Our departure from Iraq ends a dismal period in our military history
28 March 2009
Michael Portillo, in Basra, says that Britain has been humiliated: by committing too few troops, by failing to support the US surge, by showing more interest in spin than reality. If Basra is relatively calm, that has little do with us
‘The past is the past. It is no longer important,’ says Brigadier Billal Saleh Shukur, commander of Iraq’s 21st army brigade now occupying a part of Basra. We have met on a warm March day at the airbase outside the city, at the start of a five-a-side football tournament between teams drawn from the Iraqi and British forces. I had expressed my profound regret that the American-British Coalition, which rightly reveres every one of its own casualties, has always refused to count how many Iraqi citizens have been killed in six years of violence; and indeed has invested considerable effort in discrediting any human rights organisation that estimated the death toll. Somehow the Coalition came to treat Iraqis, the people we claimed to be liberating, as the enemy, or a group deserving no respect, whose deaths were not worth noting.
All things considered, the Brigadier’s attitude is extraordinarily magnanimous. It is explained, perhaps, by the surge in confidence throughout the Iraqi forces since Operation Charge of the Knights, launched just one year ago. Led, literally, by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the army swept south towards Basra, driving out Moqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi army, a Shia militia. It had controlled Basra. Its death squads had thoroughly penetrated the police, and unleashed murder and terror on a population for which Britain had responsibility as the invader and occupier.
In the wake of the Iraqi army’s freeing of Basra, today the markets and cafés are crowded. At the funfair families enjoy the spring evening under the garish lights of a new Ferris wheel. Two British colonels and I head for the bumper cars. A couple of children cadge a ride with the officers, each kid incongruously sharing the cramped space with a man in uniform and his SA-80 rifle. As we move about the amusement park, Baswaris greet us with smiles and ‘salaam’, their right hand flattened across their chest in a sign of respect. The women wear the hijab, but the young ones sport tight jeans too. They are all friendly and unabashed and their eyes meet ours steadily.
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Chris
March 26th, 2009 7:39am Report this commentBritain has been humiliated because it was there at all. We should never have been occupying someone else's country to suit America's colonial ambitions. Our troops have ended up playing the role of the Germans in an old war film.
The British government has no right and no mandate to run Iraq or Afghanistan. The people of those countries did not vote for Gordon Brown. None of them put a cross next to a labour candidate. Nobody in Britain has a right to make their decisions for them.
Richard
March 26th, 2009 12:26pm Report this commentMost Iraqi civilians were killed by Sunni or Shia terrorists or by other Iraqi militias.
'A senior Iraqi officer laments to me the further error of excluding all officers who had been Baath party members from the army for some time after it was re-established. ‘It was a great misjudgment to think that the army owed allegiance to Saddam,'
What rubbish!! If the UK had used Baath officers we would have been accused of keeping the Nazis in power.
Portilo is just a Tory who cannot acknowledge that the US led invasion might just about turn out be beneficial to Iraq. Indeed, it might turn out to the one New Labour policy that actually worked.
Forlornehope
March 26th, 2009 1:27pm Report this commentPerhaps one of the lessons is that no western democracy can be ruthless enough to control these countries. British or US troops would never have been allowed to behave like the Iraqi army during the Charge of the Knights. Saddam, like Tito in Yugoslavia, was keeping the lid on all sorts of feuds by sheer brute force. Afghanistan is no different.
Bickers
March 26th, 2009 2:28pm Report this commentRichard:
Read the article again - Portillo clearly acknowledges that the US strategy is the one that's worked whilst the UK's has at best been half hearted and lacked the commitment needed to win the 'war'
gus
April 2nd, 2009 9:20pm Report this commenti am a simple man from North Carolina. i want to sincerely thank all of the British troups that stood behind us in Iraq and stand with us in Afghanistan. may your sacrifice help bring us a better and safer world. God Bless the United Kingdon!!!
Nicholas Storey
April 11th, 2009 3:42pm Report this commentAt last it is possible to comment on this topsy-turvy article! I actually recall, as the greatest mark of shame in the Iraq business, the exposure by the Independent newspaper, of the bare-faced lies (including the nicely vague and equivocal legal advice) that Blair and his cronies used to persuade the rather gullible Opposition to back Blair backing Bush in his illegal invasion of Iraq. That the UK has inadequate military might at this period in its history seems axiomatic and any shame in that is the shame of the government rather than the forces themselves - many of whom must wonder to what Great Question Britain is still seeking the answer in it presence in far-flung places which not even any continuing Empire could justify. Moreover, there is a certain shame in the toothless consensual politics of the age which means that nothing much has to be fought hard in debate and doubt before it is (often actually mindlessly) enacted by the goons in Parliament.
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