37 senior police officers ranging in rank from lieutenant colonel to brigadier general fired in Basra.

1,300 Iraqi troops, police dismissed
By BUSHRA JUHI, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD - The Iraqi government has dismissed about 1,300 soldiers and policemen who deserted or refused to fight during last month's offensive against Shiite militias and criminal gangs in Basra, officials said Sunday.

Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said 921 police and soldiers were fired in Basra. They included 37 senior police officers ranging in rank from lieutenant colonel to brigadier general.

The others were dismissed in Kut, one of the Shiite cities where the fight had spread.

Last month, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered the security forces to confront armed groups in Basra, Iraq's second largest city.

But they met fierce resistance and the attack quickly ground to a halt as fighting flared across the Shiite south and Baghdad.

Since then, government officials have revealed that about 1,000 members of the security forces — including an entire infantry battalion — had mutinied, on some cases handing over vehicles and weapons to the militias.

The majority of Iraqi soldiers and police are Shiites.

Speaking in Basra, Khalaf said those dismissed included 421 police officers and 500 soldiers who had not returned to duty in the southern port city and would be tried by military courts.

"Some of them were sympathetic with these lawbreakers, some refused to (go into) battle for political or national or sectarian or religious reasons," Khalaf said.

But he said that those who returned in coming days and could prove they had been prevented from doing so by the militias would be reinstated.

In Kut, a senior police officer said 400 local policemen have been sacked for refusing orders to combat the militias, including the Mahdi Army of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

The officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said the Interior Ministry in Baghdad had ordered the policemen removed from duty on Saturday.

Although fighting in Basra eased in late March, security operations are continuing.

Fighting in Baghdad's Sadr City, a stronghold of al-Sadr's militia, has been ongoing for the past two weeks. Fresh clashes were reported Sunday and at least two rockets or mortar rounds were fired at the capital's Green Zone, which houses diplomatic missions and much of Iraq's government.

A senior military commander said Sunday that Iraqi forces in Basra were expanding their sweep of six neighborhoods, with army and police cordoning off the areas while searching for illegal weapons, ammunition and criminal elements.

Lt. Gen. Mohan al-Fireji said the operation, which started on Saturday, had netted significant amounts of weapons, roadside bombs and drugs. He said a large number of suspects had been detained, but he provided no figures.

Al-Sadr, who is believed to be in Iran, repeated on Saturday his demand for American soldiers to leave the country and urged his fighters not to target fellow Iraqis "unless they are helping the (U.S.) occupation."

Despite the strident rhetoric, however, there were signs that al-Sadr was trying to calm his militia to avoid all-out war with the Americans. Al-Sadr is also under pressure from al-Maliki, also a Shiite, to disband the Mahdi Army or face a ban from politics.

Meanwhile, an Apache helicopter accidentally destroyed a U.S. Humvee in eastern Baghdad when a Hellfire missile missed its target and struck the armored vehicle instead, the military said Sunday.

Two U.S. soldiers and three Iraqi civilians were injured in the incident on Saturday, the statement said.

The Folly of DeBaathification and the Basra Insurrection.

"In the past five years America has suffered 4,000 combat deaths and spent the astronomical sum of $3 trillion trying to get post-Saddam Iraq to a position where an elected Iraqi government is capable of running the country on its own."

There are now 30,000 Iraqi troops trying to undo the lawlessness of Shiite militias in Basra. There are 300 killed. Iran has a hand involved. The results of five years of American nation building hang in the balance of the outcome. George Bush and his hand picked team knew what was best to run Iraq. DeBaathification and the disbanding of the Iraqi armed forces was the doctrinaire strategy imposed by Bush. We may be witnessing the logical outcome of that decision.

Westhawk sees it as a test of America's exit strategy. We shall see:

President Bush has called the current battle between Iraqi security forces and Sadr militiamen in Basra “a defining moment.” In his mind, President Bush probably likens the Basra battle to America’s Whiskey Rebellion, when President Washington had to defend the new constitution against a militia uprising. Of course, many other observers interpret the violence in Basra as Shi’ite factions, some in government uniforms, battling for economic spoils in Basra and the surrounding oil patch.

For the U.S. military in Iraq, the battle for Basra is a defining moment for its exit strategy from the country. Namely, will,

Indigenous soldiers + U.S. advisors + U.S. ISR, logistics, and air support = battlefield dominance?

The current battle in Basra is the purest test of this model; to my knowledge there are no U.S. general purpose ground combat units yet engaged in this action. If the Iraqi conventional ground forces, with U.S. indirect support, can prevail against the stubborn Sadr militia in Basra, the U.S. military command will see a quicker way out for U.S. general purpose units in the country.

More importantly, success of this advisor-support model will encourage various factions in Iraq to ally themselves with the U.S. – they won’t want to be on the wrong side of this model when it is used in the future. Demonstrating a technique that works will indicate that there is at least one useful tool in the toolbox. When everyone witnesses that, the incentive for being a troublemaker will drop

____________________________

New Iraq receiving baptism of fire in Basra
By Con Coughlin Telegraph

This time President George W Bush has got it right. He describes the latest flare-up in the oil-rich southern city of Basra as a "defining moment in the history of a free Iraq", and no one can argue with that.

The US President's record of public declarations on Iraq's future has not always been happy. He will certainly never live down his confident prediction on board the USS Abraham Lincoln in May 2003 that major combat operations had ended. While it was true the military campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime (which, incidentally, was a stunning success) had achieved its major objective, the actual task of winning the "battle of Iraq", as the President termed it, had only just begun.

In the past five years America has suffered 4,000 combat deaths and spent the astronomical sum of $3 trillion trying to get post-Saddam Iraq to a position where an elected Iraqi government is capable of running the country on its own.

At the time of Saddam's demise, the general assumption within the British and American governments was that it would take about three years to get Iraq back on its feet. The country needed a new constitution and the opportunity to elect a government for the first time in its history. But it also needed military and security resources, and they basically disintegrated after Mr Bush had given his blessing to the disastrous deBaathification programme that removed military and security personnel who had held office under Saddam.

While tangible progress was possible on political reconstruction - the constitution was approved and a government duly elected - providing Iraq with the means to protect itself and enforce the rule of law has been deeply challenging, and the burden of preventing the insurgent and terrorist groups sabotaging the Pax Americana has mainly fallen to the US-led coalition.

Until, that is, last week, when for the first time since Saddam's overthrow, the Iraqi government made what could prove to be the historic decision to assert its authority by laying down a direct challenge to the lawless militia groups that have turned large swathes of Iraq's second city into a no-go zone. In military terms, Basra has been a confrontation waiting to happen since British troops withdrew from the city centre to the air base last September.

Rather than being - as the anti-war brigade claimed - a humiliating retreat, the tactical withdrawal from Saddam's old summer palace on the banks of the Shatt al-Arab was undertaken on the basis that the continuing presence of British troops was exacerbating, rather than helping, the local security situation. The fiercely nationalistic Iraqis did not want outsiders telling them how to run their affairs.

Formal control of the city was returned to the Iraqis in a short ceremony at the air base last December, but much of Basra has remained under the control of a combination of radical Islamic militias and criminal gangs, which has made it virtually impossible for the Iraqi government in Baghdad to exercise its authority over the city.

I attended the Basra hand-over, and after the formalities the local Iraqi military commander, General Mohan al-Furayji, invited me to celebrations in the city centre. When I asked my British military escort whether this was feasible, he replied, "It depends whether you fancy making a one-way trip."

The activities of the Iraqi kidnap gangs in Basra, which almost daily abduct victims at will for either financial gain or political advantage, was one of the many issues General Mohan told me he was keen to confront as soon as he had the manpower available to deal with the militias.

"The lawlessness in Basra is an insult to the Iraqi people and an insult to the Iraqi government. It simply cannot be tolerated," he said.

General Mohan, who is now overseeing the Iraqi government's attempts to disarm the militias in Basra, personifies the folly of the American deBaathification programme.

Formerly a senior officer in Saddam's Republican Guard, he was briefly jailed in the 1990s after falling out with the Iraqi dictator. An Iraqi patriot, rather than a Saddam loyalist, he was nevertheless barred from active participation in the initial post-Saddam Iraqi administrations because of his links with the former Baathist regime.

He was brought back into the security apparatus only when Iraq's first democratically elected government took office under Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Just how much of the bloodshed of the past five years might have been avoided had highly professional and experienced military officers of General Mohan's calibre been allowed to participate from the start of Iraq's reconstruction is an issue historians will debate for generations to come.

But the fact that he and other members of the Iraqi government believe they now have both the confidence and resources to assert their authority represents a critical moment in the country's development, one which could ultimately decide the country's destiny.

The coalition may have succeeded in its goal of establishing a democratic, pro-Western government in Baghdad, but not everyone in Iraq is happy with this arrangement, particularly radical Shia leaders such as Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mehdi Army is in the vanguard of the resistance to the Iraqi government's forces in Basra.

Al-Sadr and his supporters, who receive military and financial support from Iran, are fiercely opposed to the current political status quo, and want to see the creation of an Iranian-style Shia state in Iraq, which would not at all be in the West's interests.

The big difference between the Iraqi government and the Mehdi Army is that the former has been elected, while the other seeks to impose its hardline anti-Western ideology on the Iraqi people who, in Basra at least, have no say in the matter.

Most of the Iraqi forces now attempting to ensure that the rule of law, rather that the law of the gun, prevails in Basra have been trained by the British military, which is providing air and artillery support for the Iraqi government cause.

For the battle for Basra is a test of both the Iraqi government's legitimacy and virility. If General Mohan and his colleagues can prevail over the militias who pose the greatest threat to Iraq's survival as a democratic entity, the Iraqi people can look forward to taking charge of their own destiny - and the coalition's troops can start planning their withdrawal in the knowledge that their mission has been successfully accomplished.

Basra and Iraqification. Shiites Fighting Shiites.

The Iraqi government should be able to handle this. They should also know that now that it has started, it needs to be finished. The independent militias must be dissolved in order for there to be a credible national government. A successful outcome will go a long way to justify US involvement. A failure will be a calamity.

On one part of the news clip, notice how the Iraqi troops handle the street by handing out Qurans. Interesting.

_______________________

Clashes continue in southern Iraq

Heavy fighting has continued for a third day between Shia militias and the Iraqi security forces in southern Iraq.-BBC

There are reports of extensive exchanges of fire between the Iraqi army and militiamen in Basra and in the town of Hilla, just south of Baghdad.

More than 70 people have died and hundreds have been injured in days of violence sparked by an Iraqi crackdown on Shia militias in Basra.

There have also been violent clashes in Kut and the capital, Baghdad.

On Wednesday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki gave Shia militants in Basra 72 hours to lay down their arms or face "severe penalties".

The leader of the Mehdi Army, Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr, has spoken of the possibility of negotiations to end the violence.

Gunfights

In Basra, police chief Adbul Jalil Khalaf said he survived an assassination attempt overnight, in which three of his bodyguards were killed.

Residents in the city have said that they are beginning to run out of food and water.

One told the BBC that the Iraqi army broke into shops, took food and water, then set fire to shops and cars on the street.

_______________

BASRA KEY FACTS

• Third largest city, population 2.6 million approx

• Located on the Shatt al-Arab waterway leading to the Gulf - making it a centre for commerce and oil exports

• Region around city has substantial oil resources

• 4,000 UK troops based at international airport

___________

"I am trying to look out of the window now, but I can't - the smoke's really heavy and smells really bad. Everything is burnt," he said.

An oil pipeline near Basra, which carries oil for export, was damaged by a bomb.

A Southern Oil Company official told the Reuters news agency that the main pumping station of Zubair 1 was shut down and that exports would be greatly affected.

"Firefighters are struggling to control the fire, which is huge. A lot of crude has spilt onto the ground... We will not be able to repair it unless security is provided for the crews," he said.

In the capital, Baghdad, thousands of Sadr supporters gathered in Sadr City, a vast Shia-dominated suburb, to demand Mr Maliki's resignation over the military operation.

The city's fortified Green Zone was again hit by several rounds of rockets, causing a fire, Iraqi and US embassy officials said.

Iraqi police in Kut said dozens of people were killed in clashes on Thursday between Iraqi and US forces, and Shia militiamen, the AFP news agency reported.

And the number of gunfights in other parts of southern Iraq appears to be growing, says the BBC's Crispin Thorold in Baghdad.

Power struggle

Through the night and the early morning there have also been clashes in the towns of Hilla and Diwaniya.

Late on Wednesday, a US military air raid called in support of Iraqi forces in Hilla caused a number of casualties.

The fighting still seems to be mainly with members of the Mehdi Army, the militia loyal to Moqtada Sadr, our correspondent says.

The Medhi Army had held to a ceasefire for more than a year, contributing to the general fall in violence across Iraq.

It is not clear what has prompted the government crackdown at this time. The government says its campaign aims to re-impose law and order in Basra.

However, Sadrists say the government is attempting to weaken the militias before local elections scheduled for October.

At stake, analysts say, is control of Iraq's only port city and the region's oil fields.

The Brits had enough in Basra. Success or failure?

>

...American criticism of Britain's desire to pull back in southern Iraq has recently become public, with a US intelligence official telling The Washington Post this month that "the British have basically been defeated in the south". A senior British commander countered, "That's to miss the point. It was never that kind of battle, in which we set out to defeat an enemy." Other officers said the British force was never configured to "clear and hold" Basra in the way the Americans are seeking to do in Baghdad."...

Military commanders tell Brown to withdraw from Iraq without delay

By Raymond Whitaker and Robert Fox
Published: 19 August 2007 Independent

Senior military commanders have told the Government that Britain can achieve "nothing more" in south-east Iraq, and that the 5,500 British troops still deployed there should move towards withdrawal without further delay.

Last month Gordon Brown said after meeting George Bush at Camp David that the decision to hand over security in Basra province – the last of the four held by the British – "will be made on the military advice of our commanders on the ground". He added: "Whatever happens, we will make a full statement to Parliament when it returns [in October]."

Two generals told The Independent on Sunday last week that the military advice given to the Prime Minister was, "We've done what we can in the south [of Iraq]". Commanders want to hand over Basra Palace – where 500 British troops are subjected to up to 60 rocket and mortar strikes a day, and resupply convoys have been described as "nightly suicide missions" – by the end of August.

The withdrawal of 500 soldiers has already been announced by the Government. The Army is drawing up plans to "reposture" the 5,000 that will be left at Basra airport, and aims to bring the bulk of them home in the next few months.

Before the invasion in 2003, officers were told that the Army's war aims were to bring stability and democracy to Iraq and to the Middle East as a whole. Those ambitions have been drastically revised, the IoS understands. The priorities now are an orderly withdrawal, with the reputation and capability of the Army "reasonably intact", and for Britain to remain a "credible ally". The final phrase appears to refer to tensions with the US, which has more troops in Iraq than at any other time, including the invasion, as it seeks to impose order in Baghdad and neighbouring provinces.

American criticism of Britain's desire to pull back in southern Iraq has recently become public, with a US intelligence official telling The Washington Post this month that "the British have basically been defeated in the south". A senior British commander countered, "That's to miss the point. It was never that kind of battle, in which we set out to defeat an enemy." Other officers said the British force was never configured to "clear and hold" Basra in the way the Americans are seeking to do in Baghdad.

Immediate American discontent is said to centre on the CIA's reluctance to leave Basra Palace, an important base for watching Iran, which may explain why Britain has held on to the complex until now. But last week it was reported that US intelligence operatives were in the process of pulling out. Further ahead, the US is concerned over the security of its vital supply line from Kuwait, with some American commanders saying that if the British withdraw, American troops will have to be sent south to replace them. As the hub of Iraq's oil industry, Basra is also a tempting prize for the Shia militias battling each other for control.

There are fears that the bloody power struggle in Basra will escalate sharply if and when British troops depart, but commanders point out that up to 90 per cent of the violence is directed against their forces. They are understood to believe it was never the role of occupation troops to intervene in a "turf war" among factions from the same community, all of which have links to the government coalition in Baghdad.

Mr Brown will have to take these wider concerns into account, in reaching a decision that has political as well as military implications. At Camp David he stressed that "we have duties to discharge and responsibilities to keep" in support of the Iraqi government and "the explicit will" of the international community. The 15 September report on the progress of the security "surge" by the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and the American ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, will be crucial to British as well as US military plans.

General Petraeus is expected to report mixed results, and to plead for more time for the surge to work. But the White House, under pressure from Republicans facing disaster in the 2008 elections, is likely to announce at least some troop reductions. British commanders, and some US commentators, believe that will enable the Prime Minister to spell out plans for a British withdrawal when MPs return in October, although the process may last well into next year.

Leaving Basra

Lt-Gen Raymond Odierno, the US deputy commander in Iraq, says Shia militants were responsible for 73 per cent of the attacks that killed or wounded American soldiers in Baghdad in July. The increase in Shia attacks on British personnel may be part of the same pattern."

British losses soar as they prepare to leave Basra city
By Patrick Cockburn The Independent
Published: 10 August 2007

Two more British soldiers were killed in southern Iraq yesterday, raising the death toll in the UK's least successful military campaign since Suez in 1956. In both cases the British casualties were low but British forces wholly failed to achieve their objectives.

Two Irish Guardsman were killed and two were seriously wounded in the early hours of yesterday when their convoy was hit by a roadside bomb near the Rumaila oilfields west of Basra. The deaths bring to 168 the number of British personnel who have died in Iraq since the invasion in 2003.

British losses have increased as they prepare to abandon their last base in Basra city and retreat to their frequently attacked air base on the outskirts of the city. Here the contingent of 5,500 troops has been hit by mortars and rockets more than 600 times in the past four months.

"Basra's residents and militiamen view this not as an orderly withdrawal but rather as an ignominious defeat," according to a report by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) on Basra published in June. "Today, the city is controlled by militias, seemingly more powerful and unconstrained than before."

British officials have privately echoed American claims that the Shia militias in Basra and in the rest of Iraq are being manipulated and supplied by Iran. But the three main Shia groupings in Basra, the Mehdi Army, the Badr Organisation and Fadhila, would control most of southern Iraq with or without Iranian aid.

"The British have basically been defeated in the south," a senior US intelligence official was quoted as saying in Baghdad. The final deterioration of the British position has become evident since the end of Operation Sinbad between September 2006 and March 2007 which sought to curb the militias and strengthen security in Basra. But from March on the militias have reasserted their hold on the city and killed 30 British soldiers between April and July, making it the deadliest period for British forces at any time since 2003.

The increase in attacks may be because the militias see the British as being on the run, but also because of the growing military friction between the Shia militiamen and the occupation forces in general.

Lt-Gen Raymond Odierno, the US deputy commander in Iraq, says Shia militants were responsible for 73 per cent of the attacks that killed or wounded American soldiers in Baghdad in July. The increase in Shia attacks on British personnel may be part of the same pattern.

The US has been seeking to blame the escalation of Shia militia attacks on Iran but it is more likely that they are the result of growing frustration of the Shia, who make up 60 per cent of the Iraqi population, at what they see as increasing US support for the Sunni.

The Pentagon and White House have launched a campaign to persuade the media that Iran's provision of sophisticated shaped charges is a decisive factor in the war and is causing numerous US casualties. The accusation is denied by Iran and, even if true, the provision of a single type of explosive device is unlikely to be of critical significance in such a complex struggle.

British forces have already withdrawn from three of the four provinces in southern Iraq saying they are turning over security to Iraqi government authority. But police and army in Basra and southern Iraq are largely under the control of militias.

The outlook for the two million people in Basra, Iraq's second largest city, is not good. According to the ICG report, violence in the city has little to do with sectarianism or anti-occupation resistance but involves "the systematic misuse of official institutions, political assassinations, tribal vendettas, neighbourhood vigilantism... together with the rise of criminal mafias that increasingly intermingle with political actors."

Oops, someone forgot that cell phones kill.

Well, they actually do not, but they sure do help. They are a remarkable means of communication with civlilian and military application, but somebody was not thinking.

It is obvious that we failed to properly recognize the type of war we have entered when we went to Iraq. To say we were unprepared for many things is kind. Nothing can demonstrate that more than the use of enemy, sorry, "insurgent attacker's" cell phones to kill US and allied troops.

Saddam never tolerated many things from the shiites, one of them was open access to cellular phones. I question how many US and allied troops have been wounded and killed by the indiscriminate proliferation of cell phones. A lot.

We are so used to the technology that we forget the potency of an inexpensive cell phone. They come in quite handy for coordinating attacks, noticing US troop movements, calling in sniper fire, and setting off IED's. (Imagine any historic military battle and go back in time and give them cell phones.)

One of the first tactics used in any military operation is to deny the enemy lines and means of communications. I guess someone forgot, or the twits who are our masters and rulers, wanted to not deny the Iraqis their rights on the path to democracy. Remember the Iraqis did not have them before we arrived. We built the cellular phone towers.

The second comment has to do with the "arrest" of two "attackers" after they fired RPG's at the Brits. I think I cracked a tooth.

We really do not know what we are doing.

20 Shia gunmen die in British Basra fightback

By Thomas Harding, Defence Correspondent, Telegraph
Last Updated: 7:50am BST 12/04/2007

British forces have hit back at Iraqi insurgents who killed six colleagues last week, by launching an operation in which they shot dead more than 20 gunmen of Basra's rogue militias.

The attack began when a battalion-size force was sent into one of the southern city's toughest terrorist strongholds, three miles from where four soldiers, including two women, were blown up in their Warrior armoured vehicle.

An armoured force of 400 troops from the 2Bn The Rifles and 2Bn The Duke of Lancaster's Regiment, both of which suffered fatalities last week, entered the Shia Flats area on the western outskirts of Basra to search for hidden weapons.The district is notorious as one of the most dangerous in southern Iraq.

"We wanted to make quite clear there's nowhere in Basra we cannot go," a British commander told The Daily Telegraph yesterday. "We are prepared to be there in daylight and take whatever comes our way. We are not being bombed out or intimidated."

Initially there was no response as the troops began searching homes where they recovered some small arms. But then the atmosphere changed.


"It was all going very well but then there was a sense something bad was about to happen as we noticed children starting to speak into their mobile phones and point at us," the commander said. "At this stage it became clear that the militia was massing for some kind of attack."

As the troops took up defensive positions around their Warrior and Bulldog armoured vehicles, Iraqi gunmen carrying AK47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades could be seen scurrying along rooftops and down streets. It is believed ammunition and hundreds of weapons are hidden in the area and brought into the open at short notice when the British appear.

Intelligence sources also informed the troops on the ground that Shia terrorists were heading towards them from other parts of the city.

The battle began on Tuesday afternoon with numerous rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire hitting the British positions.

The soldiers from the Rifles and Duke of Lancaster's held off the attacks for more than two hours and shot a number of gunmen. There were no British casualties as they gradually fought their way back to their base at Basra Palace.

Coalition jets also made low flying passes to intimidate the enemy although they did not drop any bombs. During one skirmish two attackers, who fired grenades at a British position, were chased down and arrested. Both are likely to face charges.

Commanders believed that some of the dead might have been behind the ambush of a Warrior in which 2nd Lt Joanna Dyer, a close friend of Prince William at Sandhurst, and three other soldiers were killed. A sniper, possibly from Shia Flats, also killed two other soldiers earlier last week. "This was at a location where we believe those responsible for killing our people were almost certainly recruited from," a military source said.

During the battle an Iraqi policeman was shot by one of the militias. He later died.

No civilians are believed to have been killed in the fight, the military reported, although it could not rule out innocent casualties caught in the crossfire.

"While we may regret that such incidents have to take place, we will not allow militia gunmen to control parts of Basra," said Lt Col Kevin Stratford-Wright, the British military spokesman in southern Iraq.

"There are no 'no-go' areas for multi-national forces in Basra. Security is our responsibility and, in conjunction with the Iraqi security forces, we seek to provide as secure an environment as possible. This will inevitably involve taking on the rogue militia who blight the lives of people in Basra."

Official estimates put the number of Iraqis hit by British gunfire at 10 but other defence sources said that double that figure had been shot.