An End to the Soft Sell By the British in Basra

Rising Violence Damages Relations With Locals

BASRA, Iraq -- In a region long insulated from the rampant unrest in Iraq, relations between British forces and local leaders have deteriorated sharply in recent weeks as violence has escalated in and around this southeastern city, military commanders and residents said.

A series of damaging incidents began in September with an attempt by British troops to forcibly free two of their soldiers from a local prison, and escalated when they arrested 14 Iraqi police officers last month. In late January, a roadside bomb in nearby Umm Qasr killed the 100th British service member to die in the Iraq war. Less than two weeks later, the release of a two-year-old video showing British soldiers battering Iraqi boys sparked several small but angry demonstrations.

As the tension has grown in Basra, so has the murder rate. Since November, the rate has doubled, to an average of more than one per day, according to data provided by the British military. Among the victims this month was an interpreter working with British troops.

Gone are the days when British forces, who came to Basra during the 2003 invasion, won wide praise for their less confrontational approach, patrolling city streets in floppy berets and soft-skinned vehicles -- which they still use, though not as often. As they prepare to transfer more responsibility for security to Iraqi forces, the British acknowledge that their methods have failed to prevent the rise of the militia groups -- many of them linked to mainstream political parties -- that they now consider the region's greatest security threat.

Troops in Iraq's second largest city, which sits on the Shatt al-Arab River, Iraq's gateway to the sea, are fighting a different type of insurgency from that faced by American forces battling Sunni and foreign militants elsewhere in the country. In the Shiite-majority south, British commanders say, the enemy is harder to identify and is often closely associated with the Iraqi security forces that the British are training.

"It's all a bit murkier here in terms of who your friends and your enemies are," said Lt. Col. Charles Crewdson, 40, commander of the 9th/12th Lancers, a battalion that patrols rural enclaves south of Basra.

Earlier this month, the provincial council voted to sever ties with foreign troops who patrol the southeastern plains in response to a video depicting British soldiers beating Iraqi boys. At the council's most recent meeting, a representative of Moqtada al-Sadr, a radical Shiite cleric who controls a powerful militia, vowed that if British forces "continue their actions against our people, we will make Basra a mass grave for them."

British forces and Basra residents say that the city's police force, heavily infiltrated by Shiite militiamen, has been involved in assassinations. Iraqi police officers interviewed recently said that such killings are often justified.

"You know, many of the victims are former Baathists," loyalists of former president Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, said Wassam Muhammed Shia, 25, a Basra policeman, when asked about the spate of violence. "God damn them anyway. They should die."

Criticism of the British has grown more caustic from residents who say the British approach made them slow to recognize the militias' growing influence and brutality. The Basra police chief told reporters last May that half of his more-than-12,000-member force belonged to militias and that he trusted only a fourth of his officers.

The British "released us from Saddam and put us under the mercy of merciless people," said Raad Jawad, an engineer with a local oil company.

Jasem al-Agrab, head of organization for the local branch of the Iraqi Islamic Party, the country's largest Sunni Arab political group, wrote in London's Guardian newspaper recently that "the smug superiority of the British over their peacekeeping efforts in Iraq is an insult to those of us who live there."