Mobs Cheer British Deaths As Basra Slips Out Of Control

It took the soldiers from 1 Bn Light Infantry all the night and most of yesterday to remove the wreckage of the Lynx helicopter that came down in Basra at the weekend, killing five British servicemen on board.

As they used heavy lifting equipment to separate twisted metal from the debris of a house that the aircraft had crashed into, military experts were trying to establish whether the crash was caused by mechanical failure or hostile fire.

British officers believe the most likely cause was a lucky shot with a rocket-propelled grenade.

But one thing is already clear: Basra is slipping out of the control of British forces.

Saturday's televised pictures of a local mob cheering the deaths, pelting British soldiers with stones and hurling petrol bombs at their armoured vehicles belie the Government's assurances that the political situation in Iraq - and particularly in the British sector - is steadily improving.

Soldiers on the ground have long known that the reality is grim. They regard many of Basra's elected leaders as crooks at best and agents of Iran at worst.

The Shia militias that operate in the area do so with near impunity; good policemen are too frightened to confront them while the secular middle class now either dresses its women in headscarves or has moved abroad.

The tragedy is that the British have been unwilling - or unable - to stop this. With London terrified of the political effect of casualties, the Army has been forced to adopt a policy of appeasement to those they know are behind many of the worst outrages.

Yesterday Des Browne, the new Secretary of Defence, called for Saturday's events to be seen in context. It involved, he stressed, only a few hundred people in a city of more than one million.

The trouble is that the minority throwing petrol bombs at British soldiers are the ones who are taking control of Basra. They already have a powerful foothold in the provincial government and the police force, and have the power of the gun on the streets.

The wider context that Mr Browne ignores is that Iraq is collapsing. In another day of violence yesterday, car bombs killed at least 16 people in Baghdad and the Shia holy city of Kerbala, while dozens more bodies were found dead.

Amid the blood-letting, Iraq is splitting into three parts: an Islamist Shia south, a bitterly anti-American Sunni west and a Kurdish north where the vast majority long for independence.

The fault line is Baghdad with its intermeshed sectarian neighbourhoods. Basra is emerging as the capital of a new Shia "state". Several Shia militias are vying with each other for power.

British forces are the only moderating force left. But over the coming months they will be withdrawn, leaving the armed gangs, including the one led by the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, to fight it out for supremacy.

Not even the most optimistic intelligence assessment believes that Iraqi security forces will be strong enough to combat the fanatics.

Major Toby Christie, the British intelligence officer for Basra city, was resigned to the "flag-waving" that would accompany Britain's departure.

"Those people who actively worked against us will be able to play the nationalist card and hold themselves up as the heroes," he said. "There are no moderate leaders here. We will not be leaving behind a Westernised theocracy - and there will be a certain amount of killing once we go."

I recently asked Iraqi friends what would happen when the British leave. They laughed. "It will be the law of the jungle," said one.

A new form of contagious 'Idiocy' was found to be rampant on parts of the Internet, and has infected a number of people, who are now suffering from the advanced stages of muppetness and lameitis. A source claims the only way to contain the spread of the virus would be to isolate those effected and treat them with some study in International Affairs, Geopolitics and Social Philosophy Can I call you 'Imperialist, Anti-Anglo, Anti-Everything, Facist country of America', or would you get offended?

The journalist is a junk journalist; both England and the U.S. can be defeatist and socialist at times; and of course America is not a Imperialist or a Facist country?

What part of that (if any) do you have difficulty with?

You hate the British because we have done what you're doing now.

Disregard my last post. After seeing this last comment of yours I really don't want you to waste my time with an answer.

I'm merely responding to a vicious verbal volley aimed at my country and its servicemen and women. You boys want to gang up and take the chance to dis some 'allies', then go for it. If your opinion of the UK and its peoples is echoed in the majority across the US, then we should start batting for the other side.
And if you cant see the Imperialist tendencies of the US, the PNAC (Rummy, Wolfy, Perley, Kristol(y), Bushy, Condy etc) then I'm not entirely sure you are living on the same planet as I do. Embrace it, its part of the US's development into something more advanced, socially, and then in 100 years time you can look back with a pragmatic air about you (as I have now, cos I'm the man) and say "Damn, that Humanist, he was the man"....

I answer now, but you really are wasting my time in truth. I'm too educated, too clever, too cool and too suave to get into convo's with you.

Peace. Respect. Sympathies to all who fall in Iraq...

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