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Iraq

April 09, 2003

British fight to fill Basra's power vacuum

BRITISH commanders sought to establish Iraq’s first postwar civil adminstration in Basra yesterday as looting and disorder spread through the city.

While local people celebrated the end of President Saddam Hussein’s regime in southern Iraq, British officers appointed a local sheikh as civic leader, giving him the authority to recruit aides, including Baath party members, to consolidate his power base.

But the size of the task that faces the administration and its patrons grew by the hour as, in the absence of any police force, rioting and robbery spiralled, leading to the arrest by British troops of a group of armed robbers as they tried to break into a safe at a bank with a blowtorch.

The Black Watch soldiers called to the scene found an angry crowd outside the bank who told them that armed men were inside. Corporal Tom McLellan, 28, from Perth, said: “We sledgehammered the doors open and threw two grenades inside before rushing in. About five of them escaped, but we managed to arrest three.”

On some fronts, however, civilian support for the occupying force was already waning. One woman, whose home was 50 yards from a British military base, said: “The British said they have come to liberate us, but now I cannot sleep safely in my bed because these robbers have said they will kill us and take all of our house.”

She pointed to the other side of the street, where a gang of young men was stripping everything from a building. They took away doors, light fittings, flooring — just about everything they could prise free. “Under Saddam I could sleep safe in my bed, but not any more,” she said.

A Royal Marine watched from a nearby checkpoint. He said that he had reported the incident, but was told by his commanders that there was not enough manpower to deal with every incident of looting.

Lieutenant-Colonel Ben Curry, spokesman for 3 Commando Brigade, responsible for much of eastern Basra, said: “It is just two days since we arrived in Basra and there are still pockets of resistance in the area, so we are still very much in the fighting phase of our operation to liberate Iraq.When that phase has passed, we will be able to focus more on the security situation, but the plan is for a civilian police force to be created as soon as possible. But the primary role of our soldiers is as combat troops, not police.”

While many civilians were smiling and waving at every passing British vehicle, others came to the main Royal Marine base, in the former presidential palace, to petition soldiers to stop the looting.

With all of Basra’s police having fled or in hiding, Iraq’s second city has no clear sense of law and order. With little sign of any large supplies of aid coming to Basra, crowds of men, women and children grew all day outside the military bases to beg for water.

The city’s new leader, understood to be a widely respected Shia Muslim who walked into a British camp shortly after the first tanks entered the city on Saturday night, joined a postwar planning conference with divisional commanders yesterday. “We have ascertained that he is worthwhile, credible and has authority in the local area, particularly with the tribal chiefs,” Lieutenant-Colonel Chris Vernon, a British spokesman, said. “He will form, at present, the leadership within the Basra province.”

Young men, meanwhile, cruised through the city in lorries, pick-up trucks and bicycles, grabbing what they could. One hotel was a burnt-out wreck by mid-morning, with looters drawing up outside on donkey carts to take away carpets and fittings. For some, the theft and wanton destruction were too much to bear, and matters threatened to turn nasty as they began to stone the looters, known locally as the “Ali Babas”.

Some were also growing angry at the lack of water, electricity or gas. The shortages do not yet appear to be life- threatening, but as thousands of people draw unpurified water from the Shatt al-Arab waterway, aid agencies fear an outbreak of disease.

In some parts of Basra, life was slowly returning to normal yesterday. Taxis and lorries returned to the streets, the markets were back and fires that engulfed the tanks littering roadsides had mostly burnt out. Royal Marine officers told how they owed their victory, in part, to the many local people who had warned them about ambushes and about the movements of Iraqi troops.

Lieutenant-Colonel Gordon Messenger, commanding officer of 40 Commando, said: “It is clear that the Iraqi fighters had no support among the local population, and on a number of occasions we were warned about ambush plans. “The demeanour of the people has changed since we arrived. At first, we were firing weapons, and were probably a pretty dangerous crowd to be around, but now people are approaching us to ask how long we will be staying and what we are going to bring to the party. They also want to know what a postwar Iraq is going to look like.”

That final question is the most difficult to answer, not least because the appointment of the anonymous sheikh appears to contradict plans being drawn up in Washington for an interim administration under US military control.

.Additional material from pooled dispatches from Tim Butcher, of The Daily Telegraph, Nick Parker, of The Sun, and Simon Houston, of the Daily Record.

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