufferable about this," says one retired US general who advises the Bush administration on Iraq.
The four provinces comprising the UK's sector in south-eastern Iraq were also regarded as relatively friendly. The Shia majority in the region had largely welcomed the toppling of Saddam Hussein's Sunni regime and British forces did not confront the Sunni insurgency faced by the Americans in central Iraq.
But the days of soft hats and handing sweets to children are now long gone. Casualties being suffered by UK troops in Iraq are now coming at a higher rate than at any time since the March 2003 invasion. UK troops are expected to pull out of Saddam's former palace in Basra, where a battlegroup of about 700 men has been under consistent fire, within weeks. The numbers of UK troops in Iraq will then fall from about 5,500 to 5,000, with a large majority of them based at just one location – Basra airport.
UK military and MoD civilian fatalities in Iraq
With such a small force, soldiers are being used essentially to protect themselves. Their objective, says Nick Clissitt, a retired brigadier who served in Iraq, appears to be largely to provide a symbolic show of support for Washington and the Iraqi government. "And that's pretty expensive and it's not sustainable," he says.
Officially, the British government says its approach continues to be that of handing over responsibility to Iraqi security forces as they become ready. Troops are still training members of the Iraqi army's 10th division and other forces, contributing to the protection of supply lines from Kuwait to Baghdad and elsewhere and carrying out targeted security operations, often in support of Iraqi forces, the Ministry of Defence says. But while the government's public statements give the impression of a job done, the reality of what UK troops are preparing to leave behind is different.
A report from the International Crisis Group, a non-government group working to prevent conflict, said in June that "relentless attacks against British forces in effect [have] driven them off the streets and into increasingly secluded compounds". It went on: "Basra's residents and militiamen view this not as an orderly withdrawal but rather as an ignominious defeat. Today, the city is controlled by militias, seemingly more powerful and unconstrained than before."
That point was driven home on Monday as Muhammad Ali al Hassani, governor of Muthanna province, next to Basra, was killed by a roadside bomb, becoming the second southern provincial governor to be assassinated in two weeks. British forces handed over Muthanna to Iraqi control in July 2006. Now hunkered down in defensive positions in Basra, they have lost the ability to reverse the downward spiral in the south.
Anthony Cordesman, a specialist on the Middle East and military affairs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, wrote in a report on February: "The British decisively lost the south – which produces over 90 per cent of government revenues and 70 per cent of Iraq's proven oil reserves – more than two years ago."
Privately, many serving and retired British officers who have been through Iraq have been saying similar things for some time, though some dispute the terminology. "To speak of defeat is too simplistic. But we are living with the consequences of past decisions and actions – that's a reality – and there is no point in saying that everything in the garden is rosy, because it isn't," says a recently retired British general.
One conclusion is almost universally drawn: British troops suffered from being the junior partner in a coalition whose senior partner comprehensively failed in its post-war planning.
Clare Short, Britain's international development minister until she resigned less than two months after the start of the war, says the UK government's post-war planning was linked to that of the US state department and contemplated an internationally supported reconstruction effort. This approach was scrapped, she says, after the January 2003 presidential directive from George W. Bush that put the responsibility for the war's aftermath in the hands of the Pentagon.
The UK hurriedly put together what it called the Iraq Planning Unit, under the auspices of the Foreign Office and led by a civil servant, Dominick Chilcott. This was set up in February, the month before the invasion of Iraq. Yet the British government's approach was often incoherent, reflecting in part what some observers say was its ambivalence towards the invasion and the lack of popular support for the venture.
Any successful strategy needs three legs, says Brig Clissitt: a political-diplomatic part, an economic component and the military-security element. If progress is not being made on the diplomatic and economic fronts, security starts to fall apart.
Andrew Alderson, a banker whose book Bankrolling Basra describes his experience as a Territorial Army officer put in charge of rebuilding the south's economy, says that the London government did not have an integrated strategy that would have provided a chance for success. "We had a half-hearted approach from the get-go," he says.
A senior officer serving at the time reinforces the message: "There was no clear idea about what we were trying to achieve and certainly no resources being put aside to do it."
Several serving and retired officers have told the FT that Ms Short prevented funds from her department going to reconstruction in Iraq, a charge she denies, calling it an "urban myth like the tarantulas in the yucca plants at Marks and Spencer".
Nonetheless, it is clear that people involved in reconstruction were told that there was no British money available for it, and any financing would have to come from the US. Ms Short says, as far as she was aware, that the money allocated by the UK Treasury for reconstruction in Iraq was "virtually none".
Brig Clissitt says the Americans "were calling the shots because they were paying the money". One British army commander, who asked not to be identified because he is still serving, says: "We were just not willing to put our money where our mouths were." In a reference to Paul "Jerry" Bremer, who arrived in Baghdad in May 2003 as head of the ruling Coalition Provisional Authority, he says: "What we should have done was to take over the south-east of Iraq and run all the operation ourselves, telling Jerry Bremer that it wasn't his operation. That should have included aid."
One reason the UK did not want its own zone of influence in the south was because that may have been seen as preordaining the break-up of Iraq into three parts. But in any case, soon after the invasion the security situation began to deteriorate, making it harder and harder for reconstruction projects to go ahead. One reason for this, some observers say, was the rapid drawdown of British troops, which led to a security vacuum.
Some 45,000 troops took part in the invasion of March 2003. By May, there were 26,000 UK troops in the south-east and by July the number had fallen to just 9,000. Asked in February why the drawdown had been so rapid, General Sir Mike Jackson, the former head of the British army, told the FT that "you can't sustain" such a large force in theatre for long periods of time.
The reason behind that is the country's shrinking military. At just under 100,000 men and women, Britain's regular army is now smaller than at any time since the early 1840s. It would fit into Manchester's two Premier League football stadiums, while the 24,000 spare seats would seat three-quarters of the country's heavily worked reserve force, the Territorial Army, itself smaller than at any time since it was formed in 1908.
The inability to secure law and order in southern Iraq weakened support for the UK forces, and legitimised support for Islamist militias operating in the area. According to Michael Knights and Ed Williams of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy: "Without an improve- ment in security, the coalition could expect its reconstruction efforts to fail and even greater public resentment to build."
The actions of UK troops also had on occasions inflamed local sentiment, the two men said in a report on the British experience in southern Iraq. In Maysan province, one of the four for which the UK had responsibility, UK forces upset locals by their efforts to collect heavy weapons. Elsewhere, house searches for explosives using dogs caused considerable anger.
"Despite their reputation for 'community soldiering', British soldiers had crossed local red lines without knowing it," the two authors concluded. They "did not know enough about the cultural environment [they] were operating in".
Over time, British tactics developed. In Maysan, the UK forces were expected to act as "the biggest tribe in the province", Mr Knights and Mr Williams said. Sometimes their actions undermined the institutions the coalition was supposed to be building, including what one general termed "the pragmatic use of militias" and a focus on boosting the raw numbers of police recruits in an effort to meet targets.
One reason why British counterinsurgency policies had succeeded elsewhere in the world was because UK forces operated alongside capable local allies. In Iraq, there were none and by 2005, local security forces – in particular the police – were seen by British officers in Basra as part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
By then, short-term fixes were in order because there was an assumption that UK forces would not be there much longer. "Myopic policies highlighted the belief, from Whitehall down to the British headquarters in Basra, that British forces would soon be leaving Iraq," they said.
In fact, several senior British officers said, the assumption made when the government agreed in 2005 to send UK troops to support Nato in Afghanistan was that the Iraq mission would quickly be wound down.
This assumption proved wrong. Yet while there were tactical errors, there were tactical military successes and some potential failures avoided. British and US sources say the UK refused an American request to send troops into the violent Anbar province in central Iraq in 2004, for which they were assumed to be well suited, in part because British public opinion would not tolerate the rate of casualties sustained by US forces.
However, the military component is only a part of the failure. "The problem is that the Iraq insurgency is seen in terms of military operations but, when you read any field manual, the success of the operation is ultimately dependent on the political structure," says Mr Cordesman.
It was not the fault of the British forces, he says, but they were operating against the background of a struggle for power among three Shia Islamist political groupings. Factions of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and of militias attached to the firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr dominated the region. In the 2005 elections, they, the Dawa party and other Islamists secured 38 out of 41 seats in the Basra provincial elections and 35 out of 41 in Maysan.
These elections meant finally that the British mission couldn't succeed in military terms. "The political context under which British forces could achieve stability became virtually impossible," he says.
"A soft approach to the population when you are talking about counterinsurgency is one thing, but it doesn't work when you [are up against] a large and dedicated military force," he says. The model that worked in Northern Ireland would not work in southern Iraq because of the thousands of militiamen who were challenging UK forces: "There were several hundred activists in Northern Ireland – that was not what you had in southern Iraq."
Interviewed by BBC Radio on August 10, Air Chief Marshall Sir Jock Stirrup rejected the suggestion of a British defeat. "Our mission was to get the place and the people to a state where the Iraqis could run that part of the country if they chose and we are very nearly there. Our mission wasn't to make the place look like somewhere green and peaceful because that was never going to be achievable in that time-scale and in any event the Iraqis can fulfil that aspiration."
Indeed, it may be that no foreign force could have succeeded in southern Iraq. It may also be, as some military analysts insist, that the Shia south did not have the same strategic significance as the Sunni heartlands where American forces were battling a fully-fledged insurgency.
Nonetheless, the picture painted of Britain's Iraq experience is of too small a force, too rapidly drawn down, of British government parsimony and lack of internal co-ordination that compounded the errors of planning made by Washington.
BROWN MULLS THE COST OF WITHDRAWAL
What to do with the rump of British troops still stationed in Iraq is one of the thorniest political dilemmas facing Gordon Brown as he settles into Downing Street.
Deciding how and when to withdraw from the deeply unpopular war could set the tone for both his first election as prime minister – which some speculate could come as early as this year – and relations with Britain's closest ally. National interests, military tactics and the demands of domestic politics are far from aligned.
Although Mr Brown's eagerness to exit Iraq is widely assumed, no decision has been made public. Standing beside George W. Bush at Camp David last month, Mr Brown stressed there were "duties to discharge and responsibilities to keep" in Iraq. The prime minister will explain how he plans to do this more fully in a statement to MPs in October.
While a timeline is unlikely – ministers have argued setting a date would put soldiers' lives at risk – military officials are preparing for the possibility of a pull-out in the near future. "We're on the course we were always on," says one Whitehall official. "We always said we would draw down and hand over control when the Iraqis were ready. We are not staying there forever. Basra was always going to be the hardest part."
In domestic terms, Mr Brown must balance the need to defuse growing public discontent over Iraq with the need to shore up support for a "long war" in Afghanistan. Polls show a clear majority of Britons support a speedy withdrawal from Iraq, even if it is left unstable. As the withdrawal decision nears, explaining casualties becomes harder.
Tony Blair, who took Britain to war and reduced the presence in Iraq during his time as prime minister, absorbed some of this political fallout.
However an extended commitment, or messy withdrawal, is likely to ratchet up criticism of Mr Brown.
The Conservatives, the main opposition party who supported the invasion, have yet to call for a pull-out. This leaves Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat leader, to apply the political pressure, at least in the House of Commons. He argues Mr Brown must "listen to his generals" and set a target date for withdrawal.
But the manner of the exit, rather than the decision itself, is likely to pose the biggest test. Anti-British militias in Basra can be expected to exploit any pull-out by stepping-up attacks. Leaving Iraq also requires addressing a series of practical issues that could be politically explosive, such as the fate of Iraqis who worked for British forces in Iraq and the scores of people interned by UK forces.