As Basra slid towards hell, Blair looked the other way

Wednesday, 27th January 2010

It’s a mistake to focus on the dodgy dossier, says Fraser Nelson. Blair’s real crime was to invade Iraq with no strategy, no understanding of the Islamist factions and no qualms about leaving Iraqis to the mercy of death squads

There has always been a faction of the Labour party that wanted Tony Blair in the dock for the Iraq war — no matter how pointless it would be. This was the sole purpose of the Chilcot inquiry. Gordon Brown agreed to it simply to assuage his backbenchers, and the whole exercise was intended to be more a mischievous distraction than an inquisition. But almost by accident, the inquiry has exposed the real scandal of Iraq: the appalling mismanagement of the war and the defeat of the British army, which left the people of Basra to the death squads.

The WMD have become weapons of mass distraction. Mr Blair spent years answering questions about the case for war in Iraq, but he has answered far too few questions about the conduct of that war. No British journalist was based in the British-controlled south of Iraq, and so information about the situation there was sparse. For a politician wishing to construct a false narrative of progress, the circumstances were ideal. Had it not been for the Chilcot inquiry, the scale of the tragedy of Basra might never have come to light.

The problems should have been clear from the offset. As we now know from the Chilcot inquiry, Clare Short’s Department for International Development was unable to draw a plan for the reconstruction of Basra as it was deliberately kept out of the loop. The reason? Short was not trusted by the Blair circle, as Alastair Campbell admitted in his evidence. So DFID, from the outset, had no strategy — and Basra suffered as a result of the government’s factionalism.

Power was handed to Iraqis at breakneck speed. The militiamen found that if they stood in a queue, they were given guns and a badge and a police station to run. No one attempted to stop them when they turned these stations into command posts for their respective groups, loyal not to the state but to the various militia leaders. The British soldiers were instructed not to care, as long as they kept on recruiting and allowed Blair to boast about how many people had signed up to the army and military.

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Ian E

January 28th, 2010 8:57am Report this comment

So, Mr Nelson, are you saying that it was no crime to take the nation to war on an outright lie? I cannot agree - that, to me, constitutes High Treason - reneging on what is surely the highest and most sacred responsibility of a Prime Minister. I never trusted Blair on anything, I was highly dubious about the war, but I never thought a Prime Minister could lie over such an issue. I am now older, wiser, but even more disgusted with politicians than I could ever have believed possible!

Billy Blofeld

January 28th, 2010 9:30am Report this comment

Fraser,

Blair is guilty of both War Crimes and also failing to have any strategy.

He needs to be tried in court - Chilcot is just a distraction.

Yam Yam

January 28th, 2010 10:08am Report this comment

The folly of Basra could stand as a epitaph for the whole New Labour 'project', be it regarding education, health, law and order, the economy - you name it: apropos Blair's election campaign song, spin a few statistics to claim that things have only got better whilst a more thorough probing quickly reveals that they have actually got worse.

donkeyhoatey

January 28th, 2010 9:46pm Report this comment

As to war criminality, my suspicions were first aroused when bombs were blithely ordered to fall on serb grannies and their infant charges. I didn't need to wait for Iraq(when we seemed to have more right to resume the war (started by iraq invading kuwait) for 14 breaches of the terms of the UN armistice; not least in the light of a permanent Security Council member declaring openly in advance it would veto any second resolution 'en toute circonstance'(having first secured oil advantages - heads of terms were signed - for itself) thus thwarting debate and the due process of international law).
Once asked to define protofascism (ok then: socialism minus marxism plus nationalism and an insistence on one's own youth, freshness, novelty..); I replied I knew it when I saw it and I seemed, since 1997, to see more of it with every passing day.
Time we all realised politicians feel entitled, nay bound, to fool us for our own good. Too many of us fooled ourselves first - and kept on doing so. Idle then to charge those who convince themselves something ought to be true, so could be true, may very well be true, is probably true, true on a balance of probabilities, must be true, as liars.

stephen maybery

January 29th, 2010 11:54am Report this comment

The greatest crime committed by Blair, was the crime of ignorance. Was no-one in the entire Whitehall machine aware of the generic hatred of the Iraqi population for the West in General and the British in particular? Indeed, hatred of the British was practically on the school curriculum in Iraq.

How, you may ask am I so sure of myself? well, I designed all the concrete used in Saddam's nuclear bunkers and spent two and a half years in Baghdad supervising their construction, that interlude appart I have spent half of my working life in the Middle East, when it comes to that part of the world I know what I am talking about.

To send the military into Iraq without a clear strategy along with a swift exit plan was an act of crimminal negligence, as while the Iraqi's loathed Saddam and undoubtedly welcomed his removal, the window of gratitude of the locals for their deliverers was a very narrow aperture indeed.

If the lack of strategy regarding the occupation was bad enough, what was even worse was the callous underming of our armed forces by the very Government who sent the troops to Mesopotamia. This was no oversight by Blair and co, our troops were hog tied by human rights laws and the shibolleths of political correctness beloved of the Islington mafia. If the Government was not prepared to defend our soldiers when sent onverseas to defend our interests, then our boys should never have been dispatched to die in the first place.

Minnie Ovens

February 1st, 2010 11:08pm Report this comment

All very true in this good article.
But everything is looked at as if the UK had any real say in the matter.
Rumsfeld and the Neo Cons had already decided that it was best that Iraq should rebuild itself with as little support from the allies as possible. The Neo Cons believed that society would genetically democratize itself (Sorry Hobbes, it seems Locke was the flavour of the day...).
I remember sitting in my appartment in LA and hearing that a Major in the US Army, on being told that the Baghdad Museum was being pilfered of all its priceless antiquities, laconically stated that he had no forces to redress the situation and it was a low priority.
Many of us already thought Rumsfeld was a thoughtless thug (albeit a good QFI) and this confirmed that everything was about to go sideways and then spiral downwards.
Then KBR was appointed the major contractor after this happened and everything accelerated....even further downwards.
Anyone in the UK that thinks we had any influence over any post war strategy in Iraq "avait les idees au dessus de sa gare".

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