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| Iraq |
| British warplanes fire on Basra |
| 2008-03-29 |
| British bombers strafed Iraq’s second city yesterday as an embryonic Shia civil war raised the prospect of British troops being drawn back on to the front line of the Iraq conflict. RAF Tornado GR4 bombers flew low over the city and fired warning shots at positions around Basra but the Iraqi Army had not yet asked for British troops to join the battle against Shia militia, which has left at least 120 dead since Tuesday. The heavily armed 1 Scots Guards battle group, equipped with Challenger 2 tanks and Warrior armoured vehicles, was on alert and ready to leave its fortified airbase outside Basra as fighting spread to a string of cities across southern Iraq. The remaining 4,000 troops sat and watched from Basra airport as the Iraqi Army it helped to create struggled to defeat militias the British allowed to flourish in the city. The intense fighting means that Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, is likely to tell the Commons next week that British troop levels will remain at about 4,100 for the next few months, abandoning plans to reduce numbers to 2,500 from the spring. The British handed control of Basra to Iraqi forces six months ago and are reluctant to wade in again now, despite their superior firepower. Coalition forces are, though, being drawn into the new fighting that has flared up across the Shia south. US war-planes from bases to the north dropped bombs on Mahdi Army militiamen in Basra yesterday. The Mahdi militiamen are holding government troops at bay, and parading US-supplied armoured vehicles they had captured in front of television cameras. Coalition officials claim that they were not informed of the impending Iraqi attack on rogue militias until the very last minute, stressing that it was an “Iraqi-planned, Iraqi-led and Iraqi-executed operation”. There were increasing signs this week that the operation may have been premature, with Iraqi security forces shaken by reports of militia-affiliated police firing on government soldiers, and of desertions from the ranks of the military. Having sworn to fight until the militias are crushed, Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, appeared to be softening his stance, offering cash to fighters who turn in their weapons and extending a three-day deadline to surrender by another ten days. The Iraqi soldiers, popularly known as “jundis” among their US and British trainers and mentors, are facing well-organised guerrillas from the Mahdi Army, which has existed as a fighting force for longer than the new Iraqi Army. Residents of Basra said that the guerrillas, far from preparing to surrender, were building defensive bunkers and barricades. “We are still fighting,” said a Mahdi Army spokesman in Sadr City. “Nobody handed in their weapons, we will never do that for cash.” Militiamen fired a steady stream of rockets and mortars from their stronghold across the city into the fortified Green Zone, where the Iraqi parliament and US and British embassies are located. US forces were in action in Baghdad, firing helicopter rockets at militants who have started fighting across Shia areas of the capital, in particular Sadr City and the shrine district of Qaddumiya. Sadr City militiamen said that they had disabled an armoured vehicle with a roadside bomb, and that a US airstrike later destroyed by rocket fire to prevent its armoury falling into Mahdi hands. The threat of US and British forces being dragged more deeply into what is increasingly looking like a Shia civil war in the south increased as clashes broke out in Nasariyah – close to the coalition’s main supply route from Kuwait to Baghdad – and also in Diwaniya, Kut and the shrine city of Kerbala. Mr al-Maliki, a previously cautious leader who has struggled to negotiate a path between the powerful Shia blocs that rule Iraq, was praised by President Bush for boldly taking on outlaw militias that have in the past caused mayhem with their antiSunni death squads, internal power struggles, oil smuggling and links to Iran. The man widely regarded as the intellectual author of Mr Bush’s surge strategy in Iraq, Fred Kagan, blamed Britain’s “short-term approach” in Basra for the upsurge in violence. He told The Times that the UK Government had ordered the withdrawal of forces to the airport without leaving “behind a stable security situation”. Supporters of Hojestoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical cleric who formed the Mahdi Army in 2003, after the US-British invasion, have framed the spreading battle as a power struggle between the Sadr bloc and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, which has its own militia, the Badr Brigades, which are also a serious presence inside Iraq’s security forces. In the complex swirl of Iraqi power politics, both sides have links to the Iranian regime. British forces in Iraq — There are 4,100 British troops in Iraq and a further 500 in Kuwait. |
| Posted by:GolfBravoUSMC |
| #3 likely Barb, although this seems strategically timed. Whether the Brits were tougher or not in th elast year may not have played a difference. Seems like the Iraqi elections coming up and early turf/image seeking might be more in play |
| Posted by: Frank G 2008-03-29 20:47 |
| #2 Maybe if they'd been allowed to fire on Basra a year ago, we wouldn't have the problem there we have now.... |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2008-03-29 20:34 |
| #1 the brit forces, especially the point of the spear, when given the weapons and support they need by the gov't, seem willing to shoulder their part of the burden. I don't like hearing the "all Brits are pussies" even more than "all Muzzies are terrorists". Both make little sense, and reflect badly on the utterer |
| Posted by: Frank G 2008-03-29 19:32 |