Two Down, Two to Go

This sum­mer, British forces in south­ern Iraq returned the first two of Iraq’s 18 provinces to native con­trol. Another han­dover is immi­nent. But it’s anybody’s guess when the most impor­tant of the Brits’ four provinces might go.
Muthanna province was the first and eas­i­est. This remote province is sparsely pop­u­lated, deeply hos­tile to for­eign fight­ers — in fact, to any for­eign­ers — and firmly ruled by its dom­i­nant sheiks. The only rea­son coali­tion forces were there at all was to look after a Japanese team build­ing a new power plant. When the Japanese fin­ished up and headed home this sum­mer, their 500 Australian min­ders moved north to neigh­bor­ing Dhi Qar province, reliev­ing an Italian force rede­ploy­ing to Lebanon for peace­keep­ing duty.
Dhi Qar, another bar­ren desert province, itself was in the process of tran­si­tion­ing to Iraqi con­trol. The Aussies remain under a Memorandum of Understanding with Baghdad. Their job: to sit, wait and watch Muthanna and Dhi Qar. In the event extrem­ists try to turn the provinces into Al Anbar-​​style insur­gent havens, the Aussies will swing into action in their Light Armored Vehicles.
Further north, the Brits have begun a staged with­drawal from the bor­der province of Maysan, pop­u­la­tion 900,000. Once upon a time, a British bat­tle­group was based at Camp Abu Naji near Al Amarah, Maysan’s biggest city. The base, a Saddam-​​era prison, was a sym­bol of the occu­pa­tion to Al Amarah’s proud, xeno­pho­bic and impov­er­ished peo­ple. It became, in the words of British Lieutenant Colonel David Labouchere, “an indirect-​​fire mag­net”. In May, Labouchere and his bat­tle­group from the Queen’s Royal Hussars endured a 10-​​minute, 100-​​round, middle-​​of-​​the-​​night bar­rage that rat­tled even this sea­soned offi­cer. He recalls cow­er­ing naked under a table with the base’s pet goat Ben, who “pissed and shit every­where” in panic. Miraculously, no one was hurt.
After the attack, Labouchere came up with a plan to speed Maysan towards Iraqi con­trol. He would shut down Abu Naji and take to the desert with a small, light mobile force resup­plied mostly by air. With this force he would patrol the porous bor­der with Iran, con­duct diplo­matic mis­sions into tribal areas and check up on Iraqi troops and bor­der cops. The idea was to remove the dou­ble irri­tants of a per­ma­nent facil­ity and the large road con­voys that sup­ply it and focus­ing on the most crit­i­cal mis­sion — bor­der secu­rity — while lever­ag­ing a reduced pres­ence to encour­age Iraqis to pick up the slack in secu­rity.
Labouchere shut­tered Abu Naji in August. Today he rides through Maysan like a modern-​​day Lawrence of Arabia, unit­ing the province’s tribes under the ban­ner of Iraqi con­trol. He hopes the for­mally hand over the province in a mat­ter of months. Ideally, his bat­tle­group will win per­mis­sion from Baghdad to con­tinue patrolling the Iranian bor­der even after the han­dover.
Maysan’s trans­fer will leave just Basra province, home to Iraq’s sec­ond city Basra, with a grow­ing pop­u­la­tion push­ing two mil­lion. Basra is dom­i­nated by Shi’ite cler­ics includ­ing Moqtada Al Sadr, whose Mahdi Army mili­tia is more pow­er­ful by far than the city’s cor­rupt cops. Half-​​hearted and heavy-​​handed attempts to pacify the mili­tias over the past three years, plus a decay­ing infra­struc­ture and police mis­be­hav­ior unfairly blamed on the Brits, have eroded local con­sent to the point where most Baswaris are loudly call­ing for British troops to leave, often with rock­ets, mor­tars and bricks. But Basra sits atop most of Iraq’s oil and gen­er­ates 97 per­cent of the country’s rev­enue. It can­not be aban­doned until local insti­tu­tions are robust and secu­rity is air tight.
So the Brits have a plan. They call it Sinbad after the leg­endary hero who is said to have begun his voy­age from Basra. British troops, rein­forced by the top-​​notch 10th Iraqi Army divi­sion that nor­mally patrols the city’s marshy out­skirts, will push into Basra one neigh­bor­hood at a time, flood­ing police sta­tions with advi­sors while also patch­ing up infra­struc­ture and iden­ti­fy­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to spend $80 mil­lion in American recon­struc­tion funds. With the cops reformed and the streets clean, Baswaris might feel bet­ter about their British occu­piers and grant them the space to con­tinue rebuild­ing local gov­ern­ment.
It’s a bold plan, and out­num­bered coali­tion troops must exe­cute it while under mur­der­ous indi­rect fire that, on October 1, killed one British sol­dier, injured another and blew up the trailer I had left just five min­utes ear­lier. Basra’s a rough town — but one that’s crit­i­cal to Iraq’s future. Fortunately, the British-​​led force here is at the top of its game, with new equip­ment and tac­tics and a grow­ing recog­ni­tion that a func­tional Iraq won’t look like Britain or the U.S, but is still worth fight­ing for.
Check out pics from my cur­rent Iraq trip at Flickr.
– David Axe

October 4th, 2006 | Axe in Iraq (and Elsewhere) | 212719 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2006/10/04/two-down-two-to-go/Two+Down%2C+Two+to+Go2006-10-04+15%3A53%3A13wonk You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.