Was the battle of Basra our worst defeat since Suez?
Revealed: the secret and ignominious surrender to a brutal militia that lay behind the British Army's retreat after the loss of nearly 170 lives in Iraq
Part 1, published: 16 October 2011
As serialised in the Sunday TimesPart 1 | Part 2
Basra’s postal service was still not running, so the invitations would have to be hand-delivered. Ahmed, the consulate’s office manager, was dispatched with 200 stiff white cards. The florid lettering on each read: “You are kindly invited to attend the Queen’s birthday party at Basra Palace. Date April 21, 2006.”
Consular staff had compiled an impressive guestlist to celebrate the royal birthday: southern Iraq’s most notable sheikhs, imams, security officials and politicians. Iraqis working in the consulate whispered that some were known to have organised attacks against the British Army.
The Mahdi Army established a reign of terror when the Army pulled out (Peter Jordan)
James Tansley, the consul general, anxiously texted tribal chiefs, encouraging them to attend. Pulling off the Queen’s birthday party was one of the annual rigours of life in the field for diplomats, but this year’s required special dedication. Three years after the invasion of Iraq, Britain’s empire in the south — an area bigger than Ireland — was teetering.
London had shifted its strategic interest from Iraq to Afghanistan and was relying on Basra’s newly elected council to take control of the city so the British Army could begin to withdraw and concentrate on the new Afghan battleground. But popular resentment at the UK’s failure to improve the quality of life in southern Iraq was feeding a growing insurgency. UK bases were hit with nightly mortar and rocket attacks; and the suspected militia sympathisers, dodgy businessmen and clerics on the council were testing the promise of a smooth transition to democratic rule. If the insurgents could not be overcome, the British would face a “perfect storm”, caught in two theatres at the same time, as one top general warned. How was it going to extricate itself?
Basra Palace, the British centre of operations, consisted of a dozen villas in a compound cooled by breezes from the Shatt al-Arab river. On the balmy afternoon of the party, sheikhs in gold-trimmed cloaks were greeted by Tansley and a crowd of besuited diplomats and contractors clutching wine glasses. Islam forbids alcohol, but such a vital British custom could be discreetly observed without offending anyone. Muzahim al-Tamimi, a garrulous sheikh who had ingratiated himself with the British, brought his own Johnnie Walker, saying that surely the whole point was to offend the unsophisticated “turbans”, whose piety did not represent the moderate majority.
The party was in full swing when the sun dipped below a fringe of palm trees, and the mood suddenly changed. By some accounts, phones began to ring and groups of Iraqis hastily departed. Shortly afterwards, the first Katyusha rocket salvo slammed into scrubland just outside the compound walls. The remaining guests broke for cover while Tamimi remained at the buffet, sipping his whisky and joking: “I wish every party could end like this.”
The Mahdi Army had infiltrated half of Basra’s British-trained police force The next day the first diplomats began packing their bags to leave. The partial evacuation of the palace had begun, and with it the beginning of the end of the British occupation of southern Iraq.
By the time Major-General Jonathan Shaw arrived to take charge of British troops at the end of 2006 — the ninth general to do so in just over three years — Basra Palace was the most attacked location in Iraq, with a dozen rockets and mortar rounds falling a day.
The situation was not much better at the other three British bases in the city, cut off from each other by roadside bombs and the threat of ambush.
The Shi’ite militia, known as the Jaish al-Mahdi or Mahdi Army, had infiltrated half of Basra’s British-trained police force. Fuelled by oil smuggling and supported by Iran, it was linked to scores of murders of tribal and religious rivals and to constant attacks on British personnel.
Little of this was known to the public in Britain, where media coverage of Basra was largely confined to saccharine Ministry of Defence press releases. Western reporters had kept away since the murder of an American journalist, Steven Vincent, who had braved the city’s treacherous streets. But the British insistence that the south was ready to be handed over to Iraqi rule was treated with growing scepticism by the American military command in Baghdad, who could not afford to risk British forces leaving a power vacuum.
Like every general before him, Shaw had his own ideas on how to run things. His predecessor, Richard Shirreff, a bullish cavalry officer, had set out to defend the British Army’s honour by taking on the militia. But his requests for more troops were opposed by the newly appointed chief of the general staff, Richard Dannatt. Any spare soldiers were needed in Afghanistan, he argued, where UK forces were overstretched and under siege.
“No one really wanted to tackle Iraq at the end of the day. They just wanted to move on and forget about it,” Shirreff reflected four years later.
Shaw, who had the clipped air of a City lawyer, was convinced that politics rather than force was the answer. Shirreff’s efforts to take on the militias had only provoked them. The British needed to step back from the fighting. Shaw hoped that a staggered withdrawal from British bases would steadily erode support for the militia. Without a British enemy to unite them, Shaw suspected, some of the armed groups would revert to petty gang activity.
He set his staff to work unpicking Basra’s patchwork of tribal and criminal connections and was surprised to discover that the local Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) station chief, James Proctor, a former army officer, had no good interlocutors among the insurgents. “Find me some leads,” Shaw told him. The idea of talking to men responsible for killing British soldiers would no doubt prove controversial, but Shaw saw little option if he was to broker a peace deal.
His task was complicated by a change in US strategy. America’s plan for transition to Iraqi control was replaced by General David Petraeus’s troop “surge”. For the first time since the invasion, the UK’s desire to withdraw would be fundamentally at odds with US policy. There was now a danger that the Americans would “think we were abandoning ship”, warned Shaw’s chief of staff, Colonel Ian Thomas. US headquarters in Baghdad told Shaw that if the British persisted in withdrawal, the US would have no choice but to send its own troops to Basra.
The good news for Shaw was that the SIS had found the interlocutor he was looking for — Ahmed al-Fartosi, the jailed former leader of the Mahdi Army in Basra, who was responsible for the deaths of many British soldiers. For almost three years Fartosi had been locked by the British in a tiny cell at a desolate logistics base ringed with concrete blast barriers and barbed wire, kept under constant surveillance by armed guards. He was considered so dangerous that he was not allowed contact with fellow prisoners — southern Iraq’s most hardened insurgents. There was intense debate between Proctor, Shaw and the handful of other officials in the know about whether to negotiate with such a man. There seemed little choice. In Northern Ireland peace had only come after Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness were co-opted into the process.
Fartosi had not been tried or sentenced, and he had every reason to believe the British would hold him indefinitely. So he was surprised and relieved when Proctor visited him in his cell and made him an offer. Negotiate a ceasefire in Basra, the SIS man said, and the British would stay off the streets and steadily release detainees, culminating with Fartosi himself.
Fartosi’s immediate family headed the Basra branch of one of the largest clans in southern Iraq, numbering several hundred thousand. Before his arrest in 2005, he had felt invulnerable. He moved with the self-important swagger of a classroom bully, broad shoulders thrown back. A closely cropped goatee and preference for western dress were a statement of deeper sophistication: that there was a dark philosophy behind his brutality.
British intelligence knew him to be a wily customer, self-possessed and convinced of his cause. But he now looked ill, and had lost almost two stone in jail. Proctor suspected his hatred for the British had been worn down by imprisonment.
Proctor and other officials held several meetings with Fartosi, culminating with a visit by Shaw himself. The general talked to him for two hours, and warned of the threat of Iran taking over southern Iraq. British forces would leave “but the Iranians won’t”.
Despite dealing with the Iranians to fight the British, Fartosi had no desire to cede control of Basra to them or their proxies. “The Iranians must be driven out from Iraq,” he declared.
“Then you must strike a deal and help secure Basra’s future,” Shaw urged.
By early June 2007, through Fartosi, the militia had agreed to a test run for a full deal later in the summer. In exchange for a three-day ceasefire, Shaw would release one militia foot soldier and one of Fartosi’s key henchmen. In utmost secrecy, the two men were driven to the edge of the logistics base, where a phalanx of Mahdi Army Land Cruisers had gathered. That evening there was silence in Basra.
Few people outside Shaw’s small team and Jock Stirrup, chief of the defence staff, knew about the negotiations. Dannatt was kept out of the decision-making process. Lieutenant-General Graeme Lamb, the senior British commander in Iraq and a former director of special forces, only found out from his contacts in the SIS. He confronted Shaw after seeing his own name on a memo to Stirrup implying he had given his approval.
Shaw was all smooth assurance when they spoke. “Isn’t this what you and the Americans are doing in Baghdad?” he asked, referring to negotiations with a Sunni insurgent leader, Abu Azzam.
Lamb felt differently. Abu Azzam had been on the defensive when they struck a deal: most of his associates had been killed or captured, and he was hiding from Shi’ite death squads. The Mahdi Army in Basra was much more powerful, and the offer to Fartosi stank of desperation. The British appeared to be “cutting a deal to run”. But Lamb stopped short of rejecting the proposal, knowing that withdrawal was imminent and there were few other options.
Britain was about to have a new prime minister, Gordon Brown. On a visit to Baghdad, he fell asleep while the US general Stanley McChrystal was briefing on the success of special forces operations. His aides faced the difficult decision of whether to nudge him awake — Brown was a notorious snorer — or stop McChrystal, who gamely carried on talking as Brown slept.
Lamb decided to confront Brown directly about the damage Britain’s looming exit would cause Anglo-American relations. “The Americans are winning here, and we’re a part of it,” he said. “If we pull out now all that blood and treasure will have been wasted.” Brown was unmoved. Iraq had been Blair’s poisoned chalice; it was not going to be his too. “There was a real concern that Brown was looking for a Love Actually moment,” said one senior officer, referring to the romantic comedy in which a British premier stands up to an arrogant American president.
Unease ran deep at military headquarters in Northwood, northwest London. Two of the chief planners, Brigadier Patrick Marriott and Air Vice-Marshal Greg Bagwell, confronted the chief of joint operations, Nick Houghton, with their fears for the reputation of the British Army.
“We must not rush,” Marriott told Houghton. “The British public will not forgive us if we squander the sacrifices made by our servicemen.” Houghton sympathised but there was little he could do to overturn a decision taken at No 10. Besides, there were plenty of officers who believed that Britain had paid its dues and had no further obligation to support America’s war — especially as it had been turned into a quagmire by US bungling and arrogance.
The idea was to save UK taxpayers’ assets; the subtext was to give the Iraqis less to steal Brown instructed Stirrup to prepare a plan that involved the rapid withdrawal of British troops from Iraq to Kuwait. When Lamb learnt that British forces were preparing to leave, he knew that only a ceasefire in Basra could stave off a disastrous exit. In a carefully worded letter to Stirrup he approved a deal with Fartosi.
Under the agreement, British troops would re-enter Basra only after informing the Mahdi Army, a proviso intended to reduce the chance of inadvertent firefights. That did little to reassure US commanders, who had grown weary of British attempts to portray the city as a success story. At a commanders’ conference, Shaw’s description of Basra as ready for handover was met with open disbelief.
“There were rumblings in the room,” recalled one US general present. “The British withdrawal was a rebuke to the whole US surge strategy.”
On the evening of July 17, Lamb was in the ground-floor office of Maude House, the British military residence in Baghdad, when Major-General Graham Binns, who had taken over from Shaw, bounded in. “Just got my f****** orders from CDS [chief of the defence staff],” said Binns, slapping the desk and clearly delighted that he would be in charge for the historic moment. “I’m turning the lights out in Basra Palace.”
Lamb gave him a withering look. He felt the US surge was winning over Iraqis and that a similar strategy in the south would convince them to turn against the militia. “When will London listen?” he asked. “We’ve got a golden opportunity in Basra.”
“Well, I’ve got my orders,” said Binns, taken aback.
In advance of the ceasefire, fighting intensified. The palace was under heavy attack as soldiers attempted to dismantle the detritus of British occupation: portable buildings, computers, desks, a fleet of battered golf buggies. The idea was to save UK taxpayers’ assets; the subtext was to give the Iraqi mob less to steal. Packing up amid a bombardment was dangerous. Morale could not have been lower.
The ceasefire began at the end of August. Proctor had provided Fartosi with a small office in the detention facility, complete with satellite telephone, fax and television. The SIS officer enjoyed the small semblance of control he felt, via Fartosi, over the city. “He’s like a tap which I can turn on and off,” Proctor enthused.
An eerie peace fell over Basra. The order to withdraw troops rapidly to Kuwait was not given. Brown had had second thoughts about antagonising the Americans, and a slower withdrawal would allow the military to pull back from Basra Palace in a measured and dignified fashion. British forces would then be confined to Basra airport and the Shaibah logistics base, where they would remain for the following year training Iraqi security forces.
The palace took on a ghostly air. The night before the ceremonial handover several British officers gathered in the small operations room to sip whisky and steady their nerves about a Mahdi Army surprise attack. In the early hours of September 3 the British flag was lowered. Within half an hour 600 soldiers were in their vehicles. The tanks and Warrior armoured vehicles moved slowly to the city outskirts, laboriously checking for roadside bombs. When they arrived unharmed at the airport many hours later, they did so with a feeling of triumph. But a militia video quickly did the rounds, showing the British convoy trailed by Mahdi Army fighters waving their guns triumphantly. In the four-year Iraq campaign 168 British military personnel had been killed; 11 more have died since.
The palace was not stormed after the withdrawal, but the militia hardly needed to hoist a flag over the building to show it was in charge. Its black-shirted operatives soon patrolled the streets, enforcing a crude form of Islamic law. Women had to stay indoors or cover themselves in abayas. Extortion and kidnapping were common, and the city morgue was full of murdered Iraqis, many bearing the marks of torture.
There now entered a new figure. The fight for Basra was taken up by General Mohan al-Faraji of the Iraqi army, who had orders to wrest the city back from the Mahdi Army. Living in a city where thousands of fighters were plotting his demise, and at least some of his own forces were assisting them, would have overwhelmed a lesser man, but Mohan was most comfortable with his back against the wall.
A tank commander during the Iran-Iraq war, he had subsequently plotted a rebellion against Saddam Hussein, only to be uncovered and thrown into prison for five years. In his early fifties, he was garrulous, wilful and sly.
Mohan had been assigned a British mentor, Colonel Andy Bristow, a partnership that created its own conundrums, as Bristow knew about the Fartosi deal while Mohan did not. From the British short-term perspective the deal had been an extraordinary success — after months of incessant bombardment, attacks on the two remaining British bases had all but stopped. But their Faustian bargain undermined the very institutions that the British had gone to Iraq to create.
Bristow heard about the murders, rapes and abuse, and knew that the city was nothing like the peaceful oasis British defence chiefs were trying to portray to the media. He was beginning to realise that the deal might have helped the British Army avoid one calamity, but the longer-term consequences for Basra, and for the British legacy in Iraq, might be much worse.
Petraeus was also increasingly alarmed about the scale of the problem developing in the south. On a surprise visit to Downing Street, he issued Brown with an ultimatum: he was prepared to send American troops to Basra unless Britain retained enough troops there. Brown assured him that British troops would continue to support the Iraqi security forces in Basra.
Mohan was left with few illusions about whether the British would deliver when the Mahdi Army besieged his headquarters at the Shatt al-Arab hotel. Under heavy attack, he called Bristow to ask for British troops to enter the city in his support. He considered the British response — a flyover of two F-15 jets — underwhelming.
When Mohan next saw Bristow, he angrily accused the British of abandoning him, and Bristow revealed the terms of the deal with Fartosi. Mohan was horrified. The British would be leaving behind a city swimming with hardened criminals for him to contend with. “This must stop at once!” Mohan declared, banging the table.
The Fartosi deal was increasingly turning into a noose around the neck of the British, but Proctor was pushing hard to keep it alive. An SAS team had been due to conduct an operation in the city, only for Proctor to order them to stop, fearing they would break the terms of the deal with Fartosi.
On another occasion the British were presented with an opportunity to raid a building in Basra believed to hold Peter Moore, the IT consultant kidnapped in Baghdad with his four bodyguards. The intelligence was thin and, given the likelihood that a raid would upset Fartosi, Proctor advised it should be turned down. (Moore was released two years later; his bodyguards had been murdered.) Bristow, fearful of the day when the British ran out of prisoners to release, tried to broker a rapprochement between Mohan and Fartosi; but when they met in Fartosi’s cell “both men recognised that once the deal with the British ended, the battle between them would begin”, noted Bristow.
They did not have to wait long. On December 31 Fartosi was released, and within days violence against the British had resumed. Rocket fire and mortar attacks on the British base at the airport surged from a few a week to more than 30. In London, defence chiefs stuck to the position that there was no insurgency in Basra despite overwhelming and grisly evidence. The Mahdi Army was well equipped, lethally effective and the dominant force in the city, while British troops glumly hunkered down in the airport waiting for the end.
