nothing in sight
No Exit for British in Poor Corner of Iraq
Despite Progress, Old Scores Still Unsettled and Local Problems Unresolved
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, February 12, 2005; Page A01
QURNAH, Iraq -- The election is over here in the backcountry, and by local accounts, it was a grand success. The Marsh Arabs dressed in festive robes to vote. The Iraqi police and guardsmen were at their proudest. No one got shot, or even shot at -- unusual here.
Far from the bombs and politics in Baghdad, this remote bit of Iraq is now fairly quiet. But one day this week, Capt. Alexander Spry and the men of his Welsh Guards company were out on patrol, just as they were before the Jan. 30 vote. Jolting along a rutted dirt road cloaked in dust, past a squalid strip of mud huts perched on a canal levee, they had guns and waves at the ready. Either might be needed.
In Amarah, British troops who often sort out tribal rivalries and oversee reconstruction projects also continue to patrol the streets. (Ghaith Abdul-ahad -- Getty Images)
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British officers such as Spry say they still have much to do before foreign military forces can leave Iraq. The narrow task that brought them here -- to help topple Saddam Hussein -- has been accomplished, but the approximately 175,000 troops from 29 foreign countries find themselves wrapped in the suffocating embrace of local problems and ancient grievances left to them to solve.
They sort out tribal rivalries, arrest car thieves, spot crooked contractors, hire men to clean sewers, and restore order to gasoline lines. At the same time, they are trying to train the Iraqis who will replace them and to reconstruct where there was little construction to begin with -- all while keeping the peace.
"We've made good progress, and there's more to be made," said Lt. Col. Ben Bathurst, who leads about 1,000 soldiers of the 1st Battalion, Welsh Guards, in Maysan province.
Although he insisted that "we're not going to be here forever," Bathurst acknowledged that the British army's departure was nowhere in sight. When the Welsh Guards leave in a few months, another British unit will take over, and the British are moving into a nearby area as Dutch troops withdraw.
Whenever local officials complain about the troops, "I've found the best way to combat that is to say, 'Okay, we'll pull out tomorrow. Then what will you do?' " The question silences critics, Bathurst said.
The situation in Maysan, the poorest of Iraq's 18 provinces, illustrates how difficult it will be for the United States and its allies to extricate themselves from Iraq no matter how successful January's election turns out to have been or how much progress is made against the insurgency.
Tucked away in southeastern Iraq, Maysan would seem a likely place for an army to come and go quickly. It is poor and rural. Vast stretches have no schools, electricity or running water.
Here in the ancestral home of the Marsh Arabs, who for perhaps 5,000 years have relied on the vast wetlands here for fish, fowl and rice, Spry and his convoy of bristling Land Rovers are aliens as they patrol a 12-mile strip of huts along a canal. The small, square homes are made of mud and straw. A door is often a piece of sheet metal propped against the opening. Smiling, strong women and squealing children emerge to greet the patrol.
There has not been much violence here since a flare-up in August that officers say was the "most intense fighting the British Army has been in since the Falklands War" in the early 1980s. All the local politicians say the British should stay.
"The coalition forces are like a doctor. When the patient has recovered, the doctor can leave," said Hashim Shawki, the local head of a major Shiite Muslim party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
The biggest question is who would replace British forces as the authority here. Two British companies live with the Iraqi National Guard, and the Welsh Guards work daily to train guardsmen and police. The British speak optimistically and say the Iraqi security forces are coming along.
But there is no timetable for a handover of security duties. The 6,000 police officers and 1,800 guardsmen are wary rivals, their ranks stocked by members of competing militias. The new provincial council is expected to side with the National Guard against the police. The governor of the province was arrested for allegedly ordering the slaying of a local police chief. He was released, but suspicions and hard feelings remain.