Basra: British bellweather

As President Bush was in northwestern Iraq crediting the surge with changing Anbar province, “once written off as lost,” into “one of the safest places in Iraq,” a more critical test of the coalition presence was taking place far to the south.

That same day the British pulled the last of its troops out of Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, and redeployed to an airbase on the distant outskirts. From there, the 5,500 remaining Brits, promises the British government, will continue to play “a key role” in southern Iraq, available to strike against renegade militias, secure supply lines and continue the training of Iraqi forces, most particularly a 13,000-man Iraqi border division.

But the security and running of Basra is now entirely in the hands of local Iraqi authorities.

The security situation is this, according to British Defense Minister Des Browne and Foreign Secretary David Miliband writing in The Washington Post: “There is no anti-government insurgency, and very little evidence of an al Qaeda presence in southern Iraq, whose population is over 90 percent Shiite. But there is intense competition between longstanding rival Shiite movements, too often spilling over into violence.”

There are also criminal gangs warring over oil supplies and smuggling routes. And there is also the Iranian-backed Mahdi Army, the largest sectarian militia, which has promised, with whatever sincerity, to suspend operations for six months.

Mixed reaction

Local reaction to the British withdrawal was mixed. Some said the British were leaving the city’s residents to the mercy of marauding gangs. Others said the British presence aggravated the situation by becoming a magnet for attacks.

What’s clear is that the Basra city authorities are largely on their own. While the American forces in the north have gone back into towns and provinces that have relapsed into chaos, the British are unlikely to do so, and in any case there’s not political support for it back home.

The British have said all along they would promptly hand over security matters to legitimate, elected Iraqi authorities once they felt the authorities were up to the task. They anticipate handing over control of the entire province this fall. We’ll see.

Scripps Howard