Posted By Adam Robertson

August 31, 2007

“Run out of town” is how the Financial Times described the British army’s plan to retreat from its base at the southern Iraqi city of Basra to an airport outside the city and hand Basra province over to Iraqi control, possibly this autumn. 

For many, the withdrawal means that Britain lost the war in Basra, the sole remaining area the UK controls in the war-ravaged country. Opinions as diverse as Menzies Campbell, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, and Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army has harried UK occupation forces in southern Iraq, agree. 

Campbell says that Britain’s 5,500 troops can “achieve nothing” if they stay in Iraq, while Sadr, who regards U.S. and UK troops (and al-Qaeda militants) as invaders, says: “The British have given up and they know they will be leaving Iraq soon. They have realised this is not a war they should be fighting or one they can win.” 

Campbell and Sadr’s views echo those of many British army leaders, who are fed up with the growing number of military casualties in Iraq. Despite claims that most fighting in Iraq is between Iraqis, 90 percent of Basra attacks are against British troops, according to an article on Socialist Worker Online. 

The war in Iraq has been a disaster from day one, with strong resistance in the war-torn country and mass domestic opposition to U.S. and UK government policies -- opposition that forced former British premier Tony Blair to step down two years before he wanted to go. Perhaps this led many to suggest that Gordon Brown would announce a troop withdrawal as early as October. Moreover, recent comments by the head of the British army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, that his forces are stretched in Afghanistan will only increase pressure on the British government to hasten its withdrawal from Iraq. 

But Gordon isn’t his own master. Despite early speculation that he’d distance himself from the U.S. president, the new British prime minister promised Bush that Britain wouldn’t pull out completely before the U.S. did. This is probably the only reason that British troops remain in Iraq. 

However, the British withdrawal from Basra signalled a growing rift between the U.S. and UK over Iraq with complaints among American officials over the failure of British forces in Basra. At the same time, UK military officials are resisting U.S. pressure to delay withdrawing troops from Basra. 

British commanders insist that the security situation in Basra is being misrepresented by some U.S. officials. Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup said: "Our mission there was to get the place and the people to a state where the Iraqis could run the country if they chose to and we are very nearly there… Our mission was not to make the place look somewhere green and peaceful because that was never going to be achievable in that timescale and, in any case, only the Iraqis can fulfill that aspiration."

The Americans, on the other hand, charge that British troops are “disengaging” while the U.S. is losing lives daily due to Bush’s “troop surge”. General Keane, who is recently retired but is considered to be influential within the Pentagon, said there was "frustration" among U.S. commanders that they may have to send troops to the south while continuing to fight in central and northern Iraq. 

General Keane also accused the British of being guilty of "general disengagement from the key issues around Basra". 

Despite the U.S. backlash, the Americans could probably live with a British pullback. But they would certainly object to a full British withdrawal, even though it‘s becoming clear that the U.S. “surge” has failed, and that the American-backed government in Iraq is collapsing. 

Meanwhile, army commanders and politicians who believe that British troops should be pulled out of Iraq argue that they should be sent into Afghanistan instead. Afghanistan is a “winnable war”, they claim. But that’s just another lie. The conflict in Afghanistan gets bloodier every day; thousands of civilians have been killed by occupation troops, fuelling popular support for the resistance and eliminating support for Hamid Karzai‘s government. 

Jon Hill, a soldier with the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters regiment, served in Iraq three times – but says Afghanistan’s war is “much more intense”. 

Additional troops are not the solution to the chaos in Afghanistan. This strategy was tried in Iraq with Bush’s “surge” – and it failed. 

Last week, more than 100 leading foreign policy experts in the U.S. have been surveyed about the war in Iraq and other security issues by the Center for American Progress and Foreign Policy magazine. A summary of the findings stated: "[The] experts see a world that is growing more dangerous, a national security strategy in disrepair, and a war in Iraq that is alarmingly off course." Moreover, at least half of the experts said the surge is “having a negative impact on U.S. national security.” 

Despite this growing opposition, Bush recently vowed that he won’t withdraw troops from Iraq as long as he’s president of the United States!

©  EsinIslam.Com

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