MB Civic

Basra set-up makes British deaths inevitable

By Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
Last Updated: 3:35pm BST 28/06/2007

Three British soldiers killed in Iraq

It was not meant to be like this. British troops have spent months pulling back from exposed bases in Basra to the comparative stronghold of the airport.

The nature of military operations was changed too: no more routine patrols but one-off missions in support of Iraqi troops.

That was to be British Forces posture in Iraq in the early months of Gordon Brown’s premiership.

Yet on his first full day in No 10, Mr Brown received the dreadful news that three more British casualties would bring the death toll in Iraq to 154.

The set-up in Basra made today’s deaths sadly inevitable. As long as British forces are based in two different sections of the city, there must be movement – including routine resupply convoys – between the two posts.

Exposed but symbolic, Basra Palace stands in the heart of the city and must be supplied from the airport. Mostly this means by road convoys, which are vulnerable to kerb-side bombs and ambushes.

The threat to air traffic is even greater. A flight between the two bases, a 10 minute point-to-point journey over the city, can take up to 40-minutes because of detours.

As Tony Blair admitted in his last House of Commons Question Time on Wednesday, the overwhelming majority of attacks in Basra are against British forces. They attack us because we are there. Yet instant withdrawal has proven impossible.

Yes, troop numbers have fallen quickly from 7,000 to 5,500. The Foreign Office has already withdrawn from Basra Palace, viewing a diplomatic presence there as futile, given the level of danger.

The Ministry of Defence maintains troops are still needed at Saddam Hussein’s Basra bastion to ensure the city isn’t over-run.

In truth, there is a measure of power politics in this position. British commanders don’t want to hand over the palace until there is an agreement it won’t just be seized by the regional governor as a trophy of office.

So British troops will continue to make perilous, regular journeys into Basra for a few weeks more. There is only a handful of routes to alternate on the journey. The cover of darkness is crucial but not all enveloping.

The large housing projects know as the “Shia Flats” at the gateway to the city are to this generation serving in Iraq what Belfast Divis flats were to earlier squaddies.

Basra’s Shia Muslim insurgents know Warrior armoured vehicles offer the least protection of any coalition troop carrier operating in Iraq.

The Iranian-designed and produced Explosively Formed Projectile bombs the insurgents plant easily penetrate the Warriors, shredding any troops in the interior to pieces.

The Hobbesian compromise commanders have struck is to have platoons walk key sections where intelligence indicates an elevated threat. As the events of this morning prove there is only limited value in this tactical arrangement. The insurgents view each British death in Basra as a valuable act of destabilisation.

Whitehall has fashioned a smaller forces footprint in Basra so that Mr Brown does not face the political humiliation of a forced withdrawal.

But even in reserve British troops are the prime target for the amalgam of gangsters and sectarian militias who never want to see local forces take control of Iraq’s second largest city.