The Labour government has been spinning aggressively that British troops are withdrawing from Iraq because the job is done. Major General Andy Salmon, the British Commander, has even made the rather dubious claim that Basra is now safer than Manchester. It is true that the progress made in recent months has been remarkable: there have only been three successful militia bomb attacks during this period. The recent provincial elections saw the extremist Fadhila party, which had controlled the city, well and truly routed. Prime Minister Maliki’s Dawa party won a plurality of the votes and a majority of the seats; a testament to the public’s view of the Charge of the Knights which Maliki launched in March 2008 to drive the militias out of Basra.
But the flags at the ceremony this week exposed the government’s spin. The British were not handing over to the Iraqis but to the 10th Mountain Division of the US army. The job is evidently not done yet. Whatever one’s view of the Iraq war, it has been an inglorious episode in the history of British military operations (as opposed to the history of British military valour). British troops arrived in Iraq regarded as world experts in counter-insurgency. They leave having been — in the words of Gordon Brown and David Miliband’s favourite counter-insurgency expert, David Kilcullen — ‘defeated in the field in southern Iraq’ in 2006. British forces did play a part in reversing this defeat. But the decisive Charge of the Knights was ordered by the Iraqi Prime Minister and principally carried out by Iraqi and American forces.
Where does the blame lie? It is true that the British military failed to maintain its counter-insurgency skills in the years leading up to Iraq. Officers’ experience in Ulster as the Troubles were winding down made them complacent. Much more deleterious, however, was the shrunken size of the army, which meant that the British military never had sufficient boots on the ground. The compromises that were made — and the problems they caused — were the inevitable consequence of fighting wars on peacetime budgets.
The Americans faced these problems too. Their officers had little experience of counter-insurgency and — because of Donald Rumsfeld’s strategy — there were far too few troops for the task. But once Rumsfeld had left the Pentagon, the necessary political will and intellectual tools were on hand to turn things around. The United States was not prepared to cede territory to the militias in the way that the British were forced to.
There are signs in Afghanistan that a new cadre of British officers with a better understanding of counter-insurgency is emerging. But the army must be rapidly expanded so that it can carry out this form of warfare properly and cope with the strains imposed by this generation-long commitment.
When there is less money in the Treasury, few politicians are prepared to spend more on defence. Indeed, some Tories are prepared to compound Gordon Brown’s short-changing of the military by cutting defence spending to show just how thrifty they are. But defence is the public service where failing to increase spending will lead to the most immediate reductions in the quality and reach of the service. One instant fix is for the Department of International Development to pay the forces for the reconstruction work that they already do.
Shortly before he left office, Tony Blair said that this country must decide if it is to be a war-fighting or a peacekeeping nation. (Blair himself had dodged this question by sending troops into battle without the necessary increases in defence spending.) It would be ridiculous if Britain threw away its global position and became a peacekeeping nation just because politicians don’t have the courage to look in other parts of the bloated public spending budget for cuts.
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