Reports last night of a nascent uprising in Basra came as British commanders were confronting a critical decision — whether to take southern Iraq’s strategic city by force.
British troops were in danger of being sucked into a guerrilla war as the city faced a growing humanitarian crisis for lack of food and water.
British commanders on the ground were assessing whether to move straight into Basra at dawn to take advantage of the uprising. Military sources said the troops would first have to ensure that their positions on the edge of the city were well defended. Coalition forces around the city had faced ”reasonably robust attacks” throughout the day, a senior officer said.
British forces are also reluctant to risk turning the local population against them by driving into the city in an aggressive operation in which many civilians could be killed. If the revolt turns out to have petered out and the British have moved into the city, they could find themselves unnecessarily exposed to the significant Iraqi forces in Basra.
At the forefront of their minds is the need to deliver and to be seen to deliver humanitarian aid into Basra as soon as possible. The way the British handle events in the city could sway Iraqi opinion in Baghdad and other parts of the country.
Iraqi troops and militia were trying to force them into precisely the kind of tactics they were seeking to avoid — fighting in urban areas and greatly increasing the risk of civilian casualties.
Earlier in the day a British military representative said Basra — a strategic centre for Iraq’s Shia population — had now become a military target. Later he said only parts of the city, its military infrastructure and locations housing prominent regime officials, would be targeted.
”We want to win hearts and minds but we will have to use force,” said Air Marshal Brian Burridge, commander of all British forces in the war, reflecting the dilemma facing British troops there. ”We don’t want to break the china,” he added.
British troops were facing continued resistance from members of Saddam Hussein’s Fedayeen paramilitary forces and Iraqis were using human shields to help defend the city.
”7 Armoured Brigade [the Desert Rats] have made reports of gunmen, irregular forces, coming forward with civilians in front of them, we assume being coerced,” said Colonel Chris Vernon, a British army representative in northern Kuwait. ”Clearly we cannot engage the gunmen for risk of causing undue civilian death.”
But troops defending the city also inclu ded the regular Iraqi army’s 51st Mechanised Division, which crushed the Shia revolt in Basra after the 1991 Gulf war. Some of its commanders were said to have surrendered on Saturday. British soldiers then reported hundreds of other soldiers from the unit moving back towards the city.
Col Vernon spoke of ”delinking” the Iraqi regular army, irregular forces, and Ba’ath party officials, and ”driving a wedge” between them and civilians. Out of Basra’s population of about 1,5-million, irregular forces loyal to the president numbered about 1 000, he said.
”The people are pretty, pretty scared and we have to gain the confidence of them,” Col Vernon said. ”With Baghdad and the regime in place and with the legacy of 1991, that is no mean task.”
British troops captured a member of the Ba’ath party in nearby Zubayr late on Monday night and killed 20 men in the party headquarters there. The raid was interpreted by British officers as a notable success in their attempt to target leading figures in the regime. ”We’ve always known we’ve had to get at them.”
Witness accounts revealed how dramatic and high risk such snatch raids will be. According to pooled reports, British soldiers of D Company of the Black Watch in a Warrior armoured personnel carrier smashed through a three-metre-high perimeter wall of a two-storey building to reach their target of a senior Ba’ath party member. Rocket-propelled grenades were also used in the attack.
”Everything was going in, grenades, Warriors laying down 30mm fire, anti-tank weapons, everything,” Lance Corporal Colin Edwards said.
It was in the same area as Monday night’s raid, 24 kilometres west of Basra, where Lance Corporal Barry Stephen of the Black Watch was killed, and where Sergeant Steven Roberts of the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment, the first British soldier to be killed in combat, was shot on Sunday.
”What we did in Zubayr will be a model for how the operations will be done. It will be a quick in and out,” a British military source said. Royal marines and paratroopers were likely to be called on for the raids.
”They are extremely capable because they are used to fighting in these sorts of environments as they have done in Bosnia, Kosovo and Northern Ireland”, the source said.
But such considerations appeared to be overtaken by events. As British artillery fired on targets on the outskirts the city, US aircraft dropped satellite-guided 1 000lb JDAM (joint direct air munitions) bombs.
The bombs, dropped by American F-18 Super Hornet warplanes, signalled a marked escalation of the attack on the city. They were aimed at targets described by British army officers as military sites hidden in civilian buildings.
One was a large ammunition dump, containing weapons, bullets, shells and other munitions, and the second was a building reportedly used as an operational base by Iraqi fighters.
Originally British commanders intended only to surround and contain Basra. But mounting attacks by Iraqi paramilitary forces, including the Fedayeen militia, the Special Security Organisation and the Ba’ath party itself, forced a change of plan.
”Our intent is not to siege the city but to attempt to return security to the city as rapidly as we can and root out those forces that would fight in the city,” said Major-General Victor Renuart, a US general at central command in Qatar. He described the Iraqi forces as ”terrorist type”.
Securing Basra is vital to allow in humanitarian aid and to provide a safe route to the north for US troops involved in the battle for Baghdad. Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, said there should be urgent measures to ease the growing humanitarian crisis in the city. – Guardian Unlimited Â