NEW BRITISH PM UNDER FIRE OVER IRAQ

With Tony Blair no longer around to support George Bush’s Iraq policy, Gordon Brown the new British PM has come under increasing pressure from Washington to keep British troops in Iraq. At the same time, British generals have been telling him to call it a day and move troops from southern Iraq to help in the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
He has also received advice from political opponents including, Sir Menzies Campbell, leader of the Liberal Party, who has publicly stated that a full withdrawal of the 5,500 soldiers in Basra is the only acceptable option because they are achieving nothing by staying there. According to Sir. Menzies the goals once set by George Bush and Tony Blair can no longer be considered realistic.
Criticism of the British mission in Iraq has also come from the fiery Shiite cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr. His Madhi army has fought the British to a standstill in and around Basra, forcing British troops to stay holed up in Basra Palace, as well as in a massive compound near the airport. Much of the time, soldiers remain on base and face daily shelling from rockets and mortars. The CIA and other US intelligence assets have been based in Basra Palace for some time, using it as a listening post to monitor Iranian border activity. They are unhappy about the prospect of the British garrison leaving and have made their feelings known to the White House.
Al-Sadr says that contrary to claims by some elements of the US military he has not been in hiding in Iran. To prove that was so, he gave an interview to the London Independent at the historic mosque in Kufa in Iraq. In the interview, he said his Mahdi army was responsible for forcing the British to begin a pull-out and that his fighters were in regular contact with Hezbollah in Lebanon. They were not, he added, being armed and trained by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard but they would take weapons from anyone.
To most observers, his admission about links to Hezbollah made sense because both militias are Shia. It also explained how his fighters had suddenly become skilled at attacking British armored patrols. Last year, Hezbollah fighters, much to the surprise of US and Israeli generals, fought the Israel Defense Forces to a standstill. Israeli armor and infantry suffered heavy losses and were unable top push deep into Lebanon.
Al Sadr has proved over time to be a great survivor, as well as a winner of major political battles within Iraq. Despite attempts by the US to have the Iraqi government isolate him, he has continued to gain strength politically. When asked by the London Independent why he pulled his political appointees out of the Iraqi government, he responded that most Iraqis saw the Iraqi PM, Nouri al-Maliki as a “tool of the Americans” and for that reason alone his government would fall. The prediction of a limited lifespan for the Iraqi government is shared by the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, D. Mich., and his deputy, John Warner, Rep. VA. After a recent visit to Iraq they declared it was too late to find political consensus and that al-Maliki should be removed from office.
In the meantime, within Britain the most significant pressure for a pull out from Iraq has not come from the streets, or from members of parliament, but from serving British generals. Their advice to Gordon Brown has been unequivocal – get out now before things get worse and a withdrawal becomes messy and costs lives. That advice may have been on Brown’s mind when he met George Bush at Camp David last month because he subsequently issued a statement that British commanders on the ground in Basra would decide when to pull out. He also promised to report to the British Parliament on the matter in October. By confirming he would do that, some analysts reckoned he was signaling that by October a staged withdrawal from Iraq would be well underway.
In Washington, especially among neocons who still think the war in Iraq can be won, there are those who are not prepared to let Brown off the hook. There has b a concerted whispering campaign warning that a British pull-out could jeopardize the surge strategy of General Petraeus and could prove “ugly by providing the enemy with a propaganda victory. While little has been reported here about this in the US media, its increasing bitterness has not been lost on the British who do not take kindly to statements implying that they are acting in a cowardly and unpatriotic fashion, especially when those comments originate in Washington and from some who are close to General Petraeus.
One Washington critic of the British desire for withdrawal recently found himself on the sharp end of a broadside from Lord Boyce, Chief of the Defence staff between 2001 -2003. Lord Boyce’s feathers were ruffled when Stephen Biddle, a White House adviser to General Petraeus, had the audacity to compare a British withdrawal to the American pull-out from Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War. According to Biddle, a British withdrawal would be “ugly and embarrassing – a Saigon moment.”
Lord Boyce lost no time giving Biddle a history lesson by pointing out that what the US faced in Saigon in 1975 was not comparable. For a start, the American military was fighting a well-equipped Viet Cong army when it left Saigon and not the “disparate murderers and terrorists” British soldiers were combating in southern Iraq.
The tenor of Lord Boyce’s response typified the true character of recent exchanges by some in Washington and their counterparts in Britain. Some British commentators have suggested it is unhelpful to hear remarks of the type made by Biddle, given the fact Britain has remained America’s most steadfast ally in the war on terror. It has also been made clear in many of Britain’s editorial columns that Gordon Brown has no intention of wasting political capital following Tony Blair’s Iraq policy. Unlike George Bush, Brown has a general election to fight and knows how unpopular the Iraq war has been. He is equally aware Britain could be in Afghanistan for decades and he needs the British public’s support for that commitment. He is, however, fortunate that there is growing evidence the British military is winning a hearts and minds battle against the Taliban in Helmand Province. More troops are needed for that campaign and, with the British army weakened by its Iraq commitment, the troops in Basra could be better deployed to Helmand.
If the prospect of a British withdrawal from Basra spells trouble for the Bush Iraq policy, events in northern Iraq, especially in Kurdistan, are deeply troubling. It has been a relatively peaceful area of the country, long portrayed as the “jewel” of the post invasion. However, it would not take much to propel the region into chaos. Two months ago, there was a major problem when Turkey threatened to send 200,000 troops into Kurdistan to destroy Kurdish guerillas hiding in the mountains bordering Turkey. At the last minute, the US convinced the Turks to back down by offering to provide American Special Forces to help covert Turkish units eliminate the guerillas in their mountain hideouts. Now, Kurdistan faces another threat to its stability, this time from Iran. Like the Turks, the Iranians claim they too need to eliminate Kurdish guerillas that are using bases in Kurdistan to mount attacks within Iran. The guerillas say they have infiltrated the Kurdish community within Iran and have the capability to mount serious attacks on Iranian infrastructure. As it stands, the future for Kurdistan could be bleak and that must be troubling for US military planners who have more than enough to deal with in other parts of Iraq.