ELIZABETH SCHULTE explains how the operations of Washington’s junior partner in southern Iraq have exposed the U.S.-British occupation of Iraq for what it is--a dirty war waged with utmost brutality to crush all opposition.
WHEN THE occupation of Iraq began two-and-a-half years ago, scenes of British troops playing soccer with Iraqi children in the streets of Basra were top news in the media. The soldiers were winning the “hearts and minds” of the Iraqi people, we were told.
Today, those scenes have been replaced--by the image of a British soldier fleeing his tank, as it is set ablaze amid hundreds of furious Iraqi protesters in Basra in September.
British military rule over the largely Shiite South of Iraq has long been considered the “kindler, gentler” occupation compared to U.S. rule further north--especially in Sunni-dominated areas in and around Baghdad, where attacks on occupation forces are more common. But this is changing. Attacks on Britain’s 8,500 occupation troops in the South are on the rise.
Tensions came to a head September 19 when British forces used tanks to tear down the wall of a Basra prison in an operation to release two British undercover soldiers.
