Tony Blair’s government committed the British military to the invasion and occupation of the deep south of Iraq, where the troops met immediate and growing resistance. The whole war has been as much a serious error for Britain as for the US
By David Wearing
Le Monde Diplomatique, November 2007
Last month’s announcement of substantial withdrawals of British troops from southern Iraq is a useful vantage point from which to review Britain’s part in the occupation. The role of the United States has been the more important, and is far better documented and understood. But Britain’s role has not been insignificant, especially for the people of southern Iraq.
In 2003, Britain promised a post-Saddam Iraq that would be “a stable, united and law-abiding state providing effective representative government to its own people.” That those ambitions have not been realised is now widely acknowledged even within the political establishment. A recent report by Michael Knights and Ed Williams described Iraq’s deep south, the area for which Britain is responsible, as “a kleptocracy” where “well armed political-criminal mafiosi have locked both the central government and the people out of power” (1).
Britain’s official goals have now been significantly downgraded to keeping violence at a manageable level, and leaving local administrators and security services to deal with the situation. Even this is far from being achieved, and Britain faces these problems in near isolation from the international community. British policymakers and analysts will be asking themselves what went wrong for many years to come.
While Washington’s aim in Iraq was to establish a military presence and a client government in the heart of the world’s principal energy producing region, securing a major source of global strategic leverage, Britain’s aims were far less grand, as befits its status as a second-tier power. It sought to act as a transatlantic bridge between a sceptical Europe and the belligerent foreign policies of the US post-9/11, and to prove its worth as a military ally to Washington.
But British diplomacy failed to dissuade Germany and France from objecting to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and many of those European countries that did join the US-led coalition left as the post-war security situation deteriorated sharply. Even in financial donations to the Iraqi reconstruction effort, the European contribution was minimal, despite British pleas (2).
When its first major objective – acting as a transatlantic bridge – collapsed, Britain was left mostly isolated beside the US, and concentrated on its second aim: providing military support to the US-led occupation by running four provinces in the south. This area – containing 71% of Iraq’s oil reserves and its second city and main port Basra (population 1.3 million) – provides 95% of central government revenue. The task was not insignificant, so it is all the more notable that the region has, according to Knights and Williams, “suffered one of the worst reversals of fortune of any area in Iraq since the fall of Saddam’s regime”.
Immediately after the invasion, Britain made two decisions that were crucial in precipitating the eventual collapse of order in the south. The first was the failure or refusal of British forces to prevent the looting that quickly followed the demise of the Ba’ath regime. Britain described this as a “redistribution of wealth” (an echo of Donald Rumsfeld’s callous phrase “stuff happens”), demonstrating an unwillingness to discharge the responsibilities that it had unilaterally assumed by invading the south, and sending a clear message to various forces that an anarchic space would be available for them to exploit.
The second decision gave the lie to lofty Anglo-American rhetoric about spreading democracy throughout the Middle East. In May 2003 the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) decided to clamp down on a spontaneous eruption of indigenous democracy already taking place at local level. Popular local councils had begun to form, with plans underway for small caucuses or even one man, one vote elections.
Seeing in this nascent self-government the threat of a new Iraq forming in an unsuitable manner, the British, on orders from CPA Baghdad, launched Operation Phoenix, described by Knights and Williams as “a civil-military operation to dissolve all unofficial councils and remove them from government premises”. By occupation decree, municipal government was to be run by Iraqis hand-picked by the coalition, a measure which led thousands to take part in public demonstrations denouncing British rule as anti-democratic. One might speculate as to how local government would have fared in securing political stability if homegrown systems of administration had been allowed to develop naturally and by common consensus.
British rule did not prove effective either for Iraqi or British purposes. Unlike the brutal approach taken by the US in Baghdad and central Iraq, Britain preferred to choose those local actors most favourable, or least unfavourable, to its interests, and then to stand in the background as much as possible. By cultivating links with the coalition, the Iranian-backed Islamist group Sciri (now Siic) was able to take the role of local enforcer at an early stage. Local government positions fell easily into its grasp, while its Badr militia took over the security services and ran death squads to eliminate former Ba’athists and any potential moderate, secular opposition. Though it was clear that Badr was responsible for many atrocities, Britain was unwilling or unable to stop it.
Elections, held earlier than the CPA had planned following massive national demonstrations, brought other Islamist parties (principally Fadhila and the Sadrists) into the picture. The new order rejected the authority of central government and of the British, filling local security forces with party-militia personnel and turning local government into a spoils system to embezzle the region’s wealth.
As the parties began to act like mafia gangs and turf wars broke out, Britain realised it had serious problems and attempted to break the power of the militias. But it was too late. The factions were prepared to defend the spoils system and refused to bow to a foreign authority that was widely viewed as illegitimate. Attacks on British troops rose from 1.2 a day between February and June 2005 to eight a day between February and May 2007.
In August 2006 the British were forced to abandon Camp Abu Naji near Amarah under heavy fire from the Sadrist Mahdi army. That October most of the staff of the British consulate in Basra had to relocate to the remote base near the local airport, under heavy mortar fire. Operation Sinbad, a last-ditch initiative similar to the US surge, provided only a brief and fleeting illusion of security. In September 2007 the British army withdrew from its last base in Basra city, repositioning its remaining troops at the airport. Now many of them are scheduled to be withdrawn early in 2008.
What are the prospects for Britain’s future involvement in Iraq? The prime minister, Gordon Brown, has said any continuing military presence will be justified only on the basis of advice from his generals. Yet senior military commanders have already said that Britain can achieve nothing more in Iraq (3). In fact, it is as much the strategic Anglo-American relationship as the military realities on the ground that define the British mission, and cast doubt on the likelihood of a complete British withdrawal in the near future. For example, the withdrawal from Basra palace to the airport outside the city was, according to a senior British officer, delayed for five months due to political pressure from Washington (4).
The US clearly plans a long-term military presence in Iraq (5) and is unlikely to want the British presence to be any shorter. The US needs protection for its supply lines from the Gulf and, for domestic political purposes, to sustain the illusion of being part of an international coalition. Downing Street may only be able to offer limited troop draw-downs to mollify voters and a restive military.
What caused Britain’s failures in Iraq? Two key factors can be identified: a lack of capability and of legitimacy. Britain is experiencing a miniature version of the current US imperial overstretch. Britain had neither the diplomatic influence to act as an effective transatlantic bridge nor the military capacity to control its zone of operation in the south. It has found that attempts to conquer third world countries in the 21st century are not as feasible as they were in the 19th century. Decades of anti-colonial struggles, military and political, have engendered a substantial ability to resist domination.
Moreover, while Britain and the US have adopted different approaches to counter-insurgency in their respective areas, what they have had in common was always more important: a lack of legitimacy among the population (unlike the regional government of the Kurdish north). Britain has claimed legitimacy for its presence in Iraq on the basis of an endorsement by the UN Security Council. But a decision taken by 15 foreign governments in New York can hardly legitimise an occupation opposed by the majority of the Iraqi population (6). An occupation cannot be sustained in such circumstances.
Britain joined the invasion of Iraq with an inflated sense of its diplomatic and military capacity, coupled with a casual disregard for the wishes and rights of the Iraqi population that long predates even British government backing for Saddam Hussein in the 1980s. As a result, five years after the Blair government’s propaganda drive about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, the presence of a dwindling number of British troops on the outskirts of Basra and the violent disintegration of Iraqi society in the south are now all that remain of Britain’s policy.
(1) Michael Knights and Ed Williams, “The Calm Before the Storm: the British Experience in Southern Iraq”, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, February 2007. This account of the British occupation draws substantively on this report.
(2) Glen Rangwala, “Deputising in War: British Policies and Predicaments in Iraq”, International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies, Bristol, forthcoming.
(3) “Military commanders tell Brown to withdraw from Iraq without delay”, The Independent, London, 19 August 2007.
(4) “US delayed UK pull-out from Basra”, The Daily Telegraph, London, 12 September 2007.
(5) Tom Engelhardt, “Everlasting US pyramids in Iraqi sands”, Asia Times Online, 9 June 2007.
(6) “Secret MoD poll: Iraqis support attacks on British troops”, The Daily Telegraph, 22 October 2005.
Citation: David Wearing. "Britain’s failure in Iraq," Le Monde Diplomatique, November 2007.
Original URL: http://mondediplo.com/2007/11/08iraq#nb4