September 21, 2005
Bloody conflict between British forces and Shiite civilians,
police and militias has exposed the myth of Iraqi sovereignty
and confirmed that the British Army acts as a colonial occupier.
On Monday, September 19, two British Special Air Service (SAS)
soldiers were arrested in the southern city of Basra. The SAS
is the British Army’s covert special operations and dirty
tricks unit.
Dressed to look like Arabs, the two soldiers were driving a
white car, allegedly packed with weapons and explosives, when
Iraqi police challenged them at a security checkpoint.
Mohammed al-Abadi, an official at the Basra governorate, told
newswires that police had believed the SAS men were "suspicious."
When one policeman approached the car, "one of these guys
fired at him," Abadi said. One police officer was reportedly
killed and several others wounded.
"Then the police managed to capture them," al-Abadi
continued. "They refused to say what their mission was. They
said they were British soldiers and [suggested] to ask their commander
about their mission."
Reports of the men’s arrest led to protests outside the
police Felony Crimes Department where they were being held. Reuters
television footage showed two British armoured personnel vehicles
sent to the station attempting to reverse away from the crowd
as it came under attack. As flames engulfed the vehicles, one
soldier was seen scrambling from a top hatch, as he was pelted
with stones and set on fire.
Ismail al-Waili, head of Basra’s Security Committee, said
that more than 10 British Army vehicles and helicopters proceeded
to attack the facility, in what al-Waili described as a "barbaric
act of aggression." They demolished a wall in the raid, leading
to an escape by more than 100 prisoners. But the two soldiers
were not there. Having interrogated local police, the army mounted
a raid on a nearby house said to be under the control of Shiite
militias and recovered the SAS men.
Two civilians were reported killed in the clashes, and up to
15 injured.
In the past, British-controlled Basra has been considered more
stable and friendlier than Baghdad because of its predominantly
Shia population. Most of the insurgency is led by the majority
Sunni Muslims and often takes a communal form, involving attacks
on Shia clerics and civilians.
The British Army is widely reported to have been working with
Shia groups, which it has viewed as allies, and taking a "softly,
softly" approach. But in recent months, a number of Shiite
groupings have become overtly hostile to the occupation forces.
This in part expresses the opposition of all sections of Iraqi
society to what amounts to a thinly disguised form of colonial
rule and, in part, an attempt by the local Shiite powerbrokers
to secure their control over Iraqi oil reserves.
Three British soldiers were killed in two separate roadside
bombs earlier this month, taking the total number of British casualties
to 95.
Just one day before the latest incident, British military had
carried out a number of arrests, including that of Sheik Ahmed
Majid Farttusi and Sayyid Sajjad—two leading figures in the
Shia Mehdi Army militia, led by the radical cleric Hojatoleslam
Moqtada al-Sadr.
Crowds of several hundred had gathered on the streets of Basra
to demand their release, blocking roads in the city centre. On
Monday morning, Shiite militias had attacked the house of Basra’s
governor, Mohammed Musabah, with rockets and mortars, demanding
the release of the two detainees.
The attitude demonstrated by the British Army towards the Iraqi
police—the refusal to stop at a checkpoint, reportedly shooting
at them and then the demolition of the police facility—is
bound up with this growth of militant opposition.
Reports have stressed that the British Army no longer trusts
the police force, considering it to have been infiltrated by insurgents.
But the conditions for this were created by British policy of
working with local political parties and militias.
The British Army in Northern Ireland turned a blind eye to
well-known connections between the Royal Ulster Constabulary and
various loyalist groups. Indeed, there is evidence that it actively
colluded with hit squads against Irish Republican sympathisers.
In Basra, the army will have been aware that the police were
recruiting from amongst the militias and would have looked favourably
on this as a means of reinforcing its own control. In recent months,
however, the British Army has come to view the situation as having
spiralled out of control and the local police as having become
an extension of the insurgency.
In an earlier interview, Basra’s police chief Hassan Sawadi
had told the Guardian that he controlled just 25 percent
of his police force and that militiamen inside its ranks were
using their posts to murder opponents.
Since May, an estimated 65 people have been assassinated in
the city. Last month, US freelance journalist Stevens Vincent
was kidnapped and murdered in Basra, after writing in the New
York Times criticising the security forces in Basra. On Monday,
another reporter for the New York Times, Iraqi Fakher Haider,
was also found dead in Basra, after reportedly being seized from
his home by masked men.
Army spokesmen have taken great pains to underplay the significance
of the September 19 events, with one senior official describing
it as a "bump in the road." But at issue here is not
only that the army faces growing hostility from the civilian population
and militia groups. It has lost control of the police service.
Explaining why British forces had raided the police facility,
Brigadier John Lorimer said that under Iraqi law, the soldiers
should have been handed over to coalition authorities, but this
failed to happen despite repeated requests. It was of "deep
concern" that the two had ended up held by Shia militia,
he said.
This is an unprecedented development—something that Britain
never faced during its occupation of Northern Ireland. British
imperialism has always relied on its ability to cultivate proxy
forces from within the local elites to secure its colonial possessions.
It has tried to repeat this strategy in Iraq by exploiting the
conflict between Shia and Sunni Muslims.
The fact that it now faces the development of a Shia insurgency
no less hostile than the Sunni opposition facing the US in the
north throws a question mark over its ability to maintain control
of the Basra region.
Without some local force, British troops would be forced to
directly confront the civilian population at every turn, which
would require a massive escalation in troop numbers. To illustrate
the scale of numbers necessary, Basra has 20,000 police officers
and none of them responded to the attack on British forces.
What has developed in Basra also has implications for the US
occupation forces in the north. To this point, the coalition has
been able to rely on its ability to recruit Shia personnel who
are often the target of Sunni militias. If the emerging hostilities
in the south were to be replicated in Baghdad, this would leave
the US forces even more isolated than they are already.
In addition to the worsening military situation, the events
in Basra constitute a political blow for the British and US governments.
Washington and London have portrayed their occupation as a necessary
transition towards democratic self-rule. The fact that the British
Army, when it feels its interests are threatened, is ready to
shoot police officers and demolish prison facilities gives the
lie to such claims. It underscores that any authority that is
developed in Iraq will only be allowed to govern so long as it
abides by US and British diktat.
The British government’s immediate response to the violence
in Basra has been to promise to send more troops. Defence Secretary
John Reid said that whatever troop numbers were necessary to stabilise
the situation would be dispatched. Reid unreservedly defended
the actions of the army, when faced with "mob violence,"
and also the British occupation. "What we do know is that
under the law they should have been handed back to the British
forces themselves," he declared. "That is the law which
enshrines our presence there."
The scale of the crisis has produced renewed calls from both
the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives for an exit strategy,
but with the caveat that this must be "responsible"—i.e.,
not undertaken immediately.
In response, Reid said that the decision to withdraw UK troops
would be taken when requested by the Iraqi government and would
be "not an event but a process."
It is a measure of the lies and sophistry employed by the government
to justify its predatory aims in Iraq that Reid coupled his troop
pledge with the claim that "as we make the advance towards
a democracy and build up the security forces, I freely admit that
I expect that the terrorists will get more frenetic, more frantic."
The assertion that the birth of a democratic Iraq will provoke
resistance from terrorists not only conceals the extent of popular
opposition to British and US forces. It provides a blank cheque
for yet more troops to be sent.
Basra proves once again that the precondition for the development
of any genuine democratic government in Iraq is the immediate
and unconditional withdrawal of all occupying forces.