British press on leaving Basra

Reaction from British papers on the Brits departure from Basra. Strangely absent is the deluded triumphalism which innundates our own press’ coverage of Bush’s latest sneak-and-peek into Anbar.

The Guardian:

Yesterday as the Iraqi flag was hoisted over Basra Palace, the city that the British left, Iraq’s second largest, was largely under militia control. In reality the city that was Basra in 2003 was long dead before yesterday’s withdrawal, and the fragile possibilities that it promised on that morning when Saddam’s rule collapsed were long ago snuffed out.

It has been suffocated by the rise of militias that took over the police, the politics and all aspects of Basra life. Even two years ago unembedded reporters would be happy to travel to Basra to escape the violence elsewhere to a place where it was still just possible to stay in local hotels and travel independently.

But now Basra has become like any other city in Iraq. It is a dark and violent place that has become a symbol for the other, barely spoken-about conflict in Iraq. It has been largely ignored among the reporting of the other more obvious violence: al-Qaida’s suicide spectaculars in Baghdad and the north, the sectarian killings, and the relentless attacks directed at US troops.

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With Shia resistance to the occupation gaining pace across Iraq, the political parties and their armed enforcers, starting in the holy cities of Kerbala and Najaf, engaged in a Shia political turf war which gradually transformed the city’s politics. As the parties fought, and fractured, the fight for Basra and the south came to resemble a gangland war.

And in that war - as British generals acknowledged last year - British soldiers were caught in a crossfire where killing British troops was the quickest way for a faction to establish its militant credentials as anti-occupation and therefore deserving of political respect and authority. Soldiers based within Basra Palace, or employees of NGOs based nearby, would describe the constant barrage of mortars and rockets into the British positions.

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In the end it does not really matter what the British army and government say. Whether they say it was a victory or a defeat. What matters is how the militias perceive it. After today they will say that they chased the British out of Basra.

The Times has more details on how Iraqis perceive the withdrawal:

Abu Ahmad, 36, an aide in the Basra office of the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr who controls the Mahdi army, told The Times: “This victory happened with the help of Allah and all those who gave their lives to achieve this goal, the nightly attacks on the palace with mortars and shells, under Moqtada’s leadership.”

Many inhabitants of Basra agreed. “The withdrawal of British forces was a success for the Mahdi army and a victory for the people of Basra. It is time to start a new chapter and rebuild our city,” said Zuher Abid Ali, 41, an engineer.

“We’re very happy because there are no more (foreign) troops in Basra,” added Sami Ahmed, 31, a shopkeeper. “The militias forced British troops to leave.”

and here:

Iran will regard the withdrawal as a huge victory for their policy of encouraging Shia militias against American and British forces. There will be little to stop the Iranians extending their influence over the city and the province.

The Daily Mail was less restrained:

The shrill blast from a lone bugler rang out at Basra Palace shortly before 1am local time yesterday.

It was sounding ‘the advance’ for the last British convoy to leave the base.

But nothing could disguise the fact that this was, in reality, a retreat.

Operation Blenheim was the code name for the transfer of 550 troops from the last base in the city to the relative safety of the airport. Despite the heroism of our soldiers, it was a humiliating withdrawal.

The British have vastly more experience than we in withdrawing from failed colonial ventures, the first of which was here in the Americas, but most of which were in the last 75 years. The news in Britain was the failure of the Iraq occupation, and the missteps of the Bush administration along the way. None of which stopped Bush from speaking of the “success” he claims we are having in Iraq.