Dr Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert at the University of London, said yesterday: "This latest withdrawal announcement is already a cut-and-run. There is no law and order in Basra and a great deal of criminality and violence.
"If you are a militia boss, the overall feeling is probably one of optimism. For the local people on the street, it must be one of high anxiety, instability and overwhelming fear."
Withdrawal to leave garrison barely able to defend itself
BY IAN BRUCE DEFENCE CORRESPONDENT
BRITAIN'S steadily shrinking garrison in Iraq will have barely enough troops to defend itself after another 1000 men are withdrawn by Christmas.
The last remaining UK foothold in the country is Basra air station, situated in open desert five miles southwest of the city, and within easy rocket-range of militia strongholds in the Shia slums on its outskirts.
The British airfield COB (contingency operating base) will be left with a mixed bag of training staff for the Iraqi army, logistics, intelligence, and medical units, and perhaps a battlegroup-worth of fighting soldiers to guard the long perimeter of the camp.
Despite government assurances that the bulk of that force will remain there for another two years in an "overwatch" role, theoretically ready to intervene in Basra if local officials call for help against warring militias, it will have little or no manpower to spare for someone else's emergencies.
Its scarce bayonet strength will be crouched in defensive sangars round the base, or patrolling beyond the perimeter to help prevent the kind of mortar attacks which killed 11 British soldiers at the now abandoned Basra Palace inside the city earlier this year.
Random round-the-clock vehicle and helicopter sorties out to about four miles are vital as a deterrent to insurgents who can fire a few rapid mortar rounds from launch tubes in the back of pick-up trucks and then vanish.
The soldiers destined to serve rolling tours there until 2009 are a political sop to American worries about the security of their 300-mile umbilical supply cord stretching from depots in Kuwait along the main highway past Basra to Baghdad in the north.
In the meantime, Basra itself has become the battleground for three militias competing for economic and political clout in the oil-rich south.
The Mehdi Army is the largest, and already controls much of the city police force, the port authority, and the "government" facilities protection agency.
Its rivals are Fadhila, which has infiltrated the protection force hired to guard the lucrative oilfields on the Faw Peninsula, and the Iranian-dominated Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, which runs the police commando units and the intelligence services in the area.
Civilian truck drivers passing through greater Basra often have to pay bribes at militia roadblocks belonging to all three militias to pass.
There are also outright criminal gangs organised on tribal lines who owe loyalty to no-one except their own chiefs. For all, the current main prize is smuggled oil. The ultimate aim, once the British and Americans have finally left for good, is control of the oilfields and their entire output.
Dr Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert at the University of London, said yesterday: "This latest withdrawal announcement is already a cut-and-run. There is no law and order in Basra and a great deal of criminality and violence.
"If you are a militia boss, the overall feeling is probably one of optimism. For the local people on the street, it must be one of high anxiety, instability and overwhelming fear."
Elsewhere in the country, a suicide car bomber detonated his explosives-laden vehicle at a police checkpoint near a town north of the Iraqi capital, killing six people and wounding 10, the police said.
Those killed in the blast near Khalis, 50 miles north of Baghdad, included two policemen and four civilians, police said. The civilians - two women, a man and a child - were passengers on a minibus that was closest to the checkpoint. It caught fire in the explosion.
Two roadside bombs also exploded in Baghdad, killing three people and wounding nine others.
