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| Iraq |
| British accused of appeasing Shia militia in Basra |
| 2008-04-12 |
| In Basra the signs of the feared militia are slowly receding. For the first time in years alcohol vendors are selling beer close to army checkpoints, and ringtones praising the rebel cleric Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr are vanishing from mobile phones. Music shops are once again selling pop tunes instead of the recorded lectures of Shia ayatollahs. But, as the city cautiously comes back to life after an offensive by Iraqi troops backed by hundreds of US soldiers, there is a lingering resentment towards the British Army. Many here blame the British for allowing the al-Mahdi Army and other militias to impose a long reign of terror on the once cosmopolitan city. The battle for Basra is still not over. An American airstrike yesterday killed another six men who had been attacking Iraqi troops from the militia's hold-out areas, which the Army has so far been unable to penetrate. Support is, though, slowly building for Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, who led his troops into Basra having given his US allies barely more than a weekend's notice of the impending attack. The British were informed only a day before, prompting Lieutenant-General Peter Wall, the deputy chief of staff, to describe the whole operation as “hastily planned”. “After the Iraqi Army set up checkpoints and the militia disappeared from the streets, I decided to start selling alcohol,” Luay Hanna, a 46-year-old liquor store owner, said. His shop was burnt down by fundamentalist militiamen three years ago, and many of his colleagues were butchered. “Many of the alcohol sellers reopened their shops. We always sell near the Iraqi army checkpoints to be safe - not like before when the militia killed and kidnapped people right in front of the police's eyes.” Qaldoon Nuri, who runs a CD shop, was forced to stop selling pop songs for fear of the zealous gunmen four years ago. One of his friends was murdered for refusing to heed the ban. He was forced to sell religious songs, many of them praising al-Sadr, as well as lectures on tenets of the Shia faith. “The militia forced us to follow a fanatic Islamic code. They forced us to put up pictures of the imams,” he said. “Now after the militias have been defeated by government forces, we started to put some songs on CD and are looking for what's new in the arts - what people actually like.” One of his neighbours, Saleh Muhammad, has been badgered in his phone shop by customers demanding new pop ringtones and pictures of female singers to download. “I think it's freedom from the fear,” he said. The British have been unable to bask in even the partial success of the battle. Having abruptly decided to take on the militias after years of appeasing them, Mr al-Maliki's first venture on to the battlefield was plagued by desertions from his security forces and stronger than expected resistance. Outfought, he called on US forces for support rather than the 4,100 British troops who have barely left their base at Basra airfield. When the British commanding officer visited the Prime Minister's field headquarters during the fight he was left waiting outside by the Iraqi leader. The humiliating snub was believed to be payback for an alleged deal with the militias by British forces, who released several of their jailed leaders and agreed not to attack them if the British base was not hit. “I think the British troops were the main reason that militias became very powerful,” complained Inas Abed Ali, a teacher. “They didn't fight them properly and, when they found themselves losing in the city, they moved out to the airport and chose to negotiate with the militias and criminal groups as if they were legal.” “The British Army had no role in Basra,” Rahman Hadi, a coffee shop owner, said. “We haven't seen any achievements by them in the streets of Basra. I don't know why their troops didn't respond to the acts of these militias for long years, after seeing all the suffering that Basra people went through.” Even senior Iraqi officers admitted that the hands-off British approach to policing the city had given the militias free rein. Brigadier Alaa al-Ittabi, from the infantry command of the Iraqi Ministry of Defence, said that the British Army “was sometimes negatively lenient, like the way they dealt with the militias”. Mr Hadi was placing his hopes on the new Iraqi forces. “The presence of these foreign troops adds nothing to the situation, and even the Iraqi troops trained by the British Army proved to be infiltrated by the militias and to be corrupt.” General David Petraeus, the US commander here, said that the Iraqi Army's initial performance in Basra had been disappointing and gave warning that the battle could last months. Brigadier al-Ittabi attributed the mass desertions at the outset to the deployment of local forces who were unwilling to fight their neighbours and whose families were vulnerable to militia threats. Sources in Basra said that the Iraqi troops started to gain traction only after Mr al-Maliki drafted in two extra brigades, one from the Sunni city of Ramadi and the other from Karbala, where the al-Mahdi Army's rival militia, the Badr Brigades - loyal to the main Shia party in Mr al-Maliki's Government - holds sway. Some observers have described the battle in Basra, which has also sparked fighting in the al-Mahdi Army's main stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad, as a power struggle between the anti-US Sadrists, with strong grassroots support among poor Shia, and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, which runs the Badr militia and has long co-operated with the US military. That theory was lent weight yesterday when unidentified gunmen shot down Hojatoleslam al-Sadr's brother- in-law, who ran his office in the Shia holy city of Najaf, where the Badr forces are strong. |
| Posted by:GolfBravoUSMC |
| #4 "The British have been unable to bask in even the partial success of the battle. Having abruptly decided to take on the militias after years of appeasing them, Mr al-Maliki's first venture on to the battlefield was plagued by desertions from his security forces and stronger than expected resistance. Outfought, he called on US forces for support rather than the 4,100 British troops who have barely left their base at Basra airfield. " That paragraph is basically propaganda. The author is making that up. Yes, ONE Iraqi battalion that was sent into battle right after basic training cracked but the Iraqi Army sent in reinforcements. It wasn't like the Iraqis just stopped and called the Americans to bail them out of a jam. From what I have been reading, the Iraqis did quite well and the Americans came in to get them over a couple of rough spots but they are doing most of the heavy lifting themselves. I would say the US role was more of a mentoring role. Also, I believe Sadr's brother in law was killed by the Iranians. They can't kill Sadr because Sadr is in Iran and it would be immediately obvious who did it. Iran wants control of Sadr's organization. I believe Iran is going to purge anyone who might be more loyal to Sadr than to Iran. Sadr himself is safe as long as he is in Iran but if Iran kicks him out, then that will be the signal that his days are numbered too. The JAM is probably going to be transformed into the Iraqi Hezbollah. |
| Posted by: crosspatch 2008-04-12 11:56 |
| #3 It's a Sunni vs Shiite thing. |
| Posted by: ed 2008-04-12 09:21 |
| #2 put up pictures of the imams This practice by these so-called fundamentalist or extremist Muslims always struck me as strange: In the past (e.g. Muslim Spain) really fine art was developed using geometric themes because Islam prohibited representations of man (or even animals, I think). And you see how they get all bent out of shape over cartoons of old Mo - but since they're all supposed to emulate him, how can they plaster pictures of themselves all over town? |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2008-04-12 08:57 |
| #1 That doesn't sound unlike our government. We;ve got to look out for the Human Rights of the fascist muslim brothers at home as well as abroad. Screw our own army though, they loose any legal right to proper equipment, that may halp protect their lives, once outside British borders. |
| Posted by: Glusoter Platypus 2008-04-12 04:03 |