Saturday August 27, 2005

The truth about Steven Vincent's murder may never be known, but that should not cloud the truth about Basra's police. In an opinion piece in the New York Times on July 31, the American journalist said Shia militias had infiltrated the force and were assassinating opponents in Iraq's second city. He was right.
Two days later, Vincent and his female interpreter, Noriya Ita'is, were abducted outside his hotel in downtown Basra. The next day his body was found riddled with bullets. Ita'is had been shot twice in the leg and once in the shoulder, according to a doctor who treated her.

Some witnesses said the abductors wore police uniforms and shouted at bystanders not to get involved because it was police business, and that their pick-up was stencilled with the word "police". Other witnesses disagreed about the uniforms and stencilling.

British officials, embarrassed because the police were trained at their base in Basra, told journalists that British and Iraqi investigators had spoken to Ita'is and concluded that Islamists, not police, were responsible. Some newspapers alleged that the 49-year-old married New Yorker was romantically involved with the 31-year-old Basran, and that this had inflamed local opinion.

In late May, it was clear that Vincent and Ita'is were getting disapproving looks from Basran locals, who seemed convinced that a westerner had crossed the line with a Muslim woman. Was it that perception, rather than a police vendetta, that led to their being shot? We may never know for sure.

Regardless, there is no doubt Vincent was correct about the police being infested with murderous Shia militias, notably the Mahdi army of the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and the Badr organisation of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri).

"The militias are the real power in Basra, and they are made up of criminals and bad people. Some of the police are involved in assassinations." That was not a frightened civilian, or an anonymous low-level copper, but General Hassan al-Sade, Basra's chief of police, speaking on record to the Guardian in late May.

He admitted that half his 13,750-strong force secretly worked for political parties; only a quarter of his men could be trusted; politicians used police officers, weapons and vehicles for party business, including bumping off opponents. "I am trying to sort this out, for example by putting numbers on police cars so they can be identified," said Gen Sade. "I wish I could sack bad people but I do not have the authority."

Since that interview it has been business as usual: posters of Moqtada al-Sadr pasted on police checkpoints; assassinations of Sunnis and moderate Shias; police openly siding with militias during clashes with rivals.

British officials concede the infiltration but say what matters is that Basra's low-level violence is a world away from Baghdad's mayhem. Free of bombs and razor wire, families stroll the corniche after sunset.

With 35 of 41 provincial council seats, Shia conservatives boast an electoral mandate. Turn a blind eye to what they want - even if that is corrupting the police, burning alcohol shops, oppressing women - and you give them an interest in keeping Basra relatively quiet, allowing Britain to scale down troop levels next year. The alternative is to stir things up, US-style, by confronting clerics and arresting militia members, thus pushing British casualties closer to US levels.

Vincent raged against the trade-off and accused Britain, rich on human-rights rhetoric, of buying itself an exit strategy by abandoning Basra to intolerance and gangsterism. He was right.

· Rory Carroll is the Guardian's correspondent in Iraq; Osama Mansour is a special correspondent for the Guardian

email: rory.carroll@guardian.co.uk