The public dust-up concerning recent British operations in Basra started with three items in Tuesday's Times, nothing yet on the Ministry of Defence official web page or the Basra Blog (official news blog of Headquarters, Multi-National Division South East, Basra) on this issue. (Update: See Top US Officer Praises Army's Efforts in Basra City at Basra Blog) Below the fold is the SWJ roundup of news, analysis, op-ed, editorials and blog commentary so far - check back as we'll be updating this page as the story develops. And remember - No FACTUAL STATEMENT should be relied upon without further investigation on your part sufficient to satisfy you in your independent judgment that it is true.

News

Secret Deal Kept British Army Out of Basra Battle - Haynes & Evans, The Times

A secret deal between Britain and the notorious al-Mahdi militia prevented British Forces from coming to the aid of their US and Iraqi allies for nearly a week during the battle for Basra this year, The Times has learnt.

Four thousand British troops – including elements of the SAS and an entire mechanised brigade – watched from the sidelines for six days because of an “accommodation” with the Iranian-backed group, according to American and Iraqi officers who took part in the assault.

US Marines and soldiers had to be rushed in to fill the void, fighting bitter street battles and facing mortar fire, rockets and roadside bombs with their Iraqi counterparts.

Hundreds of militiamen were killed or arrested in the fighting. About 60 Iraqis were killed or injured. One US Marine died and sevenwere wounded...

'Secret Deal with Local Militia' - Damien McElroy, Daily Telegraph

British commanders were accused of turning a blind eye to lawlessness in the city as they forged an IRA-style reconciliation pact with the Madhi army, which controlled swathes of Basra with gangster-like ruthlessness.

"Without the support of the Americans we would not have accomplished the mission because the British Forces had done nothing there," said Colonel Imad of the 2nd Battalion, 1st Brigade, 1st Iraqi Army Division. "I do not trust the British Forces. They did not want to lose any soldiers for the mission."

The Iraqi officer's views were backed up by a senior US advisor to the division, which participated in the March operation...

Basra: Six Days on the Sidelines - Deborah Haynes, The Times

... The Basra offensive, started unexpectedly by Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, on March 25 to rid the oil-rich port city of armed gangs, was the first real test of the Government’s ability to impose its authority on one of the most lawless parts of the country. It also demonstrated a growing distrust of the British military, which was kept unaware of the plan until the last moment after Mr al-Maliki discovered that Britain had been negotiating with the very militia he was trying to expel.

Even after the offensive had started, the 4,000 British troops based at Basra airport were unable to join the fight because of a deal with al-Mahdi Army not to enter the city. It would take six days before the permission was granted by Des Browne, the Defence Secretary.

Details of the “accommodation” between British intelligence officers and elements of al-Mahdi Army, which has been blamed for murders and other atrocities in Basra for the past four years, shocked US and Iraqi officers, who have expressed a sense of betrayal. All parties involved agree that Britain’s reputation in Iraq has been badly, possibly irrevocably, damaged by the episode...

Did Britain Make Mehdi Army Pact? - BBC News

The British in Basra made a secret pact with the Mehdi Army which kept the military out of March's Iraqi-led offensive against the Shia militia for a week, according to the Times newspaper.

The BBC's Crispin Thorold, in Baghdad, assesses whether such an "accommodation" could have been possible.

In March this year the Iraqi security forces launched a major offensive against the Mehdi Army, a Shia militia, in Iraq's second city Basra. From the beginning the British described that operation as "Iraqi planned, led and executed".

But once again questions are being asked about why the British were so slow to put their troops on the ground in the city.

From the earliest hours of the Iraqi military operations in Basra it was clear that things were not going according to plan...

Britain's 'Secret Deal' in Basra - Mark Tran, The Guardian

The Ministry of Defence is facing some tough questions today after the Times' splash story described a hands-off deal between British forces and Shia supporters of the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr during the battle for Basra this year.

The Times says the deal involved the UK staying out of Basra in return to an end to attacks by the militia. It was designed to encourage Shia fighters to lay down their guns and take up politics, but in the end it dealt a "huge blow" to Britain's reputation.

The deal infuriated the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, and meant US soldiers had to be rushed in to fill the void.

Deborah Haynes, the Times' Baghdad correspondent, writes: "The arrangement was not dissimilar to the agreement struck between the US military and Sunni Muslim insurgents in central Iraq.

"The difference was that the British had effectively surrendered control of the city."

Still, as Michael Evans, the paper's defence editor, notes, no one denies that Basra is now a safer place...

Iraq Deployment Not Affected, Says MoD - Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian

British defence officials today denied reports that a secret deal between Britain and the Shia militia the Mahdi army prevented UK forces from taking part in a major offensive in Basra earlier this year.

Officials in the Ministry of Defence today confirmed the existence of an "accommodation" between British forces and leaders of Moqtada al-Sadr's militia, first reported in the Guardian last year.

However, referring to a report in the Times, they dismissed as "absolute nonsense" any link between the deal and the fact that British troops did not take part in the early stages of the Charge of the Knights offensive in March.

An official said: "The reason [why UK forces were not deployed initially on the ground] was, we were simply not asked. The reason we were not asked was because [the Iraqi prime minister] Nouri al-Maliki's own credibility was on the line.

"The only reason the Americans were involved was because they were with the Iraqi units."...

Political Row over 'Secret Deal' - Kirkup and Harding, Daily Telegraph

The Defence Secretary angrily denied reports that a secret agreement with the Iranian-backed Mahdi Army meant British troops stood by in March as Iraqi and US forces fought for control of the Iraqi city.

US and Iraqi officers were quoted as saying that a "pact" with the militia had kept the British forces out of Operation Charge of the Knights.

Mr Browne told MPs in April that British tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery all took part in the operation. The MoD added that Tornado warplanes and UK medical evacuation facilities were also used.

The MoD said: "Suggestions that UK forces failed to get involved in the recent operation against militias in Basra are inaccurate. No 'secret deal' or 'accommodation' kept us out of the city."

Defence sources also rejected reports that Mr Browne himself was the only person who could have authorised British forces to enter Basra from their base outside the city...

Report: UK Troops Cut Deal - Jeniffer Quinn, Associated Press

... The British military turned over provincial control of Basra to the Iraqi government in late December despite vicious infighting between Shiite factions and widespread militia infiltration of the local security forces. But British troops remained on standby at their airport base outside the city.

The American forces and elite Iraqi army units brought in as reinforcements did most of the fighting in the battle, which began March 25 and was aimed at removing criminal gangs from the port city.

But the defense ministry said that the operation was planned, led, and executed by the Iraqis, and that British troops were not sent into Basra because "there was no structure in place in the city for units to go back in and start mentoring the Iraqi troops."

"When the action was launched, British forces provided a raft of military support including armor, artillery, airpower, medical and logistic support," the ministry said.

US Marines sent from distant Anbar province did fight alongside Iraqi forces and US jets conducted airstrikes...

Report: Secret Deal Kept British Troops out of Basra - Reuters

... The Times said under the deal with the Mehdi Army, which it said was aimed at encouraging the Shia movement back into the political process, no British soldier could enter Basra without the permission of British Defence Secretary Des Browne.

It quoted Lieutenant-Colonel Chuck Western, a senior US Marine who advises the Iraqi army, as saying, "I was not happy".

"Everybody just assumed that because this deal was cut nobody was going in. Cutting a deal with the bad guys is generally not a good idea," he told the Times.

But the Ministry of Defence statement said: "The only limit on our involvement was Prime Minister Maliki's rightful concern that the operation was seen by the people of Basra to be Iraqi-led."

The Times report also quoted a senior British defence source as saying the deal had damaged Britain's reputation in Iraq.

The Ministry of Defence said while it had always supported Iraqi efforts to reconcile with insurgents, "it is nonsense to suggest that this hampered UK support to the operation."

British Commanders Wanted to Storm Basra - Evans and Haynes, The Times

British and Iraqi commanders in Basra had their own troop-surge plan to rid the city of Shia militia extremists but it was vetoed by the Iraqi Prime Minister, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed.

The third and final phase of the plan, which would have involved a surge of Iraqi troops into Basra with “low-profile” support from British troops, was due to have started this month. When it was presented to Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, on March 21, however, he surprised the British by announcing that he had his own troop-surge plan that he would launch the following day, with 900 American soldiers and Marines being sent into Basra.

Colonel Robert Castellvi, the senior American Marine adviser to the 1st Iraqi Army Division sent down to Basra, described exclusively to The Times what he found when he arrived in the southern city in March. “The Iraqi forces that had been in the city had been defeated. There were whole swaths of the city under militia control,” he said. “The provincial government had stopped functioning as a government that provides security for the people. There were dead bodies and burnt-out vehicles on the streets.”

The rejection of the longer-term plan drawn up by General Mohan al-Firaiji, then the Iraqi commander in Basra, in collaboration with the British military, was the latest blow in relations between Mr al-Maliki and the British commanders in the south...

UK Basra Deal Claims 'Not True' - BBC News

The defence secretary has said reports British soldiers delayed helping Iraqi troops in Basra because of a deal with militiamen were "simply not true".

The Times said a secret pact with the Mehdi Army kept British forces on the sidelines for days while an attack was launched on the Shia group in March.

While officials denied the pact, but admitted a previous deal, Des Browne said he never constrained the military.

The Conservatives said the public had not been given the "full picture".

Responding to questions from shadow defence secretary Liam Fox, Mr Browne said: "The allegations made in the Times article are simply not true - there was no deal, never mind a deal preventing the UK military from entering Basra.

He said this had been made clear in a letter to the Times by Air Vice Chief Marshall Chris Nickols...

British Soldiers 'Itched to Join' US Fight - Evans and Haynes, The Times

British troops encamped at the airport outside Basra when American units and thousands of Iraqi reinforcements arrived in March to launch an attack on Shia extremists in the city were itching to join in, the commander of Britain's brigade at the time told The Times yesterday.

Brigadier Julian Free, commander of 4 Mechanised Brigade, said that they had all wanted to be part of the operation “to help the Iraqis”. But it was not possible to deploy British military instructors to work alongside the Iraqi troops in Basra until several days after the Baghdad-sponsored Operation Charge of the Knights began.

A ministerial “submission” also had to be sent to London before a company-sized force could be deployed. For six months, there had been no British troops in the city after a deal last summer with the Shia militia.

The Ministry of Defence confirmed that Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, had been sent the submission, but that he was required only to “note” it, which he did...

Britain Debates Army’s Delay at Basra - John Burns, New York Times

More than four months after American troops were moved hundreds of miles across Iraq to help save a faltering Iraqi Army offensive against Shiite militias in the southern oil city of Basra, a political controversy has erupted here over Britain’s failure to promptly deploy its own troops, stationed only a few miles from the fighting.

British newspapers have made much of the dismay that the delayed British entry into the Basra fighting caused among American commanders, who committed nearly 1,000 soldiers to the fighting. Many of the Americans were moved from bases in central Iraq, the first time United States troops had been committed to combat in the southernmost area of the country since British troops took control of the area after the 2003 invasion, leaving central and northern Iraq to the much larger American force.

The charges come as Prime Minister Gordon Brown faces a widening challenge to his leadership within the governing Labor Party, less than 14 months after he succeeded Tony Blair.

NEWS ANALYSIS / OP-ED / EDITORIALS

Bad Time, But Basra Safer - Michael Evans, The Times analysis

The repercussions of the decision to withdraw the last 500 British troops from Basra city last September are only now beginning to unfold.

While the British Government insists that handing responsibility for security to the Iraqis was right, in retrospect the withdrawal was premature, leaving the military commanders blind to what was going on in the city: in effect a takeover by Iranian-backed Shia militia and criminal groups. “It was a bad day for the British Army,” one senior defence source has admitted to The Times.

Worse still was the small print of the deal fixed between the British military and leaders in Basra of the Shia al-Mahdi Army – supporters of the fiery cleric Moqtada al-Sadr – under which it was agreed that Britain’s military would stay out of the city and remain encamped at its base at the airport.

When Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, found out about the “accommodation” he was said to be furious. His anger led six months later to the surprise decision to send 30,000 Iraqi troops, backed by more than 900 American Marines and US Apache attack helicopters, into Basra on March 25 in Operation Charge of the Knights to take on the Shia extremists – ignoring the 4,000-strong British contingent at the Basra airfield...

Fighting Talk - The Times editorial

If war is indeed the continuation of politics by other means, talks should be as effective as bazookas in achieving the strategic objective. When to talk and when to fight, however, is one of the most vexed decisions that commanders have to make – as the recriminations over the British deal with the militia of al-Mahdi Army in Basra now make cruelly clear.

In the West, there is little tradition of negotiating while battles are in progress. Farther east, there appears to be little contradiction. In Afghanistan, tribesmen have long been adept at mounting an armed attack, breaking off to bargain over bribes and then resuming the attack if the price is not right.

The tradition in Iraq is less venal. But there is no doubting the cynicism of the Shia fighters entrenched in Iraq’s second city who launched continuous attacks on the 500 British troops in Basra palace to force them to accept a deal last summer: safe withdrawal to the airport in return for an accommodation with the Iranian-backed militia. British troops, it was understood, would no longer patrol Basra.

Whether this therefore ruled out support for the Iraqi Army’s attack on the militia in March is as unclear as it is contentious. The Ministry of Defence insists the reason that British Forces did not join the Americans in the first crucial week is because there was “no structure in place” for the troops to reenter the city. Angry Americans and Iraqis giver a harsher reason: Britain waited on the sidelines because of the deal...

Blogs

Lecture Over - Max Boot, Contentions

It wasn’t too long ago the British officers were lecturing their American counterparts on the finer points of counterinsurgency. (See, for instance, this article.) You don’t hear many such lectures any more. In part this is due to the signal success that the U.S. armed forces have been enjoying lately in Iraq. But it is also due to the growing realization that the Brits have, as they might put it, blotted their copybook. Or, to put it into Americanese, they screwed up...

... In fairness to the British soldiers, they did not craft their own rules of engagement. Those were forced on them by a casualty-averse Labor government which, since the departure of Tony Blair, has shown at best tolerance, rather than outright support, for the mission in Iraq. The Brits are still among the best allies we have, and they are increasing their efforts in Afghanistan, where they are fighting and suffering casualties. Their armed forces also remain one of the most professional in the world. But Her Majesty’s forces are suffering increasingly from budgetary neglect and political pressures from a society ever more averse to warfare. The Basra misadventure is simply one more embarrassment for an army that once wrote the book on counterinsurgency with impressive successes from Malaya to Northern Ireland.

Hands Tied in Bara? - David Betz, Kings of War

... What to believe? If the Times is correct the government has behaved with staggering duplicity, stupidity and spinelessness. I’m not rushing to judgment; on the other hand I think the government is quite capable of the above...

... If it is true a mitigating factor, as far as I am concerned, is that there were not exactly many alternatives given the available force structure. That’s a pretty serious indictment in itself, but of a different kind. From my perspective it seems pretty evident that the British Army needs more troops, more kit and a political leadership better prepared to accept blood on its conscience if it stands a chance of succeeding in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Our Loyal Allies, the British - Rick Moran, American Thinker

Betrayal in diplomacy among allies is rare but happens on occasion. But betrayal on the battlefield? And by our closest ally?

Needless to say, our boys who went in with the Iraqi Army to take on Moqtada al-Sadr's militia were surprised and bitterly disappointed to hear of this. Evidently, the Brits thought that if they held back that Mookie would return to the political process and slough off extremists in his group.

This is at a time when Petreaus and Prime Minister Maliki wanted to confront al-Sadr's group and destroy it thus marginalizing any political power Mookie might retain. The deal was a direct contravention of our Iraq policy - and the Brits are evidently suffering for it in Iraq...

Raw Deal - Greyhawk, Mudville Gazette

... Whether the larger claims are accurate or not, none of this should reflect on the British soldiers, who've risked much and suffered more with far less support from their government and folks back home than the Americans...

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