An End to the Soft Sell By the British in Basra
Rising Violence Damages Relations With Locals

By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, February 26, 2006

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."

British troops recently launched a comprehensive effort to rehabilitate the police force. Dubbed "Operation Corrode," it aims to "reform the reformable" policemen and "detain the rest," according to Maj. Alex Wilson, chief of staff of the 7th Armored Brigade, which is responsible for Basra.

"The overwhelming majority of the police are good people, but they can be easily intimidated," Wilson said in an interview. "We would estimate that if you got rid of 40 or 50 of the key bad people at the top, you'd have gotten rid of the problem."

As part of that effort, British troops on Jan. 24 arrested 14 policemen who had been members of Basra's Internal Affairs Department, a police intelligence unit. The 2,000-member branch, suspected of carrying out kidnappings and assassinations, was closed by the Iraqi government late last year.

The British have also opened a police academy on a World War II-era Royal Air Force base west of downtown Basra, where more than 1,300 recruits and officers are enrolled in a 10-week course. The class emphasizes forensics in an effort to encourage officers to try to solve crimes and abandon the Hussein-era focus on extracting confessions from suspects.

"Many of them have been in the force for many years with no formal training," said Martin Quinn, the school's head instructor, who in civilian life is a policeman from Sheffield, England.

The challenge of breaking long-held habits was evident during a recent human rights lecture.

"All countries must forbid torture, first of all, and if torture happens, there must be an investigation of those cases," said Omar Abdul Dalil, an Iraqi human rights worker who, along with a pair of Danish police detectives, taught a class of about 20 veteran policemen in a spartan, concrete classroom. "Even though there is a political mess in the country, if a high-ranking officer orders you to mistreat a prisoner, you are not going to follow that order."

Hands quickly shot up.

"What if the person is very bad and makes trouble in the prison?" asked a visibly exasperated lieutenant.

"You can't expect them to do things exactly like they are done in America or Europe, but my impression is that they are absorbing these ideas," said Kaj Kristensen, 60, a retired detective from Copenhagen. "Sometimes they have a difficult time when they get back to the stations because their superiors don't always like new ways of doing things. That is why we focus on mid-level and junior officers."

After the class adjourned, some Iraqi officers said they were skeptical the lessons were relevant to police work in their country. "This is general information. We know it. But we cannot apply it here," said Maj. Naseer Abdul-Jabbar, 40. "Terrorists want to kill me and my family, so I cannot treat their rights as an ordinary thief."

With Iraq's security forces not yet ready to assume control of the city, British forces said they were patrolling as frequently as ever, but acknowledged their tactics could start to shift.

"They've looked at each patrol and asked themselves, 'Is it absolutely necessary?' " said Maj. Peter Cripps, a spokesman for British forces in Basra. "But we can't just shut ourselves on our bases or we won't know what's going on outside."

On a recent afternoon, a group of British soldiers from the 1st Battalion, King's Own Royal Border Regiment, crisscrossed the city in a Merlin helicopter that swooped down and landed in intersections, where soldiers disembarked to inspect passing vehicles. Every 20 minutes they loaded back up and flew to the next stop.

"If you always use the roads, you make yourself predictable to the enemy," said Drum Maj. Ian McLardie, 37, patrol leader.

In Britain, news of the 100th death of a British service member prompted fresh calls for a pullout.

In a recent interview with the Bloomberg news service, British Defense Secretary John Reid said the country is "not far off" from drawing down its forces in Iraq and that the process would begin this year. "We have no long-term ambitions," he said.

While many residents are also quick to call for an end to what they term an occupation that has worn out its welcome, they also fear that a vacuum would be left in its place.

"Unfortunately," the continued presence of the British forces is "the only way to get rid of that scum," said Haj Jassim al-Salim, 56, an auto parts salesman in Basra, referring to the militias.