Interesting article from the Telegraph.co.uk
British troops in Basra will be hemmed into an isolated military base and will face a relentless series of murderous attacks over the summer, senior officers have warned.
Commanders believe that the plan to withdraw troops to just one British base in the southern Iraqi city, which begins today, will lead to a significant increase in the number of casualties being sustained by the Army.
They fear it will encourage insurgents to concentrate almost all their attacks against the base, Basra Palace, a mile from the city centre and home to about 1,000 soldiers.
The withdrawal is part of a "reposturing" plan outlined by Tony Blair in a statement to the House of Commons in February, in which British troops gradually hand over areas of the city to the Iraqi police and army, while withdrawing from three separate bases to just the one.
The fighting in Basra is already being compared to the summer of 2004, when British troops were attacked by heavily armed insurgents every time they ventured on to the streets of the city after an uprising by the Shia Mehdi Army.
The latest deadly attack came on Thursday when four soldiers, two of them women including a Sandhurst contemporary of Prince William, were killed when their Warrior armoured vehicle was destroyed by a roadside bomb.
Virtually every military patrol in the city is now attacked with automatic rifle fire, rocket propelled grenades or, worse still, the feared roadside bomb. Soldiers who have recently returned from fighting in Basra have revealed that troops can now be expected to be attacked within minutes of leaving the relative safety of their bases.
Even non routine, intelligence-led operations are at risk from attacks because troop movements are monitored by so-called "dickers", a term which originated during the conflict in Ulster and is now used to describe Iraqis who relay information to the insurgents by mobile telephones.
The upsurge in violence is being blamed on two rival Shia groups in Basra who are vying to fill the power vacuum created when British troops finally pull out of the city. They also want the perceived kudos of being able to say they were the ones who ousted the British Army.
British commanders in Basra now admit that the number of attacks against coalition forces are beginning to escalate dangerously.
Lt Col Kevin Stratford-Wright, the Army spokesman in Basra, said: "The level of attacks against us at the moment is high. There appears to be a conscious decision by the insurgents to attack British troops.
"They want to disrupt the security transition process and they want to be able to say 'we kicked the Brits out of Basra'. But we will leave Basra when the time is right."
Movement by military convoys around the city is also becoming increasingly more difficult and even the shortest journey borders on being a major operation, with routes having to be cleared by Army dog handlers checking "vulnerable points" - such as areas where roads narrow - for hidden explosives.
The eight miles to the airport can take more than five hours to travel because it is no longer possible to take a direct route in and out of Basra.
Last month, British troops vacated the Old State Building, the base in the centre of Basra which had the dubious distinction of being the most attacked military location in Iraq.
One senior officer said: "We have been bombed out of every base we have been in so far and the prediction is that the same will happen when we are based only in the Basra Palace.
"Withdrawing to just one base will enable the insurgents to concentrate their forces against us. They can attack us with indirect fire from within the city, by firing rockets and mortars into the compound, they can ambush us with IEDs [improvised explosive devices] when we are travelling in vehicles and they can snipe at us when we are on foot patrol. It is only going to get worse."
The security situation in the area is further undermined by the notoriously corrupt local police, the majority of whom are aligned to one of the insurgent groups. Last month one police chief complained that he could not trust one third of his officers because of links to insurgents. Another senior officer said that he had been forced to hire 300 illiterate officers for tribal reasons.
In any other country apart from Iraq, Basra Palace would be a "must see" site on the international tourist map. Built by the Ottomans and expanded under Saddam Hussein's regime, it sits in a tranquil setting along the lush banks of the Shatt al-Arab waterway.
These days, however, its once beautiful gardens, lakes and canals are rarely visited by the multi-national force housed inside. No one wants to be caught in the open when mortars and rockets begin to fall, as they do on most days.
The brunt of the attacks has been felt by troops from 19 Light Brigade, who are coming to the end of their six-month tour. The brigade has sustained more than 20 fatalities and dozens more soldiers have been injured. Several have lost limbs.
This year alone 13 soldiers have been killed in Basra and six of those deaths have occurred this month.
Thursday's attack, which left four soldiers and a civilian interpreter dead when their Warrior armoured fighting vehicle was destroyed by a roadside bomb, was a carefully planned ambush.
The soldiers, 2nd Lt Joanna Dyer, 24; Cpl Kris O'Neil, 27, Pte Eleanor Dlugosz, 19 and Kingsman Adam Smith, 19, were all killed instantly.
Lt Dyer, who came from a military family, was a close friend of Prince William at Sandhurst. She was serving with the Intelligence Corps and had volunteered to deploy to Iraq immediately after being commissioned in December.
Such is the strength of the armour on the Warrior that the vehicle was regarded previously as being impregnable to improvised explosive devices, which use a shaped charge to pierce the hull of armoured vehicles.
The fact that the Shia insurgents have developed a weapon that can "defeat" a Warrior's armour means that British troops now have no vehicle that can protect them against the threat from roadside bombs.
The "shaped charge" basically has the same effect as an anti-tank rocket when it strikes an armoured vehicle. It is widely assumed that the technology for making the bombs and the devices for triggering them have been developed across the border by elements of the Iranian Republican Guard.
Prince Harry will be serving with 1 Mechanised Brigade which replaces 19 Light Brigade in the next few weeks.
However, the prince will not take part in patrols in Basra. His unit, the Life Guards, will spend six months working as a covert force patrolling the border with Iran.
Senior officers have said that Harry, who has "won the respect of his men" will be given no special treatment and will expect to carry out his duties "just like any junior officer".
