By Thomas Harding and Oliver Poole
The Telegraph, UK, 26 October 2006
The number of British troops serving in Iraq will be halved early next year after commanders on the ground yesterday claimed to have reached the "tipping point" in defeating insurgents in the southern city of Basra.
Senior Army officers said the number of British troops serving in Iraq would be reduced from 7,200 to 3,500 by February if the military campaign continued at its current rate of success.
The campaign, known as Operation Sinbad, began last month.
As the latest six-month turnaround of British forces got under way this week, officers said they were confident the success of the counter-insurgency effort would lead to a significant reduction in troop numbers.
"If Operation Sinbad goes as well as it has done, then we can expect to substantially decrease our force by February at the earliest," said a senior British officer based in Basra.
"There is a real sense that we are just short of that tipping point. If we can just push it over the edge everything will fall in a particular way."
A senior US defence department official in Washington said that British officials had informed Washington that they wanted to withdraw the majority of their forces within a year so that they could concentrate their resources on the war in Afghanistan.
He said that British officials had told their US counterparts that the British military was "near to breaking point" due to long deployments in Iraq and weak retention of military personnel.
Local commanders' plans to reduce substantially British forces in Iraq reflected comments made by Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, last weekend when he said Britain was "quite far down" the road to possible withdrawal which depended on the ability of Iraqi security forces to take control of the southern provinces.
Tony Blair came under renewed pressure last night to allow a full Commons debate on how long British troops should stay in Iraq.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the former Conservative foreign secretary, said it was "disgraceful" that MPs had not discussed the matter for two years. He tabled a motion urging a fresh debate which has received cross-party support.
And in Washington President George W Bush mounted a stout defence of his policy in Iraq, warning the country would be used as a staging ground for attacks on America if Islamic radicals drove out foreign troops.
In an unexpected press conference at the White House, he raised the spectre of terrorist masterminds setting up training camps in Iraq, as in Afghanistan under the Taliban.
Plans to cut British troops in Iraq have the full support of Army commanders in London who are worried about the growing commitments in Afghanistan and the strain that fighting on two fronts is putting on men and equipment.
Military planners have brought forward proposals to reduce numbers because of the success of Operation Sinbad, which is now into its sixth week.
The campaign began after the British arrested a key player allegedly behind the death squads in a move that proved highly popular with the local population.
The number of murders has now dropped from about 30 a month in August to 11 in the past four weeks.
Operation Sinbad has also seen the Army undertaking important repair work in Basra's 18 districts, repairing schools, broken drains and faulty street lighting.
The regeneration is said to have gone some way to restoring civic pride and weakened support for the insurgents.
The second phase will be to rehabilitate the police force which is riddled with insurgents.
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Citation: Thomas Harding and Oliver Poole. "British troops in Iraq likely to be halved after success," The Telegraph, UK, 26 October 2006.
Original URL: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/10/26/wirq26.xml
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