“Run Out Of Town”
“Run out of town: how we got it wrong”
The British difficulties in southern Iraq resulted largely from the classic error of allowing political pressure at home to shape operations.
The big problem was a lack of “boots on the ground” for which the government – anxious to reduce domestic criticism of its involvement in Iraq – was largely responsible, although senior commanders cannot escape blame.
At the end of the 2003 war, Britain had 18,000 troops spread around bases in the four southern provinces of Basra, Dhi Qar, Maysan and Muthanna. By the end of 2003 that number had reduced to little more than 8,000, with only four operational infantry battalions. This was a calamitous misjudgment.
“At the top end our own chiefs failed to press home the need for more troops to remain in southern Iraq after the battle,” said one senior officer who served in Iraq in 2003.
“We knew we would succeed [in toppling Saddam], there was never any doubt, and we all knew that we would then enter a honeymoon period of peace-support operations which would be vital in winning hearts and minds. But when the initial fighting was over we were left with a force smaller than that which was based in Northern Ireland.”
Within weeks of the allied victory, ordinary Iraqis in Basra were asking troops patrolling the city by day where they were at night “when the bad men come out firing their guns”.
Although British troops were on standby to deploy after dark it was largely left to a hopelessly inadequate police force. The city by night became increasingly anarchic with sporadic bursts of gunfire. Anyone seen assisting the British by day found themselves visited by “the bad men” at night. Intelligence dried up.
Reconstruction was underfunded and difficult with criminality hampering attempts to repair power and water supplies.
“By late 2003 the locals had had enough, the streets were full of sewage, power was limited and jobs were scarce,” another officer said. “With the Iraqi army disbanded, thousands of men were walking the streets.”
Lack of money, and uncertainty over the future provided easy recruits for the militias, particularly the Mahdi Army, which went from being the weakest of the main groups in the south to the strongest.
The population was initially jubilant at the removal of Saddam, but became disillusioned by the deterioration of their lives under the British. Not for the first time, the British Army had arrived as liberators and swiftly turned into the enemy.
Over the next year, there were progressive attempts to increase the numbers of infantry in Iraq without making it look as if the original decision sharply to reduce troop numbers was a mistake. Pretty soon they were unable to go anywhere without the risk of being ambushed.
By late 2005, with deaths rising towards the politically significant 100 figure – the total is now 174 – the number of patrols was reduced in an attempt to stave off the inevitable embarrassment to Tony Blair. But by now there was a much more sinister hand operating behind the militias. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards were buying up influence with money and weaponry and providing training, some of it exceptionally good.
The British were being steadily forced out of Basra. In spring this year they pulled out of three of their five main bases around the city, leaving just the Basra Palace and the main base at the airport. With these both under virtual siege from Mahdi Army rockets and mortars, secret negotiations took place to allow a ceasefire and a peaceful withdrawal from the palace. That was followed within weeks by Gordon Brown’s announcement that British troop numbers will be reduced from 4,500 to 2,500 in spring next year.
Many within the US military have suggested the British have effectively been defeated in Basra, provoking Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, the chief of the defence staff, to insist: “They’re wrong, they’re completely and utterly wrong.”
The view within the British Army is divided between those who agree with Stirrup’s view that they have achieved all that they could have realistically hoped to do – getting rid of Saddam and handing over to a well trained Iraqi military – and those who agree with the Americans.
Last week a British infantry officer wrote on the internet forum Arrse: “To anyone who thinks we have made it a better place, we haven’t.”
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Uh-huh!……perfect example of what our troops would have had to endure if congress and the liberal surrender-monkeys had their way!
Nice going, dip-shits.
December 16th, 2007 at 10:36 pmLast week a British infantry officer wrote on the internet forum Arrse: “To anyone who thinks we have made it a better place, we haven’t.”
And leaving before the job is done is better, how?
December 16th, 2007 at 11:39 pmTroops are only as good as the support they receive.
December 17th, 2007 at 12:16 amYo congress write the check!
Run out by a bunch of ragtag monkeys…
I pray every day that liberalism does not completely overtake this country.
December 17th, 2007 at 1:50 amBritain may be finished as a reliable ally and may only threaten the US’s radical leftist and islamic problem if we continue to pretend nothing is wrong with the Kingdom.
It’s society is suffering from the Socialist disease of pussification and It’s happening in the US and is only in the early stages. They are in deep shit, let the rest of Socialist Europe drag us down with it.
We founded this country to from Countries like Europe and have done very well without their particular breed of ideologies that plaque the world. Our nation became great on the foundation of limited government, protection of property rights, and capitalism. It has changed the world greater than any force in history before it’s time. We want to apologize for what we earned and keep fawning for the love of those that despise us. We fools.
December 17th, 2007 at 2:06 amTo interpret events in al Basra, context is critical. When we invited the British to join us in this war in 2003, the U.S., with the bulk of troops and assets, was the senior partner. In essence, we were the driver of a bus filled with several dozen partners: Poland, Australia, Japan, Georgia, Korea, Albania and so on. Although several key countries had opted to stay home, no nation stepped up to the task like Great Britain, taking responsibility for southern Iraq. But they could not have not planned for the seemingly precipitous and arbitrary decisions made by the mostly American bus drivers in Washington and Baghdad, who took many turns without consulting an accurate map. Egos and strained competencies only magnified and compounded errors. Nobody paid more for these mistakes than Iraqis and Americans, but the Brits and others have also paid tolls for their seats.
Counterinsurgency experts cautioned Coalition members from the outset that military forces would have a limited shelf-life. There can be a finite expiration period during which popular perceptions shift, and liberators become viewed as occupiers, and eventually as malignant beings that must be expurgated. While the American shelf-life in some regions was measured in weeks and months, tolerance for the British was measured in years. But when American stewards made early and notable missteps that extended the war, the British outlived their welcome in the southern provinces.
“We don’t do nation-building,” I remember hearing someone say. But by systematically and in relatively short order demolishing Iraq’s government infrastructure, firing its staff en masse, disbanding its army, our combined militaries in Iraq could only accomplish the mission by rebuilding the country from scratch. While we were making these mistakes and getting ourselves into a serious shooting war around Baghdad and in northern Iraq, some of our British partners made public statements questioning the wisdom of our actions. That the Brits were mostly right was beside the point; their words chafed. Basra was mostly quiet, which was widely taken as evidence of British knowhow, despite how the highly nuanced demographic and historical context could support other plausible interpretations.
After the invasion in March 2003, Great Britain assumed responsibility for four southern Iraqi provinces: Muthanna, Dhi Qar, Maysan and al Basra (of which Basra is capital). The first three provinces have already been returned to “Provincial Iraqi Control” or PIC’d. The Coalition still operates in these provinces, but in limited capacities. The final Province under UK administration is al Basra, and it is scheduled “to PIC” in early December.
By 2007, when the U.S. military had made a rapid metamorphosis and was meeting the insurgency head-on, despite that the transformation was stunning in both speed and outcome, it came too late for the British, whose expiration date in Basra had passed. Increasing tensions in Basra between rival political factions were beginning to undermine an otherwise successful mission in that region. With fewer forces on hand at a time when the British might have been planning final withdrawals, Basra’s many feuding factions galvanized hostilities around a central target: the British.
As to grumblings about the British cutting and running, we were driving the bus, and had we not taken so many wrong turns, the British mission would likely have ended before their expiration date had passed.
In truth, the British have kept faith with their pledge of partnership, and much more because by overstaying, they jeopardized men, women and mission in order to buy us time and keep the exits covered. America has no truer ally, always there, through bad and worse.
Michael Yon – Men of Valor Pt II
http://www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/men-of-valor-part-ii.htm
December 17th, 2007 at 4:15 amI don’t care what Michael Yon says–Britain’s cutting and running is craven and cowardly.
December 17th, 2007 at 10:27 amAnd the whole “bus” analogy is weak.
We let the Brits “drive the bus” at times during WWII in operations like Market Garden in which 17,000 Allied troops were killed in a futile plan of Montgomery’s.
And we didn’t get off the “bus” then.
The problem wasn’t that we were driving the bus and made mistakes–the problem is that the Limeys have Leftist EU sickness and Islamophilia planted firmly in their butts.
They spend a fortune on their national health care, pensions, welfare and other government gimmes to illegal immigrants and Islamist terrorists who feel quite at home in Londonistan, while they spend a minimal amount on their military and defense.
No power on earth will make the mistake of calling Britain “Great” anymore, starting with Al Queda.
Yea I don’t care either. The British soldiers have done right by me, its their fucking lefties that did them in.
The Brits didn’t “lose” Basra. For that to happen, they’d have to have been trying to keep it, or at least playing to win. Their politicians manipulated this “loss”, at the price of their own soldiers’ blood.
December 17th, 2007 at 1:06 pmI would love someone to explain the “cutting and running” comments I keep seeing on here. The UK still has 4500 troops in Iraq. In the next couple of months it will reduce to 2500 the number it will stay at in case the Iraq Army request support in Basra. If you look at the troop contributions from other countries the only one (with the obvious exception of the US) who has ever had more than 2500 troops in Iraq is Italy who had 3000 troops when their commitment was at it’s biggest.
With the second largest troop commitment currently in country and the third largest at any stage I do not understand how you can describe it as “cutting and running”.
I happen to find Michael Yons article very accurate as do many who have been in Basra recently. I believe the current statistics (terrorist attacks in Basra have dropped by approx 80% since the handover of Basra Palace) back that up. Basra was never going to get better while the militias were able to portray UK troops as an occupying force. The move to the airport has meant they can’t do that any more. However by keeping the troops at the airport the militias still know that the troops are close enough to hand to give them the same malleting that brought them to the negotiating table this year and that they got during both Shia rebellions in 2004.
December 17th, 2007 at 2:39 pm