Tahir al-Hussein and his three brothers returned to their family home in Basra this month to find it wrecked, looted and festooned with graffiti proclaiming the glory of the radical Shia leader Moqtada al-Sadr.
When they fled the city last summer, Sunnis such as the Hussein brothers had every reason to be afraid. The golden-domed Samarra shrine in central Iraq, the holiest in Shia Islam, had just been blown up, and the Sunni minority in southern Iraq was under threat. Family by family, they left the Sunni enclave of Abul Khaseeb, on the Shatt al-Arab waterway.
"First we had red paint on the houses to mark us out as Sunnis," said Tahir. "Then we had warning letters telling us to leave. Then we had people killed. Rashid, a cousin of mine, was shot dead. We decided then it was time for us to go."
So why have they come back? The answer, far from indicating any confidence in the ability of British forces in Basra to maintain control and protect minorities, shows the opposite. The reason that Tahir and a few others are trickling back is that they believe that the Shia militias in Basra are too busy fighting their own turf wars to bother with a few Sunnis keeping their heads down.
"We know this is still a dangerous place, and there are lots of killings," said Tahir. "That is why we have left our parents, our wives and our children back in Mosul. We will see if we are safe, if we are allowed to stay, and only then will we think about bringing them here. As for the British, they did not help us when we were chased out, so why should we expect them to help us now?"
His words encapsulated the ambivalence that surrounds last week's announcement by Tony Blair that Britain is about to begin withdrawing its troops from southern Iraq, nearly four years after the invasion of 2003. The Prime Minister sought to convey the impression that the pullout could go ahead because the security situation in Basra had stabilised, while at the same conceding that this did not mean the city was "how we want it to be".
Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert at London's Institute of Strategic Studies, had little time for such claims. Britain, he said, was being "criminally irresponsible" in abandoning the people of Basra to the ravages of "militias, criminals and a police force fighting for control". He added: "Once the British forces withdraw from the city, there will be no restraints at all."
But others believe that Britain has been fighting a losing battle in southern Iraq since the looting and anarchy that followed Saddam's fall in 2003. "The British may not have been defeated in a purely military sense, but lost long ago in the political sense," said Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
The analyst, who has access to US intelligence on Iraq, is not alone in thinking that the British failed to appreciate how swiftly the Shia militias seized the initiative in Basra. They drove out Sunnis and the Christian minority and imposed their strict vision of Islam on what was once a cultured, tolerant city before beginning to struggle for power among themselves, although they can unite in violent retaliation against outside attempts to interfere.
By last year the Sunni population of Iraq's second city had fallen from 40 per cent in 2003 to just under 14 per cent. Several hundred from the community, including the most prominent Sunni cleric in the south of the country, Imam Yusuf Yaqub al-Hassan, had been murdered and more than 700 families evicted.
Such is the fear inspired by the Mahdi Army, the fighters of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, that Tahir and his brothers refuse to apportion any blame for what happened. "We do not want to get involved. We just want to live in peace. We want Basra to be the way it was, with Shias and Sunnis living together and with security for everyone".
That is an unlikely prospect: there are too many groups that want to control southern Iraq and its highly lucrative oil revenues. The main opponent of the Mahdi Army is the Badr Brigade, but there are also the Fadillah, a breakaway faction from Mr Sadr, and two factions of Hizbollah as well. Looming in the background is Shia Iran, reputed to be subsidising some or all of these groups and blamed by London and Washington for supplying sophisticated roadside bombs.
The Iranian influence is the subject of much hushed talk in Basra. Among the first Sunnis, and a few Shias, to be killed after the official end of the war were those who had fought for Saddam Hussein's forces against Iran, with air force officers who had carried out bombing raids being particular targets. Similar executions, on a larger scale, were replicated later in Baghdad.
Mazin Younis, who grew up in southern Iraq, is chairman of the Iraqi League, a pressure group based in Britain. "The British did nothing much to confront Iranian influence until they started blaming them for the bombs killing their troops. They also did nothing to confront the Shia militias. The main Sunni mosque in Basra, al-Kabir, was repeatedly attacked, and then we had the killing of Imam Yusuf. I do not see that their withdrawal will make any difference."
Some analysts believe the Iranian influence in Iraq can be exaggerated, and that the most disastrous British mistake was to invite the militias to join the Iraqi security services in an attempt to demilitarise private armies. Instead militias set up a "force within a force", using their uniforms to carry out killings, kidnappings and extortion.
Much of what went on in Basra remained unpublicised, because the militias intimidated and assassinated journalists. Most of the victims were Iraqis, but among those killed was Steven Vincent, an American reporter who was taken away with his female translator, Nour Alkhal, by men in police uniforms. She was shot three times and left for dead. The Americans took her to the Green Zone in Baghdad as a material witness to the murder of a US citizen, but abandoned her once it became clear that the investigation into the murder of Vincent, like most others in Basra, would go nowhere.
In one of the most infamous incidents of militia action in Basra, Shia gunmen attacked a group of students on a picnic. Their "crime" was that young men and women were mixing together. As the police stood and watched, one gunman tore off the blouse of a female student. Two university guards who attempted to intervene were shot.
The militia filmed their attack, put it on CDs, and distributed it at the market as a lesson, concentrating on the young woman's semi-naked state, She later committed suicide. Another student there at the time, Halima, left Basra after the attack and now lives in Nasiriya. "They picked on the girl because they wanted to humiliate females. They beat us with their rifle butts and said next time it would be a lot worse," recalled Halima. "The police did nothing; we never saw the British. I could not stay in Basra after that."
The most notorious symbol of the infiltration of the police by the militias was the Jamiat police station, where opponents were illegally held and murdered, and from where gun-running and assassinations were carried out. Finally the British military stormed the station in September 2005, after two members of the SAS carrying out a surveillance operation were caught and held there. A number of policemen, allegedly members of paramilitary groups, were arrested. But it was not until last Christmas, when British troops returned and blew up the building, that the militia hold on the Jamiat station was broken.
That action was part of Operation Sinbad, billed as a five-month effort finally to "clean up" the corrupt and murderous Basra police force. British and Iraqi troops swooped on areas of the city in succession, and members of the Royal Military Police were placed in stations to get rid of the "rotten apples". As Mr Blair pointed out, the operation did have beneficial effects - the murder rate in the city fell sharply, for example. But some in the military nicknamed it "Spinbad", claiming that its effects were exaggerated and will quickly dissipate as British troops withdraw from the streets. Sinbad, the most cynical say, was little more than an attempt to bring Basra under enough control to justify the withdrawal, and the Shia militias will soon be free to resume their murderous activities.
And the increased British activity meant that troops were again targets of bombers and snipers. Ten have been killed and 60 injured in the past three months. But the most vulnerable British bases in Basra will soon be handed over to the Iraqis, leaving the remaining force hunkered down in Basra air station outside the city.
Patrolling in the Basra area will cease, except around the airport perimeter, and it is hoped that the steady trickle of casualties in Iraq will all but cease. That will be a relief to the military authorities as they prepare for the glare of publicity that will accompany Prince Harry's arrival in theatre.
There will be pressure from elsewhere, however. The Americans are particularly concerned about the road convoys from Kuwait, which bring them 80 per cent of their supplies in Iraq. They are also insisting that British forces maintain and even increase patrols along the Iranian border.
Meanwhile there has been a series of bloody clashes between the Mahdi Army and the overwhelmingly Shia Iraqi government forces in Diwaniyah and Maysan, in the British zone north of Basra. Recently Sadr militiamen took temporary control of Al-Amara, the capital of Maysan, blowing up a number of police stations. A 500-strong British force was sent up from Basra but did not intervene, leaving the fighting to the Iraqi army.
Moqtada al-Sadr enjoys significant influence in Maysan. The province will be handed over to full Iraqi control in the next two months by the British, and it is widely predicted there will be a concerted attempt of a Mahdi Army takeover.
In Basra, those seeking a normal life are fearful. Hakim Mohammed (not his full name), a Shia businessman involved in construction, said, "I have had policemen come to me saying I had to pay special 'taxes' to them. I have paid out hundreds of dollars. These things will only get worse. The British are leaving, and maybe it is about time they went home. But what are we being left with?"
A city divided in two
Basra, strung out along the Shatt al-Arab waterway, is Iraq's second-largest city. Hardline Shia Islamist militias took over in the chaos that followed the 2003 invasion, driving out Sunni and Christian minorities and intimidating the city's more educated, Westernised inhabitants. Although Basra never suffered from the sectarian bloodshed of Baghdad, British forces were no more successful in gaining control than their American counterparts were in the capital, and the start of their withdrawal was announced last week.
The handover to Iraqi forces of Shaibah logistics base, in the desert south of the city, is imminent. Next, all bases within Basra will be closed, starting with the Old State Building and the Shatt al-Arab hotel. Within a few months only Basra Palace, built for Saddam Hussein on the banks of the waterway (but which he never visited), and Basra air station will remain.
Repeated mortaring of Basra Palace has already driven British consular staff to the air station, and by the end of this year the whole complex will be yielded to the Iraqis. The remaining British forces will be largely confined to the air stations, with no patrols going into populated areas. The troops will be carrying out training and staying in readiness to 'surge' in support of Iraqi forces if required.
