SATURDAY’S engagement in Basra was a serious one for British imperialism.
One Lynx helicopter was lost, shot down by a Strella missile and five British troops were killed, including the highest ranking British officer to be killed in Iraq since the invasion in March 18 2003.
There were also clashes around the site of the shot down plane. In these clashes British officers estimate that five Iraqis, including two children, were killed while the Al Sadr Medical Institute gave a figure of 25 Iraqis killed and many more wounded.
As well a British tank, a warrior armoured vehicle and an armoured Land Rover were set alight by crowds of Iraqis who danced and cheered to show their pleasure at the British losses.
This engagement proved that the British presence in southern Iraq is coming rapidly to an end. Troops have not patrolled in Basra for months. Road transport is out because of the danger of ieds (improvised explosive devices). Now helicopter transport is also out, because of the danger from missile fire.
The fact is that if British forces do not quit soon, they will become like the French defenders of Dien Bien Phu in north Vietnam, whose attempt to build an impregnable fortress from which they could slaughter the Viet Minh, turned into a trap for themselves, a giant prison that could not be supplied, even from the air, to the point were they had to surrender in their thousands, on May 7th 1954, effectively marking the end of French rule in Indo China.
British officers are well aware of this historical precedent.
The responsibility for the imperialist slaughter in Iraq lies with the Blair government and a military staff that did not have the gumption to refuse the dirty, illegal job that Bush and Blair handed them.
A British military occupation of southern Iraq was never viable. It only became possible because the British government made a deal with Iran to allow back the various Shi’ite movements into southern Iraq that had been in exile from Iraq for as long as 20 years, the Dawa Party, the SCIRI and the Badr Brigades, and in return these would collaborate with the occupation and run the area for the British occupiers.
These forces continued to become the backbone of the various puppet governments in Baghdad.
This mutually beneficial relationship was then steadily undermined.
First of all by the very determined insurrection against the occupiers, whose strength and endurance spread into the Shi’ite movement with the two revolts led by Moqtada al Sadr and his Mahdi army.
The Shi’ite movement was split between those who wanted an end to the occupation and those who were willing to be its policemen.
Then the US fell out with Iran over its nuclear programme, and with the support of Britain, threatened Iran with war and the same destruction as had befallen Iraq.
This further undermined any acceptance of the occupation amongst the Shi’ite masses.
Meanwhile, the Mahdi army became the Al-Sadr current. It opposes the occupation but claims to have three ministers in the puppet government.
It is the Mahdi army that is getting the blame for the shooting down of the helicopter.
This explosive incident in the main city in the south proved that those movements which supported the occupation are now in a minority in Basra and throughout southern Iraq.
Al-Sadr movement is also opposed to sectarianism and federalism and defends the right of the masses to rise up against the occupiers.
The message from Basra is clear. Basra is now no friendlier to the British occupation than is Al Amarah, further to the north east where so many British soldiers have lost their lives.
The British army must quit southern Iraq at once.
Those who sent it there, the British government and its military chiefs, should face war crimes trials.
