Basra: Case Study In Failed Gunpoint Diplomacy

With the UK military officially handing control of Basra back to the Iraqis, now is a good time to consider just what the occupation has wrought.

While the official line from the British military is that violence in Basra is down, and this is all about a "success for Iraq", there's some pretty ugly stories that should not be ignored.

al Qaeda is claiming that the UK is "fleeing".

Fair enough, one doesn't have to dig too far to guess what al Qaeda's motives might be, but I also think there's a certain truth value to the notion that as the occupying forces pull back, the power vacuum will be filled not by Iraqi forces per se, but by "shadow forces" that see an opportunity to step forward. (and I'd put money that by this time next year, much of the equipment the Iraqi forces in Basra have today will be in the hands of militants of one sort or another.

The Guardian points out a few rather bleak facts of the reality in Basra:

What have they achieved? When they entered Basra in 2003, they handed out sweets and water and helped to clean the streets. Now they can't safely enter the town even in armoured vehicles. Iraqi security chiefs and politicians say the British should go and that when they do security will improve significantly. Yet police chief Khalaf told the Guardian yesterday that Britain had left him to cope with militia, gangsters, and beheadings of women considered insufficiently Islamic.

It is this second point that scares me. Essentially, radical nutcases are clearly operative in Basra, and trying to impose their peculiar brand of "Islam" on everybody they can. From a human rights perspective, these acts are horrifying - beheading someone because they are a woman, and they aren't "dressed modestly enough" is vile in the extreme.

However, this is ultimately a reflection of precisely the kind of outcome that any military occupation of Iraq would be likely to have.

My prediction is that short of a multi-generation occupation and rebuilding process, the short to medium term outlook for Iraq is bleak and violent. I do not know what forces would come to the forefront if Iraq were allowed to descend into the civil war that is clearly brewing just beneath the surface veneer of "peace".