Iraqi Army Succeeds Where Brits Failed, Blame Brits For Running From Fight
Times Online:
In Basra the signs of the feared militia are slowly receding. For the first time in years alcohol vendors are selling beer close to army checkpoints, and ringtones praising the rebel cleric Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr are vanishing from mobile phones. Music shops are once again selling pop tunes instead of the recorded lectures of Shia ayatollahs.
But, as the city cautiously comes back to life after an offensive by Iraqi troops backed by hundreds of US soldiers, there is a lingering resentment towards the British Army.
Many here blame the British for allowing the al-Mahdi Army and other militias to impose a long reign of terror on the once cosmopolitan city.
The battle for Basra is still not over. An American airstrike yesterday killed another six men who had been attacking Iraqi troops from the militia’s hold-out areas, which the Army has so far been unable to penetrate.
Support is, though, slowly building for Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, who led his troops into Basra having given his US allies barely more than a weekend’s notice of the impending attack. The British were informed only a day before, prompting Lieutenant-General Peter Wall, the deputy chief of staff, to describe the whole operation as “hastily planned”.
“After the Iraqi Army set up checkpoints and the militia disappeared from the streets, I decided to start selling alcohol,” Luay Hanna, a 46-year-old liquor store owner, said. His shop was burnt down by fundamentalist militiamen three years ago, and many of his colleagues were butchered.
“Many of the alcohol sellers reopened their shops. We always sell near the Iraqi army checkpoints to be safe - not like before when the militia killed and kidnapped people right in front of the police’s eyes.”
Qaldoon Nuri, who runs a CD shop, was forced to stop selling pop songs for fear of the zealous gunmen four years ago. One of his friends was murdered for refusing to heed the ban. He was forced to sell religious songs, many of them praising al-Sadr, as well as lectures on tenets of the Shia faith.
“The militia forced us to follow a fanatic Islamic code. They forced us to put up pictures of the imams,” he said. “Now after the militias have been defeated by government forces, we started to put some songs on CD and are looking for what’s new in the arts - what people actually like.”
One of his neighbours, Saleh Muhammad, has been badgered in his phone shop by customers demanding new pop ringtones and pictures of female singers to download. “I think it’s freedom from the fear,” he said.
The British have been unable to bask in even the partial success of the battle. Having abruptly decided to take on the militias after years of appeasing them, Mr al-Maliki’s first venture on to the battlefield was plagued by desertions from his security forces and stronger than expected resistance. Outfought, he called on US forces for support rather than the 4,100 British troops who have barely left their base at Basra airfield.
When the British commanding officer visited the Prime Minister’s field headquarters during the fight he was left waiting outside by the Iraqi leader. The humiliating snub was believed to be payback for an alleged deal with the militias by British forces, who released several of their jailed leaders and agreed not to attack them if the British base was not hit.
“I think the British troops were the main reason that militias became very powerful,” complained Inas Abed Ali, a teacher. “They didn’t fight them properly and, when they found themselves losing in the city, they moved out to the airport and chose to negotiate with the militias and criminal groups as if they were legal.”
“The British Army had no role in Basra,” Rahman Hadi, a coffee shop owner, said. “We haven’t seen any achievements by them in the streets of Basra. I don’t know why their troops didn’t respond to the acts of these militias for long years, after seeing all the suffering that Basra people went through.”
Even senior Iraqi officers admitted that the hands-off British approach to policing the city had given the militias free rein. Brigadier Alaa al-Ittabi, from the infantry command of the Iraqi Ministry of Defence, said that the British Army “was sometimes negatively lenient, like the way they dealt with the militias”. Mr Hadi was placing his hopes on the new Iraqi forces. “The presence of these foreign troops adds nothing to the situation, and even the Iraqi troops trained by the British Army proved to be infiltrated by the militias and to be corrupt.”
General David Petraeus, the US commander here, said that the Iraqi Army’s initial performance in Basra had been disappointing and gave warning that the battle could last months. Brigadier al-Ittabi attributed the mass desertions at the outset to the deployment of local forces who were unwilling to fight their neighbours and whose families were vulnerable to militia threats.
Sources in Basra said that the Iraqi troops started to gain traction only after Mr al-Maliki drafted in two extra brigades, one from the Sunni city of Ramadi and the other from Karbala, where the al-Mahdi Army’s rival militia, the Badr Brigades - loyal to the main Shia party in Mr al-Maliki’s Government - holds sway.
Some observers have described the battle in Basra, which has also sparked fighting in the al-Mahdi Army’s main stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad, as a power struggle between the anti-US Sadrists, with strong grassroots support among poor Shia, and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, which runs the Badr militia and has long co-operated with the US military.
That theory was lent weight yesterday when unidentified gunmen shot down Hojatoleslam al-Sadr’s brother- in-law, who ran his office in the Shia holy city of Najaf, where the Badr forces are strong.
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The Iraqis are really trying hard. I’m really beginning to like them.
April 15th, 2008 at 10:57 pmShit, I’m still pissed off that the British were able to burn down our first White House.
April 15th, 2008 at 11:29 pmIt’s kind of like the valiant battle Brit’s are fighting in their homeland, to deny creeping shari’a and islamization of the UK.
sarc/off
April 16th, 2008 at 4:43 am“The British were informed only a day before, prompting Lieutenant-General Peter Wall, the deputy chief of staff, to describe the whole operation as “hastily planned”.
Another Field Marshal Montgomery. Nothing has changed. British still need us to bail their a$$ out of their failures. Damn appeasers.
April 16th, 2008 at 5:50 amCome on now, let’s be fair–remember how the British Navy stood up to the Iranians last year!
April 16th, 2008 at 6:40 amAllow me to start by saying that most Europeans (largely the Brits) were figuratively castrated by WWI. In WWII, it was the German’s turn under the knife. Quite fortunately for America, we have never lost our balls - still got ‘em! We have always been a courageous and healthy nation (even if elements of it were anything but). This article makes me very proud to be an American (I already was but still). It also makes me nostalgic of the time when British Regulars had nothing to fear from death and could hold the line against anything.
April 16th, 2008 at 6:58 am
Good on the Iraqi’s.. Keep kicking ass.
April 16th, 2008 at 7:33 amI have worked with the Royal Marines and I can not fault them for thier leadership being unwilling to commit to a fight. They can’t go merc, even though most of them would be happy to. They need to let the true fighters lead, not the politicians. We should take notes, because that is where we are headed right now with the weak democRats trying to castrate our military. Leave the fighting to the fighters and the politics to the limp wrists.
April 16th, 2008 at 8:05 amWow, Trafalgar, Roarkes Drift, there was a time when the Union Jack was a banner to be feared. This coming on the heels of the story of the UK’s eunuch approach to the Somalia Pirates; https://pat-dollard.com/2008/04/pirates-can-claim-uk-asylum-detaining-them-may-breach-their-civil-rights/
Inspite of this, I tend to agree with USMC Beans, that the Labor Party girly-men, and a few Monty-knockoffs in the military deserve the blame. Unfortunately, the damage to their reputation stands. The policy of appeasement towards the pirates, surrender without a fight with the Iranians, and now Basra, only show them to be a paper tiger. Hell it was just a few weeks ago that Argentina renewed their claims to the Falklands; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6517705.stm
Why is it so hard to understand that weakness, and appeasement never works.
April 16th, 2008 at 9:11 amNo one knows those areas and local sentiments better than the Iraqis do. And no one fights better than the US does. The Iraqis know the US is on their side and is willing to “bleed with them”.
Remember what the lady back in Anbar province said a few years back: “Americans are more Iraqi than Iraqis are.”
She was acknowledging a respect that Iraqis have for Americans and Americans have for Iraqis.
Who you gonna call when the shit his the fan? Europe?
Hell no. Iraqis are smart enough to show some balls, and then call someone else with balls when they get into a jam.
The US kicks ass. So does the IA anymore. Hoo-ah.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:18 amits the bloody government that makes a complete arse of everything,if the brigadiers, captains and others did not have the beedy eye of some political wanker wingeing on about human rights and budget constraints and poking his nose in where its not wanted,and any squaddie who has the audacity to shoot anyone gets hauled in front of the courts marshal,if that wanker blair had just said”what do you need and get in there and kill them bastards” we would’nt have the blame laid out the way it is,keep your politics out of your armed forces its like fighting with one arm tied behind your back and one shoe off.
April 16th, 2008 at 1:27 pmI don’t think anyone here blames the squaddies, I sure don’t.
April 16th, 2008 at 2:51 pmNobody blames the squaddies. They’re good people. Its the pols in the UK that suck.
April 16th, 2008 at 7:28 pmI began to wonder about the Brit tactics some time back, when I saw a few vids on the Military Channel and the web where they were puffing up their chests about how they patrolled without helmets and played soccer with the kids, to look more human and score those important PR points
- that’s great, but maybe they should have scored more mooj dead, and Basra would not be the mess that the Marines are having to clean up today. I feel bad for the squaddies; I can’t imagine they wanted to patrol without helmets - the job is tough enough, without missing your vital equipment - some heads need to roll higher up the chain of command for the whole mess. 
April 16th, 2008 at 7:35 pm