B Gavin Cordon, PA Whitehall Editor
Britain's policy of building up the Iraqi security forces so they can take control when the troops pull out has taken a severe blow with events in Basra, defence analysts warned today.
The Government's exit strategy depends upon their ability to create an effective local police and army structure capable of maintaining some sort of law and order once the coalition forces have gone.
However the arrest of two undercover British soldiers by Iraqi police who then apparently handed them over to the local militias, underlined the extent to which those security forces have been penetrated by the militias.
There are fears that the incident - which also saw a prison wall knocked down by a British armoured vehicle - will poison relations between the British Army and the local authorities.
Some experts now believe that it may be another two years at least before the UK can safely hand over security in the region to the Iraqis.
It is not a new problem. Last month an American journalist, Steven Vincent, was killed after he reported claims that death squads of off-duty policemen in Basra were carrying out hundreds of targeted assassinations against rival groups.
In an article for the New York Times, he criticised the failure of the British forces to prevent Shia Muslim radicals from effectively taking control.
Although British officials played down suggestions that Mr Vincent's killing was in retaliation for his article, they openly acknowledged that most people in the city, including the police, owed allegiance to one of the two main Shia militias - the Badr Brigades and Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.
"Everybody owes allegiance to a political party, to a tribe, to a particular cleric," one official said at the the time.
Since the fall of Saddam Hussein two years ago - and the disbandment of the existing security forces - the British seem to have felt that they had little choice but to try to work with what was left.
"I think that what the British decided, with the benefit of experience, was that there was no point in trying to exercise total control over something which you cannot expect totally to control," said Colonel Christopher Langton of the International Institute of Strategic Studies.
"This expedience has allowed certain activities of the militia, who are a part of the local way of life, to continue."
One result has been that in a city where women used to be able to dress in Western style, they now face threats if they do not cover up in accordance with the dictates of the Shia clerics and their militia supporters.
And the seizure of the two British soldiers has underlined what unreliable police allies they may have created by allowing the militias such a free hand.
Dr Rosemary Hollis, director of research at the Chatham House foreign affairs think tank, said that it would be difficult now to hand over responsibility to a police force "riven by factional strife".
"It isn't as if this came out of the blue. If the militias and organised crime are holding sway on the streets, there isn't a coherent entity to hand over to," she said.
However, the option of carrying on as they were was also problematic, she said, leaving the British with a dilemma.
Col Langton was more optimistic, pointing to the continuing high levels of recruitment for the security services, despite all the dangers and difficulties they faced.
"I don't think we know at this stage whether relations (with the Iraqi authorities in Basra have broken down as much as people think," he said.
However Colonel Tim Collins, who commanded the 1st Battalion The Royal Irish Regiment during the invasion of Iraq and who has since left the Army, said that the British must stay until there was a reliable Iraqi force to take over.
"We can't allow police forces to be controlled by single agenda organisations. It must be a police force for all the people," he told BBC Radio 4's The World at One programme.
"So unfortunately what it says to me is that the Iraqi police force are not in a position to take on responsibility for the security of their country and that means coalition forces have to remain there for the vast majority of people.
"I would say that that timeframe suggests it's maybe two years, who knows, maybe more than that to provide that."
