British draw-down from Basra a positive development

I read Juan Cole regularly, which anyone who reads me regularly knows. I rarely have analytical disagreements with Juan's assessments on Iraq. His blog is an invaluable resource, and his judgment has proven prescient repeatedly over the past few years. With that said, I have to disagree with his article at Salon today.

Juan begins by saying, rightly, that Vice President Cheney calling the British decision to redeploy 1,600 troops from southern Iraq by May "an affirmation of the fact that there are parts of Iraq where things are going pretty well" is quite absurd. This administration never tires of twisting premises to fit already-determined conclusions -- such as the dichotomy of rising insurgent attacks being a good sign because "they're desperate" or in "last throes" while reductions in attack levels are also a good sign because "we're winning", for example -- and the Vice President's most recent comments are no different.

The piece then goes on, however, to elaborate upon why things are not "going pretty well" in Basra to the extent that it seems like an argument against the troop withdrawal. Juan explains that supply lines for both Coalition troops and Iraqi oil supplies will be vulnerable, and warns that troops in the rest of Iraq, especially Baghdad, will be increasingly vulnerable to the intra-Shia conflict in the south. The article cites three battles just in February to show that Basra remains unstable, but the first includes an admission from British military sources that they might be doing more harm than good in Basra and the other two explicitly describe the violence as being between British troops and the Mahdi Militia. It's unclear to me that this violence would necessarily continue between Iraqis rather than lessening as British troops depart, taking with them the incentive for anti-occupation attacks.

And really, we're not talking about a huge number of troops. The British have just 7,100 forces in Iraq, and they plan to remove 1,600. Basra, the second-largest city in Iraq, has roughly 2.5 million people. Not exactly numbers that are going to make or break the security situation, and I remain unconvinced that the troops there are having a significant effect upon the levels of violence. In summer 2006, Iraqi officials announced that deaths were occurring in Basra at the rate of one every hour, and it's not like there's been an influx of British troops (or effectiveness) since then.

I would not ask British troops to get in the middle of Iraq's southern civil conflict any more than I want U.S. troops in the midst of sectarian violence in the rest of the country, and I'm skeptical of the idea that this withdrawal is going to precipitate a precipitous decline for Basra's security. Are the Vice President's statements about the withdrawal demonstrating success completely full of it? Absolutely. Does this involve risks? Yes. But is it the right thing to do for the future security of both Iraq and the U.K. (and perhaps U.S.)? I think it is.

In his closing paragraph, Juan says, "Without a United Nations peacekeeping force or the like to tamp down violence, the British retreat from Basra is unlikely to produce positive results." I respectfully disagree, at least in the mid- and long- term. While worst-case scenarios are possible, I think this will ultimately be a positive development -- not because it reflects positive changes, but because it could portend them. If the security situation in Basra declines precipitously in the late spring and early summer (beyond the usual seasonal cycles of violence), I'll stand corrected, and I would have to reevaluate my support for significant Coalition withdrawal. But it's my hope -- and belief -- that this will begin to demonstrate that troop redeployment may not be quite the apocalypse remaining war supporters claim.