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.
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