[A-List] UK state: Iraq crisis

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

MPs put Blair on spot over exit strategy

Nicholas Watt, political correspondent
Thursday June 26, 2003
The Guardian

Tony Blair yesterday faced cross-party pressure to map out an "exit
strategy" from Iraq, to ensure that British troops do not become engulfed in
a Vietnam-style quagmire.

Both Labour and Tory politicians seized on the military deaths in Iraq to
demand a timetable for withdrawal of British troops, who should be replaced
by UN forces.

John Major, prime minister during the 1991 Gulf war, said outlining an exit
strategy would help to persuade the Islamic world that Britain and the US
were not in Iraq for selfish reasons.

"We need to talk about an exit strategy so that those people who are
spreading the propaganda that we are there for the long term... find
themselves confounded by the fact that we are talking publicly of an exit
strategy," Mr Major said on Radio 4's Today.

"If you had wider forces, it minimises some of the risks that are
self-evidently there for American troops and British troops as well." But
the former prime minister warned that Britain might find it difficult to
withdraw its forces.

"We may find ourselves in a position where we are enmeshed and unable to
leave without creating substantial chaos. We need to create a circumstance
in which we can."

Mr Major's remarks were echoed by a former Labour defence minister. Doug
Henderson, an opponent of the war, said: "There is a very difficult dilemma
for the government.

"If more troops are brought in to protect troops, that will send a signal
that we are in for the long haul and will be seen as invaders rather than as
liberators. It may be better for the government to win a further United
Nations security council resolution for UN peacekeepers. Britain should
persuade the US to do that."

Mr Henderson added: "It is not Vietnam yet. But if we do not bring about law
and order quickly, it will be impossible to effect reconstruction of Iraq."

The deaths of the six British military police dominated the prime minister's
Commons appearance yesterday. Jon Owen Jones, the Labour MP for Cardiff
Central, warned the prime minister that Britain could end up remaining in
Iraq for decades.

"I am reminded that Northern Ireland... is still directly ruled from this
place over 30 years after direct rule was put in place. We desperately
require an exit strategy from Iraq."

The prime minister, who showed some irritation with Mr Jones by dismissing
the comparison with Northern Ireland, said the number of British troops in
Iraq had been reduced from 46,000 at the height of the conflict to 14,000.
Over the next few weeks, around 19 or 20 countries would be sending troops,
providing a force of several thousand.

But Mr Blair made clear that Britain would not embark on a unilateral
withdrawal. "Our exit strategy has to be based on making sure we maintain
our pledge to help Iraq be rebuilt as a stable and prosperous country,
because if it is not rebuilt in that way... it would continue to be a threat
to the region and the wider world."

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MoD struggles to find the truth

Richard Norton-Taylor and Jamie Wilson
Thursday June 26, 2003
The Guardian

The Ministry of Defence was last night struggling to establish the sequence
of events which led to six military policemen and a number of Iraqis being
killed and eight British paratroopers being injured.

Despite several eyewitness accounts from Iraqi civilians about what happened
in the southern Iraqi town of Majar al-Kabir, the ministry said hard facts
were scant.

But defence sources' descriptions of key events echoed accounts given by
local Iraqis. Yet with many overnight media reports citing witness accounts
of execution-style killings, MoD officials in London claimed they were
"speculative".

The sources told the Guardian that on Tuesday morning the six military
policemen paid what they called a "routine visit" to a police station where
they had been training Iraqis in maintaining law and order.

Meanwhile, soldiers from the Ist Battalion the Parachute Regiment went on a
pre-planned patrol looking for weapons. They were accompanied by what
sources described as an Iraqi "guardforce" and local interpreters.

According to the MoD, people threw stones at the soldiers, who then
withdrew. As they did so, they were fired upon.

Only then, says the MoD, did the paratroopers fire back. A light rapid
reaction force and Chinook helicopter arrived to rescue the soldiers. It
also came under fire and eight paratroopers were wounded before the patrol
was extracted.

In a separate - but what the MoD assumes was a related - incident, the six
military policemen were attacked and killed after heavy exchanges of fire.

Defence sources said the searches were pre-planned and people had been given
prior notice of them. They were not intrusive and the soldiers did not go
into living accommodation, the MoD said.

The ministry said the nature of the attackers and their motives were not
known.

There were "all sorts of tensions" in the town, defence sources said
yesterday. They pointed to lack of water and electricity.

An MoD spokesman in Basra, Captain Adam Marchant-Wincott, said British
forces would fire their weapons only if their lives were threatened: "A
Parachute Regiment patrol was doing normal framework patrolling and they
were engaged by hostile fire."

He categorically denied reports that British forces had given civilian
leaders in Majar al-Kabir 48 hours to hand over gunmen who killed the six
military police.

-----

Urgent tactical review considers thousands more troops for Iraq

Richard Norton-Taylor
Thursday June 26, 2003
The Guardian

Ministers and their senior military advisers were yesterday conducting an
urgent review of tactics in Iraq, including the possibility of sending
thousands of extra troops.

"We have significant forces available should it be necessary", said the
defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, referring to the 19,000 armed forces
personnel released as a result of the settlement of the firefighters'
dispute.

Mr Hoon said the review would include the issue of whether British troops
should wear helmets and body armour, like the Americans. However, British
military sources said there would be no "blanket order" for soldiers to don
combat kit all the time.

Tony Blair told MPs yesterday that General Sir Michael Walker, chief of the
defence staff, had told him British commanders in Iraq said they had enough
troops. But he added that if that judgment changed, more could be sent.

"The local commanding officers believe they have the troops sufficient for
the job," the prime minister said.

But despite a drop in the number of armed forces personnel in Iraq from
46,000 at the height of the war to 14,000 now, army chiefs will not relish
deploying more troops at a time when their forces are still extremely
stretched.

The army, though, is having to reassess whether British commanders have made
too much of their "softly softly" approach, a point they have wanted to
emphasise to contrast their tactics with the Americans, whom they regard as
trigger-happy and as hopeless in the battle for "hearts and minds".

Sir Michael said recently that there was "something in the British
character" which allowed British soldiers to switch rapidly from fighting to
peacekeeping. It was something we "need to cherish", he added.

Such assumptions have been shattered by Tuesday's violent incidents in which
six British military police and five Iraqi civilians, according to reports
from southern Iraq, were killed, and eight British paratroopers injured,
some seriously.

Allegations are already being investigated by the military police of British
soldiers mistreating Iraqi prisoners of war, including lifting them, bound
in a net, with a forklift truck.

Referring to incidents which appear to have sparked off the chain of events
leading to Tuesday's deaths and injuries, British defence sources yesterday
admitted that disarming Iraqis was a "provocative act".

Air Marshal Brian Burridge, the commander of British forces during the war
against Iraq, admitted in evidence to the Commons defence committee last
week that military commanders had still to understand what forces they
needed to police Iraq effectively. "We thought the regular [Iraqi] army
would be available to be organised. In the event they were not".

The deaths of the six British military police may also be a wake-up call for
Britain to put pressure on the US, the UN and other countries willing to
deploy troops in Iraq to adopt a coherent strategy for the country.

"Our troops in Iraq, quite disgracefully, are being called upon to operate
in a political vacuum", General Sir Michael Rose, former commander of UN
forces in Bosnia, said yesterday.

"Sadly, from all the discussions I have had with those tasked with running
post-conflict Iraq, it is obvious our politicians, both in Washington and
London, have little or no idea what to do with the country", he said in an
article in the Daily Mail.

Britain's military are worried by the absence of an exit strategy and are
unlikely to be encouraged by Mr Blair's comment yesterday to the Commons
that "exactly when those troops can come home I cannot be sure".

They are also unlikely to be reassured by US officials demanding the
handover of those responsible for the murder of the six military policemen
within 48 hours - a demand sharply denied by British officers - or by their
description by the US as "fanatics". Such moves will not help in the battle
for hearts and minds which the British troops have no option but to pursue.