LIKE a thief in the night Prime Minister Brown sneaked into Basra airport on Saturday night to tell British troops that their period of being the occupier of southern Iraq, even if it was in name alone, was over.
In fact, in two weeks time they will be permanently grounded at Basra airport and will only be able to venture outside if they are invited to do so by the Iraqi security authorities.
Their number is to be reduced by 2,500 by the spring of 2008. By the end of 2008, when the UN mandate for Iraq ends, and it is not renewed, the remaining troops will quit Iraq, and within a few months of that date, what was the entire British garrison in southern Iraq will have been relocated to Afghanistan.
The phrase from the frying pan into the fire immediately springs to mind!
The British imperialists who marched into Iraq like lions, and then were held up for nearly a week at the border port of Um Qasr, and who only belatedly took the city of Basra after discharging a hail of thousands of internationally banned cluster bombs, are now to leave Iraq with a whimper.
Their ability to control the area was always conditional.
To begin with from May 2003 they made a pact with the various pro-Iranian parties who returned to Iraq after as long as 20 years exile in Iran, where they had been sustained by the Iranian government. The pact was that these parties would be allowed to control the area provided they cooperated with Britain and its troops.
The period of relative peace that emerged from the deal – disturbed by the killing of six military policemen in Al Amarah by insurgents and the murder of Baha Mousa and atrocities against many other Iraqis by British troops – was greeted by the British military and politicians as a brilliant contrast to the battles and massacres that the US were engaging in northern and western Iraq.
This contrast was said to show the innate superiority of the British model of imperialist oppression.
However, this bubble was burst as soon as the US and UK governments fell out with Iran and labelled it a vital part of the axis of evil, with military action against it not be ruled out.
This policy immediately turned Basra into a death trap for British troops, and with the honeymoon over, and with pro-Iranian militias running the second biggest city in Iraq, British casualties rose rapidly.
A policy of military action by British forces in Basra to restore law and order was met head on by the Mahdi army militia and other forces.
The end result was that British forces were driven out of the city to Basra Palace, where they were attacked for every minute of the night and day with bombs, rockets, mortars and missiles.
The position at the Basra Palace was untenable. However it was not possible just to withdraw to Basra airport. The well grounded fear of the British commanders was that any retreating column from the palace would be attacked, blocked, surrounded and destroyed.
The only way out was to make another deal, this time with the Mahdi army. This was that they would be allowed to retreat to the Basra airport if they agreed that they would not leave the base without the permission of the Mahdi army.
If they made this agreement, then the Mahdi army would stop the rocket bombardment of the Basra airport base.
The British command agreed and as expected the Mahdi Army kept its word. All that Brown did yesterday was to extend the deal to include the Basra authorities, many of whom are supporters of the Mahdi army. Because of this the British army will be allowed to reduce its garrison and then transfer to Afghanistan.
There is no doubt that the debacle in Iraq will be followed by defeat in Afghanistan. Clearly British imperialism has had its day and must be put down like a disease-ridden old dog.
In the struggles to come the British workers must support the Iraqi and Afghan people.
Marx described the working class as the grave diggers of capitalism. In the period ahead the British workers must discharge this historic function by expropriating the bosses and the bankers and disbanding their imperialist officer corps, putting an end to the bankrupt, blood soaked capitalist system to go forward to socialism.
