Iraqi forces in full control of Basra: British general
BAGHDAD (AFP) — Violence has plummeted in Basra and Iraq's security forces are in full control, a British general said on Thursday, a month before a formal handover of the southern oil city to Iraqi authority.
"I'm confident the current level of violence is sufficient for the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) to handle," Major General Graham Binns, head of the coalition forces in south-eastern Iraq, told reporters in Baghdad.
He had no doubt, he said, that Iraq would be ready to take over security in the entire southern province of Basra from the British military on schedule in mid-December.
"I wouldn't have recommended PIC (Provisional Iraqi Control) if I was not confident," he said, adding however, that the handover was not without risk as violence had not dropped off entirely.
"Is there risk? Yes. But you don't make progress unless you take risks," he said.
"In May, June and July the brigades that we had in Basra were standing toe to toe with the militias and fighting some of the most intense tactical battles that we've had to fight during the four years that we've been here.
"We were taking casualties, they were taking casualties ... 90 percent of the violence was directed at us."
The turnaround in the violence, said Binns, came when the last British troops early September left their headquarters at Basra Palace, a sumptuous former residence of Saddam Hussein in the heart of the city, and joined their colleagues at a nearby air base.
The overall number of attacks against the security forces -- British and Iraqi -- in Basra now was about one-tenth of what it was in August, said Binns.
"There has been a remarkable and dramatic reduction in the number of attacks against us," the general said.
This was due, he added, to the fact that the British troops were more difficult to target as they are no longer staying within Basra and that capabilities of the Iraqi police and army "has improved and is improving day by day."
Furthermore, he added, "the motivation for the militia for attacking us was removed in that we are no longer seen as an army of occupation patrolling the streets in Basra."
Significantly, said the general, the main militia operating in Basra, the Mahdi Army of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, appeared to have called a halt to their attacks.
"The main stream of the Sadrist militias whom we were fighting ... are no longer fighting us on a regular basis. That is not to say that irreconcilable elements of the Sadr spectrum are not intent on attacking us," he said.
"The main stream has bought our offer of a future that will only get better if the security situation improves, if they back the Iraqi police and the army."
Roadside bomb attacks on British convoys and mortar fire into the airport base, which is home to about 5,000 British troops, have not ended entirely.
"There are those who will remain irreconcilable and for whom the offer of money to attack us will be greater than our counter-offer of 'improved security equals prosperity'," said Binns.
Attacks although fewer in number than previously were still being carried out on citizens in Basra, though he could not give figures.
"The level of crime and murder is still unacceptably high and we would like to see it reduced," he said.
However, an expected spike in Shiite-on-Shiite violence had not materialised, mainly because the Mahdi Army had established itself as the dominant militia in the port city against the Badr Brigade of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC).
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has announced that 1,000 of the 5,000 or so British troops at the airbase would be home by Christmas, and that troop levels would be cut to 2,500 by next spring.
Binns said that after the handover -- a date has yet to finalised -- the remaining troops would focus on providing specialist backup to the Iraqi security forces, patrolling Iraq's border with Iran to prevent the smuggling of arms and giving support to the economic regeneration of the Basra region.
