Patrick Cockburn: This deployment was always doomed (Brits/Basra)

[marmar]

from the Independent UK:


Patrick Cockburn: This deployment was always doomed
Published: 05 September 2007


The British campaign in Basra was undermined from the beginning to the end by lack of Iraqi support. The supposed aim of the occupation of Basra and southern Iraq was to allow time fora stable and democratically elected Iraqi government authority to be established with its own police and army forces on whom it could rely.

This was never likely to happen. The British occupation began with the killing of six British military policemen at Majar al-Kabir, south of Amara, in June 2003 after an ill-conducted search for arms.

Local people said they had never bowed their heads to Saddam Hussein and asked why they should now accept a foreign occupying power.

Tony Blair was endlessly claiming that the British forces were usefully engaged in training Iraqi security forces in the face of dogged resistance from "rogue" policemen.

But it was clear from early on that the rogues were, in effect, in charge.

British forces had to storm a police station to rescue their own soldiers who had been detained while spying in Arab clothing on the same station.

"As early as 2004, British influence was in steep decline," says Reidar Visser, a leading academic specialist on Basra and southern Iraq.

"In other words, the recent pull-out itself was a largely symbolic affair: the British ceased exercising effective control of Basra a long time ago." .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article2927114.ece