How Basra riots turned bloody

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1769538,00.html

If you want to take on a major army in an urban street fight, there are worse places than Basra. The southern port city is a perfect mix of wide open streets - allowing armoured columns or heavily armed troops to penetrate rapidly, which then allows them to be hounded.
The British army had been trying to avoid this particular trap for a long time. Yesterday they found themselves deliberately walking into it, having effectively having set their own bait in the form of the British military helicopter that crashed in a residential area, reportedly killing four British servicemen at around 11am yesterday. If confirmed, the deaths will mark one of the most serious single losses for British forces in Iraq for over a year and come at a critical time for Tony Blair and British forces in Iraq. Equally, if a suspected missile strike is confirmed, it will mark a major step forward in the local insurgents' capabilities, and a serious blow to the UK deployment.

But initially the problem was elsewhere. For the troops of the Battle Group Basra, Highlanders and Royal Scots Dragoon Guards under the command of the Seventh armoured division, the priority was to reach and secure the site of the crash without being dragged into a Black hawk Down scenario.

<snip>

As the British troops moved into the site they were met by a hail of stones from a crowd of several hundred angry people. Molotov cocktails impacted on the armour of the Warrior fighting vehicles sending gouts of orange fire into the air. Soldiers emerged periodically to douse the flames.

As word of the incident spread, the crowds grew. They also changed in character. Where they had earlier been spontaneous, they soon took on a more organised nature. A clue as to why lay in the chants the rioters hurled at the troops: 'Victory to the Mehdi Army', they shouted, a reference to the armed militia of the radical Shia cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr. His men - and the Medhi army - have repeatedly been responsible for violent unrest in Basra and elsewhere in southern and central Iraq, though the extent of their involvement in bombings and missile strikes is unclear.

K&R

Mission Accomplished.

what took them so bloody long?

They are just as complicit in the deaths and destruction be preventing the US public from learning about this.

but the cat's out of the bag now. And those are NOT nice pictures, chanting crowds, anti-Brit and anti-US.

Anyone think that maybe, just maybe, Iraqis want us to leave? Recall what Bush and Rice said. If they want us to leave, we will.
Now it looks like we won't.

I only saw a bit on this on CNN yesterday. I also don't know why this is in editorials now. :shrug:

Get rid of a strongman, and the people return to three-fold tribalism. First, warlords, military leaders that collect a gathering; second, clans and tribes in sensu stricto, with their leaders; third, religious, with different sects collecting militias and trying to impose their dogmas. In Anbar, we see the second and third, but with Baathist leaders lurking in the 'resistance' they're in the mix; in the Kurdish north, we mostly see political parties that started off as quasi-warlords but managed to resolve their differences enough, but kept their militia(s?). In the south, the religious militias seem to hold sway.

No "people", just factions. Hussein worked for a decade or two to reduce the role both of traditional tribalism (apart from those from Tikrit, of course) and of clericalism in Sunni areas. Not that he was close to succeeding, to be sure, but he was making headway in making sure only he had loyalty. Then after '91 he pulled a Stalin and reversed course, emphasizing tribes and Islam, funding clerics and embarking on a huge mosque-building spree to ensure that the leaders were all loyal to him.

But really, I think it's a question of timing. Saddam would eventually die in any event; either his sons would have taken over and enforced their personal rule, or what happened after Tito's death in Yugoslavia would have happened in Iraq. The civil war in Yugoslavia was predicted at Tito's death, it just happened more slowly.

And Somalia, even after so many said "just get the foreigners out of the country, the Somalis will quickly resolve their problems and get along just fine with no interference" ... is still rife with the warlords and the clerics vying with competing militias for power.

The most recent incident comes at the beginning of the hot season when temperatures soar and the failure of the coalition to successfully provide electricity and water to millions of people in southern Iraq is resented more profoundly than ever.
(snip)

Good godalmighty. HOW long have they been there?

I read they cut off work on water and electricity, etc. because they wanted to pour more money into that VAST embassy complex, the LARGEST IN THE WORLD _Bush is building in Baghdad.

I hope it backfires on _Bush BIG TIME.