billions of dollars while living conditions for ordinary Iraqis collapsed. By late 2003 grandiose plans to fashion a model Middle Eastern democracy were already giving way to an accelerated effort to turn over power to local leaders.
Arabists in the British embassy and MI6 station kept up a caustic running commentary as political, security and presentational mistakes multiplied. ‘Have you ever met an Arab who said he wanted democracy?’ a senior MI6 officer asked – rhetorically – at the time. ‘The Americans were in total denial about the state of the insurgency,’ says another British intelligence officer. ‘The arrogance and hubris of some of them were breathtaking.’
The aggregate effect of American folly, detainee abuse, poor intelligence and the cautionary influence of those overseeing operations in the UK was, for many months, to have a deadening impact on special forces activities in Iraq. In the south meanwhile, some flattered themselves that the British operation was a model of how things ought to be done.
Down in Basra, the Shia majority still remained broadly welcoming towards the Coalition that had liberated them from Saddam’s oppression. The area had been tightly gripped by the mukharabat , particularly after the Shia rising following the Gulf War in 1991. Thousands had been tortured and murdered and the southern port, once a hub of regional commerce, deliberately starved of investment. The city British troops had entered was friendly. Soft-skin Land Rovers and rented civilian ‘white fleet’ vehicles remained a common sight, and troops tried to patrol built-up areas in soft hats rather than helmets. There was plenty of time for sport and officers at the air station could enjoy a beer or bottle of wine at the end of their day’s work (and indeed continued to do so until late 2005). The MI6 Chief of Station referred to Basra as ‘the sleepy shire by the Shatt al-Arab’.
As time wore on, however, the surge of expectations that greeted the fall of Saddam had gone unmet. There had been some signs of trouble: the killing of the six military police in Majar al-Kabir had been the most shocking, but there had been other incidents too. In the slums on the city’s eastern edge, such as at the bazaar christened the Five Mile Market by the soldiers or the Shia Flats (the huge housing development known to locals as the Hayyaniyah), aggro had already become routine. Stones flew, causing the soldiers to attach wire mesh to their Land Rovers, and bullets sometimes came in too.
The Shia political parties with their own armed militias promised to look after the streets. After the assassination of Ayatollah Hakim by car bomb that August, the British made the fateful decision to allow Shia militias to run their own checkpoints, claiming that they needed to do so to prevent car bomb attacks on their offices in the city. Large numbers of these armed party members, particularly from the late Ayatollah’s party, were also co-opted straight into the police force. The militia had begun to spread their tentacles through the city – with British agreement.
Major-General Graeme Lamb was by October 2003 back in Iraq commanding Multi-National Division South East. When, during a BBC interview that November, I asked him whether his predecessor’s decision to allow the militia to bear arms in the city would buy short-term quiet at the expense of long-term stability, he candidly accepted that only time could answer that question.
SAS and MI6 personnel who visited Basra during those months, and through the following year, talk with despair about the general half-heartedness of the operation, even while Lamb, a man after their own heart, was in charge. One describes a ‘critical mass’ of complacency in an officer corps formed in Northern Ireland and the Balkans. Others highlight the lack of energy with which intelligence gathering or training the Iraqi police was conducted. ‘It was not impressive,’ notes one
Arabists in the British embassy and MI6 station kept up a caustic running commentary as political, security and presentational mistakes multiplied. ‘Have you ever met an Arab who said he wanted democracy?’ a senior MI6 officer asked – rhetorically – at the time. ‘The Americans were in total denial about the state of the insurgency,’ says another British intelligence officer. ‘The arrogance and hubris of some of them were breathtaking.’
The aggregate effect of American folly, detainee abuse, poor intelligence and the cautionary influence of those overseeing operations in the UK was, for many months, to have a deadening impact on special forces activities in Iraq. In the south meanwhile, some flattered themselves that the British operation was a model of how things ought to be done.
Down in Basra, the Shia majority still remained broadly welcoming towards the Coalition that had liberated them from Saddam’s oppression. The area had been tightly gripped by the mukharabat , particularly after the Shia rising following the Gulf War in 1991. Thousands had been tortured and murdered and the southern port, once a hub of regional commerce, deliberately starved of investment. The city British troops had entered was friendly. Soft-skin Land Rovers and rented civilian ‘white fleet’ vehicles remained a common sight, and troops tried to patrol built-up areas in soft hats rather than helmets. There was plenty of time for sport and officers at the air station could enjoy a beer or bottle of wine at the end of their day’s work (and indeed continued to do so until late 2005). The MI6 Chief of Station referred to Basra as ‘the sleepy shire by the Shatt al-Arab’.
As time wore on, however, the surge of expectations that greeted the fall of Saddam had gone unmet. There had been some signs of trouble: the killing of the six military police in Majar al-Kabir had been the most shocking, but there had been other incidents too. In the slums on the city’s eastern edge, such as at the bazaar christened the Five Mile Market by the soldiers or the Shia Flats (the huge housing development known to locals as the Hayyaniyah), aggro had already become routine. Stones flew, causing the soldiers to attach wire mesh to their Land Rovers, and bullets sometimes came in too.
The Shia political parties with their own armed militias promised to look after the streets. After the assassination of Ayatollah Hakim by car bomb that August, the British made the fateful decision to allow Shia militias to run their own checkpoints, claiming that they needed to do so to prevent car bomb attacks on their offices in the city. Large numbers of these armed party members, particularly from the late Ayatollah’s party, were also co-opted straight into the police force. The militia had begun to spread their tentacles through the city – with British agreement.
Major-General Graeme Lamb was by October 2003 back in Iraq commanding Multi-National Division South East. When, during a BBC interview that November, I asked him whether his predecessor’s decision to allow the militia to bear arms in the city would buy short-term quiet at the expense of long-term stability, he candidly accepted that only time could answer that question.
SAS and MI6 personnel who visited Basra during those months, and through the following year, talk with despair about the general half-heartedness of the operation, even while Lamb, a man after their own heart, was in charge. One describes a ‘critical mass’ of complacency in an officer corps formed in Northern Ireland and the Balkans. Others highlight the lack of energy with which intelligence gathering or training the Iraqi police was conducted. ‘It was not impressive,’ notes one
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