BASRAH--some perspective (Iran, etc)
To the readers of this Forum:
Thought you'd find these observations of interest since they are from a secular Shia university professor living in Basrah. I've been in regular contact with him by mail (since 1992) and email (2002-EARLY 2003; fall 2003 on) and met him 2 yrs ago in Canada at a conference. He was mentioned by name & quoted in a spr 05 NYT article of the restoration of marshes in southern iraq)
He was concerned about the LACK of action by our British allies VERY EARLY ON (late 2003) and warned me in early 2004 about Iran.
Here are some email excerpts:
(I have corrected some spelling, grammar—and cut out text not relevant to Iran).
12-12-05:
“I think the balance is changing against clerics and religious parties. They will have a share but not like January. They are putting tremendous effort to win. People don’t like them in the south. THEY WILL WIN BECAUSE OF IRANIAN INFLUENCE (my emphasis in caps). We need a change. It will be a disaster if they win”.
12-13-2005:
Two days ago a prof of soil sciences have been kidnapped and yesterday they found his body killed. These gangs came to him at midnight and take him to his death. I know the fellow... I believe his crime was to be a Dean of the College of Agriculture seven years ago. It is a chaotic country! MAYBE I AM ON THE LIST PREPARED BY PRO-IRAN GROUPS FOR KILLING. I am going to buy a gun to defend myself and my family. I feel really bad and sad. We need somebody to rescue us from this horrible situation."
2-22-06:
“We are safe till now. We live day by day. The British troops at last wake up. I wonder if they have a chance to achieve things. They left Basrah so long to be very dangerous even to them. BASRAH IT WILL BE THE BATTLEPLACE WITH IRAN. God bless and save us. After the British caught several police men the wave of killing stopped—hope forever. BUT EVERY PERSON KNOWS EVERY MONTH NEW LIST OF NAMES TO BE KILLED COME FROM IRAN. They used certain cars, sometimes police cars,and police men perform the assassination”
1/14/07 “We are living under constant bombardment of Al Mahdi army shelling to the British and American consulates. By the way we are under the regime of Shiite Taleban. It is the same as that of Afghanistan with no big difference.”
7/18/07: “i did not told you about what we face during June in Basrah. Previously I you told we have the intention to leave our house to another one more safer but it is very difficult. In first week of June mortar shell fell in front of garage ,thanks god the shrapnel hit the iron door, I depot of fuels for the generator and barrel of kerosene beside the car full with gas., The worse turn up during the third week of June when mortar shell hit the second floor roof. thank god only the rim and water storage, That happened at night . The house was full of smoke,water and dust coinciding with power cut ie in darkness. Imagine the situation. Now no bombs we are feel safe for a while [note: in Syria].
Another "penpal" just got out of Basrah to Kuwait, but is having trouble getting his family out.
From 2/3/05--Much more hope and optimism----now lost
DEAR STEVE THE FEAR IS AWAY ANDI TOOK ALL FAMILY FOR ELECTION EVEN THEIR IS A THREAT OF BOMBS AND TERRORIST BUT NEVER THE LESS WE WENT AND VOTE AT THE END IT IS BEUATIFUL TO FEEL FREE TO CHOOSE WHAT ONE THINK IT IS RIGHT, WE THANKS U.S. FOR THAT AND HOPE TO KEEP HELPING IRAQI PEOPLE IN PROCCESS OF DEMOCRACY WITH OUT U.S. WE WILL RETUR BACK TO DANGER AND DARK AGES .WE ARE SAFE FOR TIME BEING HOPING THE SITUATION WILL BE IMPROVED .
Such a depressing change .
Basra is astride our supply line.
When the Brits pull out, I don't see any choice but for us to go down there and secure it.
Cordesman's assessment was right. The response of the British Army and the commentariat surrounding the Brown Government was to call Anthony Cordesman a right-wing neocon.
Anything but.....
Question: will we have enough Mojo in Anbar to pull forces from there to go down south? It will definitely have to be an overwatch kind of thing, as I think the Iranians have decided that they want to get a stranglehold on our supply lines.
The Brits are great and all, but the Brown Government wants out, ASAP.
Failure of the British approach?
Here's a question: is the British retreat from Basra, which is certainly what it looks like, a serious blow to the British counter-insurgency approach, supposedly perfected over decades in Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Aden, Malaysia, and many other theaters? Softly softly, berets instead of helmets, and rapid enlistment and cession of control to local elements seems to have worked no better than much heavier U.S. tactics in Anbar, and indeed, probably worse.
The Financial Times covered this to some extent:
http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage...9599778&page=1
Quote:
"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."
Seems to me, and maybe this is stating the obvious, that it's further proof that almost all of what we talk about here, like "population-centric" vs. "enemy-centric operations," levels of firepower, role of indigenous security forces, etc., depends almost entirely on the situation. Maybe there are some broad counter-insurgency principles, from the likes of Thompson, Galula, Kitson and others, but even these seem to make a lot more sense in the classical Communist insurgency case.
Of course, the article also says this:
Quote:
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".
British Troops Pull Out of Their Last Base in Basra City
3 September London Times - British Troops Pull Out of Their Last Base in Basra City by Michael Evans.
Quote:
The final 500 British troops in Basra city last night withdrew under the cover of darkness from their base, a former palace of Saddam Hussein.
The highly symbolic pullout from Basra Palace began at about 10pm local time. Residents then reported seeing helicopters overhead and a convoy of eight tanks, six Land Rovers and five other large vehicles, possibly armoured personnel carriers, approaching the main British airport base from the palace shortly before midnight.
The streets of the city were largely deserted, and the convoy of troops from the 4th Battalion The Rifles was not attacked. Troops at the palace suffered daily attacks over the summer, with nine members of The Rifles being killed since May 21.
Basra airport will now be the only base for the 5,500 soldiers still serving in southern Iraq. With the palace base handed to the Iraqis, the Government is expected to announce that the British presence in Iraq will be reduced by 500 within the next few weeks...
The pullout came as two of Britain’s most influential generals during the Iraq war delivered scathing attacks on the Americans for their handling of the campaign after Saddam’s defeat. Major-General Tim Cross, who supervised reconstruction projects alongside his American counterparts in 2003, joined General Sir Mike Jackson, former head of the Army, in criticising the US for ignoring British advice. General Cross, a Royal Engineer, is retired but he was a hugely respected figure in the Army and had unrivalled experience in dealing with postwar nation-building. He revealed that he gave advice to Don-ald Rumsfeld, the former US Defence Secretary, about the size of the force needed to tackle the challenges after Saddam’s downfall, but was ignored.
The attacks by General Jackson, the former Chief of the General Staff, in his autobiography, and General Cross, in an interview with the Sunday Mirror, have laid bare the anger felt by the British military over the way that Mr Rumsfeld dismissed all the warning signs of a potential disaster in Iraq.
Although much has been said about the failures of the American strategy in Iraq, not least by Sir Jeremy Green-stock, the former British Ambassador at the United Nations and later Tony Blair’s special envoy to Baghdad, the strong criticism from the two generals has added to the growing sense of a rift between Washington and London...