The Violent Consequences of a Pullout
The port city of Basra is a dangerous mess. And it looks to get worse as British troops depart
As talk in Washington turns to just how tricky a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq will be, U.S. military analysts are warily tracking developments in the oil-rich southern province of Basra, now loosely under the control of some 5,500 British troops. Loosely is the operative word.
Look to Basra, U.S. officials say, to see a case study that weaves together considerable and growing Iranian influence, a free-for-all among warring militias, and, on the British home front, demands to pull out troops as quickly as possible amid broad opposition to what is widely seen as a lost war—a case study, in other words, of precisely the Iraq outcome that Washington is most anxious to avoid.
"What you see is the Brits leaving—and leaving behind an unstable situation. I think if and when the U.S. leaves, it's likely to be like that, too," says Stephen Biddle, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who has been a consultant to Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. "You can leave as a consequence of success or of failure. The odds are that the U.S. will soon be facing the consequences of a withdrawal from an unstable Iraq."
And what happens in Basra could both foreshadow and contribute considerably to that instability. Basra has geographic significance. It holds about 60 percent of the nation's proven oil reserves and provides an otherwise landlocked Iraq its only access to the Persian Gulf. This last point is not lost on U.S. military analysts. "It's our primary supply line to Iraq. If the south becomes destabilized, could we still withdraw through Kuwait?" says Andrew Krepinevich, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, echoing concerns of U.S. planners. "Do we have to find some other way to get our equipment to a port?"
It's a valid worry, say planners. Conditions in Basra are steadily deteriorating for one of America's key allies in the country. The bulk of the British forces is now at the Shaibah air base, about 10 miles southwest of the city, while a battle group of 500 soldiers remains at a palace within Basra city. "We have not handed it [Basra palace] over to the Iraqis yet," says a British Ministry of Defense spokesman. "We are on course to do so shortly." By most accounts, shortly means this autumn.
Shiite rivalries. In the meantime, a small force of British troops that had been holed up at police headquarters in Basra was withdrawn last month. In the aftermath, there were reports that members of the Mahdi Army militia, loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, seized the building and looted equipment. The British military has contested such reports, but the fact remains that militia activity is unlikely to abate—and will most likely increase—as a pullout date approaches. "The intra-Shiite rivalries are just as bad as the Sunni-Shiite cross-sect rivalries," says Lt. Col. James Gavrilis, a counterinsurgency specialist at the Pentagon.
At stake for the militias is, most immediately, bragging rights. Various Shiite militias would like to claim credit for driv-ing out the British, and as a result, there will be symbolic attacks in advance of a departure "because the Shiite militias will want to associate themselves politically, to the degree that they can, with the British withdrawal," says one U.S. military analyst. Even more important, the resource-rich area is a valuable prize for the victor.
For that reason, some U.S. officials believe that following a British pullout, the United States may be forced to send its own, already overstretched troops to the south. "At the end of the day, I really don't see how the coalition can leave no forces in Basra," says Frederick Kagan, a military analyst at the American Enterprise Institute and an architect of the current "surge" strategy. "The issue entirely turns on the timing." To that end, the British may try to delay the pullout of the remaining 5,000 troops until the year's end, according to analysts there. That's because there is a great deal of concern about the impact of a British withdrawal on the relationship with Washington. "If they do this in an irresponsible fashion," says Kagan, "they are going to be dumping a burden on U.S. forces."
War weary. But Kagan and others concede that the withdrawal pressure on new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is immense. Ultimately, says Rosemary Hollis, an Iraq expert at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, protecting the British Army from being overstretched—there are now 7,000 British troops in Afghanistan—"must come ahead of the trans-Atlantic relationship." Says Kagan: "The British Army is overstrained—worse than the U.S." And, he adds, "the British population gave up on this war long ago."
The lack of public support is key in Britain, a factor that will prove increasingly pivotal on this side of the Atlantic as well. "The British recognize that they can't do much more, even though the situation isn't where they want it to be," says Hollis. American analysts add that turning the tide in Basra could take years. "To establish an enduring level of security, you're talking about an effort that could run the better part of a decade," says Krepinevich. "So you have to ask yourself, if you're going to stay that long, what are the odds that you'll succeed?"
That is the question that the U.S. military is now posing within the halls of the Pentagon. On Capitol Hill and within a growing segment of the American public, adds Krepinevich, Basra may portend the same question in another form: "Do we deplete our resources and bleed for another 10 years, or do we cut our losses now?"
With Thomas K. Grose in London
This story appears in the September 10, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.