Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Times Online:

Des Browne, the British Defence Secretary, flew into Basra today to meet commanders on the ground as uncertainty hung over a plan to withdraw up to 1,600 British troops from southern Iraq by the spring amid claims of an increase in militia violence.

No decision has yet been made on troop levels and time is running out to reduce Britain’s contingent in the country to 2,500.

Gordon Brown said in the autumn that a final decision on the hoped-for withdrawal would depend on conditions on the ground.

In a sign of the ongoing challenges ahead, a roadside bomb killed 14 mourners travelling in a bus to Basra from a funeral in Najaf yesterday. A total of 18 people were wounded in the blast, which was aimed at a US convoy going in the opposite direction.

Iraqi officials, who took control of security in Basra from the British in December, have asked Baghdad for up to 6,000 extra troops to help to quell the unrest on top of a new brigade sent to the province last month.

Mr Browne attended an event at Basra airport, where British troops are largely based, in an event organised by the Iraqi Government to demonstrate its new capabilities at Iraq’s port in Umm Qasr.

He also met Major-General Barney White-Spunner, the senior British commander in Basra, as well as some soldiers.

The trip, described by a military spokesman as “routine”, comes at a time when future troop levels are in focus.

Lieutenant-General Bill Rollo, the most senior British officer in Iraq, has emphasised that the withdrawal plan hinged on assessments on the ground.

“There was a direction of travel and that is the aim and then we will judge it on conditions at the time, and that process is ongoing,” General Rollo told The Times. “I am not going to try and anticipate what the final figure will be.”

Asked whether there was a potential for troops to stay longer, given that it was spring already, he said: “There is a process that we will go through and we will get to the figure and we will know what the aim is.”

As for when that would be, he said: “It will still be the spring in April.”

Four hundred soldiers left Iraq in January, taking Britain’s troop strength to about 4,100, mainly based at Basra airport, outside the city. With the Iraqi police and army in charge of security, British forces are largely involved in protecting their base as well as offering surveillance, intelligence and training to the Iraqis.

Many local people, however, feel that Britain relinquished responsibility for the oil-rich port too quickly.

“The British helped these militias to grow,” said Abu al-Razzaq al-Saedi, a lawyer. “Now they stay in the airport and leave us with the militia groups killing us and controlling the city.”

Several thousand people protested at the weekend over what they said was an increase in violence since the British pulled back. A neurologist, one of 12 left in Basra, was buried on Monday after being kidnapped and strangled, his arms and legs broken.

Determined to rein in the militant gangs, Iraqi commanders have been building up the Army’s 14th division in Basra. A third brigade of 3,000 soldiers was deployed to the province in February, with a fourth brigade due to follow in December. In addition a fourth brigade for the 10th division, which is also based in Basra, is due to arrive in September.

All Iraq’s army divisions will eventually have at least four brigades but Basra was seen as an urgent case because of its strategic importance and also the potential for conflict, with rival Shia political parties and militias vying for control.

Lieutenant-General Rollo, who is coming to the end of a nine-month tour in Baghdad as one of General David Petraeus’s two deputies, acknowledged that there were problems of intra-Shia violence in Basra along with criminality and corruption.

But he said the Iraqi forces were able to cope.

“Have they got a lot further to go? Yes they have and they know that,” the British officer said in an interview at the weekend at his office in the fortified Green Zone.

“They have a plan to do it … and gradually over time I think it will come good.”

Drawing on his perspective at the US-led coalition headquarters in Baghdad, General Rollo noted that Basra accounts for less than 2 per cent of total violence in Iraq.

“I do sense, perhaps with heroic optimism, that people are increasingly focused down there on the opportunities they have,” added the commander, who led British forces in southern Iraq in the last half of 2004.

General Rollo is lined up to become Britain’s new Adjutant-General after he leaves Baghdad later this month.